A refreshingly non-dogmatic take on retro musical styles.

The braggadocio heard on this track and throughout is like an extension of that confidence in “Formation” from Lemonade. ... Closing with “LOVEHAPPY”, Beyonce and Hov are at their most transparent about the moment that almost broke their marriage.

Ultimately, there’s something genuinely courageous and admirable about Cyrus’s ambitions with Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz. Sure, it’s way too long, and flamboyantly self-indulgent; but it’s free, and it’s fun.

It’s always been their melding of sounds that has singled them out. That glorious, flagrant disregard of genre is on full display here, a merging of sensibilities smooth as a rich, dark rum.

So even if this is an elegy for FJM, it’s a rather wonderful one.

Markedly different [from Dedication] in intent, a much lighter affair lacking the somewhat sombre, haunted mood of that valedictory record.

Thematically and sonically, For Those That Wish to Exist feels limitless.

Equal parts Jean Genet and Hellboy, it’s a magnificent oddity, exultant in its uniqueness, both personally and musically.

It's delivered with Bonnie's trademark kindly swagger, although her best performances here are probably the brace of covers from Dylan's Time out of Mind, "Million Miles" and "Standing in the Doorway", on which Frisell's tiny vibrato glimmer wields a subtle power to match her quiet passion.

The result emulates, and equals, Joanna Newsom’s Divers, another ambitious album about the inescapable inter-connectedness of love and death.

Cypress Hill are the hippies of the hip hop world, making music surrounded by a green-tinged haze that takes more cues from classic Sixties and Seventies rock than anywhere else. Elephants on Acid is one hell of a trip.

Rather than phone anything in, Cooper’s clearly making the most of his elder statesman position, finding new ways to freshen up vintage sounds and styles. He’s every bit as durable as the American city he celebrates.

Deforming Lobes is unpredictable and invigorating--the best representation of Segall’s restless creativity to date, not to mention the most fun to listen to.

The album loses some momentum around the more generic “Strangers”. But even with that song, the harmonies are hard to resist. It’s the best pop comeback – and likely one of the best pop albums – of the year.

It’s a superb album, full of welcome surprises.

“How long will it take to break the plans that I never make?” It’s a question that was inevitably begged by those previous celebrations of low-rent outlaw glamour, and, in attempting to answer it, Suede may have made their best album.

Zeffira's facility with reeds, keys and strings ensures constantly interesting textural shifts, while the combination of Badwan's imperious, Scott Walker-esque baritone and Zeffira's varied vocal stylings recalls not just Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra but even the effervescent charm of The B-52s.

Irish folk quartet Lankum’s second album offers an object lesson in how to perform old songs in new ways, without losing the essential sense of continuity that gives traditional music its timeless appeal.

For the most part the songs are full to bursting with youthful melodies that lift the weight off the more serious of topics.

It was worth the wait, of course.

Musically, it’s lovely – loose, swirling California rock and country, led by gaze-out-the-train-window melodies. ... This album will leave a mark – one that is Moore’s and Moore’s alone.

The first line of the first song encapsulates the adolescent angst which blossomed over and over throughout the band's career, with varying degrees of wit, empathy, contempt and self-pity.

Threads is a culmination of virtually every sound Crow has explored through her career, which began with her crafting ad jingles in the late Eighties.

Off Off On stakes out the Winchester-born, Paris-based Stables as one of the most original and musically gifted artists of today.

A rich, rewarding indulgence.

Isles invites you to close your eyes and let your alpha waves throw their own shapes.

Listening to it feels like fleeing from a warehouse rave. Just like lockdown itself, How I’m Feeling Now can be overwhelming – panic-inducing, even – when taken as a whole. But there are snatches of brilliance here, and as perhaps the very first album to be produced under lockdown, it is really quite an achievement.