This lovingly and lavishly packaged reissue is a timely reminder of what a supremely focused and satisfying record Soul Mining is.

A handful of the album’s later tracks, including “Sleep Paralysis” and the restless “Choose Your Fighter”, do perhaps fall short of other songs’ ‘absolute banger’ status, but nowhere is there an outright miss.

Commanding, assertive, and powerful, Prioritise Pleasure is everything pop music should be. Wholly unafraid to tackle difficult subjects with ease, in Rebecca Taylor we also have the makings of a serious pop behemoth.

This is a record that is highly sonically ambitious, and even the moments that don’t quite come together are carried by Beyoncé’s vocal talents and sheer star power.

For now, what we do have is an incredible record from a band, mid-flight, delivering sweeping abstractions of Gen-Z anxiety that only this group, as a seven-piece led by Isaac Wood, could create.

They inject even their most aggressive tunes with so much joy it becomes something incredibly hard to resist. Even after endless listens, not one chorus, riff, meditation or croon falls flat and none of it feels like it could've come from any band other than this one.

Without losing the sense of comfortable familiarity, and the nostalgia that comes along with it, Alexisonfire have signposted a new era for themselves as a band – and in doing so have let us know that they’re ready to roll with the times and the fast-evolving post-hardcore scene as it is right now.

Rolo Tomassi are a band still looking to push themselves further forward creatively, while remaining just as focused on retaining the dramatic core of their sound that has long set them apart from any contemporaries.

These songs have the funereal grace of David Bowie’s elegant final goodbyes (The Next Day and Blackstar), as well as Bob Dylan’s trio of reflective, mournful albums that helped usher in--and bring some clarity to--the fractious start of the 21st Century (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times).

While it’s pretty impossible to sit through more than a couple of hours of this box in one go, the importance of this body of work is undeniable. Music simply hasn’t caught up--this still sounds futuristic, enigmatic, distant and complicated.

The fuzz caked like dust onto Ellis’ demo mixtape has been cleaned off on Blizzard thanks to its proper mix and production job, allowing his extraordinary flirtations with folk music to shine.

We’re All Alone In This Together truly lives up to the quality expected of Dave’s sophomore album and cements him in time as a fallible but even more forthright voice of UK culture.

Titanic Rising is a new thing, her own stamp on the world. Like all the best musicians and songwriters before her, she’s plumbed the depths of her imagination and brought forth a masterpiece from the depths.

Despite the uncertainty of what is to come, Patterns in Repeat is so assured in its sound. Marling is the captain of her own ship, off on another adventure with one more crew member on board.

On Melodrama, Lorde invites all of us to join in her anguished party of the damned, convincing her believers that if we just keep on dancing the ills of the world won’t be able to catch up to us. And for now, that is a faith promising enough to get totally lost in.

The Greater Wings joins Sufjan Stevens's Carrie & Lowell and Ghosteen by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in the ranks of minimalist yet multi-layered, masterfully realised albums that are unmistakably rooted in loss and grief but ultimately transcend their painfully personal origins by blooming into life-affirming, universal beauty and resonance.

Hadreas may be uncompromising but stubbornness has its rewards: few albums feel as distinct or as complete as his.

In anyone else’s hands, 30 tracks might feel bloated and indulgent, but Swift tempers length with careful curation, sequencing and a respect for what made the original Red such a superb pop record.

Williams has created something that exceeds even her finest, most vital work. In short: a masterpiece, then.

All told, The Island Years contains an embarrassment of riches and must rank as amongst the most exhaustive and impressive undertakings of its kind; it’s the kind of towering tribute Martyn’s talents richly deserve. However, it’s hard to figure out who it’s intended for exactly.

Dense and immaculately detailed, nothing about Act II is accidental, and no one could begrudge Beyoncé her moment in the centre of the rodeo ring. There’s no question that Cowboy Carter is a landmark record. Arguably, an inevitable one. But once the dust of its audacity settles, it misses the mark of a classic.

Hidden History of the Human Race isn’t just one of the best death metal albums of the year, it’s one of the best metal albums of the entire decade. Stripped of its reductive metal assignations, it’s also one of the finest psychedelic albums of the decade.

The album does peter out somewhat. “Smugglers” is a languid rockier offering that only picks up in the last cacophonous couple of minutes and the final song, and album title track, “Glutton For Punishment” is a sweeter sounding, ironic take on maybe attracting the barrage of chaos life can bring. But when viewed in its entirety the album feels like a momentous leap.

Renaissance is one of Beyoncé’s best albums to date: it doesn’t walk in the footsteps of its predecessors but instead makes its own path, going to places we didn’t think Beyoncé would go. The six years since her last effort have well and truly been worth the wait.

It's brave but vulnerable, energetic but reflective and youthful but wise. If you listen to any Little Simz track, you'll know instantly she's a great MC, but with this project she has stepped beyond that to become a uniquely gifted artist. An incredible album.

"Born Cold" sounds like HIM, though with a slight pop-punk tinge to the chorus as Gould almost whines “do I look so good that you wanna treat me bad?” ‘Thorns of Love’ immediately feels like an old Gaslight Anthem track, and "Napalm Girls" – along with much of the record – has Alkaline Trio written all over it. This is no bad thing – Gould’s delivery of each line is fantastic, and the lyrics are lofty in multiple different ways. It’s exciting and feels fresh set against the current scene, but it feels just a little too all over the place.

This is a world-class band seemingly ending a chapter, clearing the board and resetting the clocks. This is the sound of a world-class artist, with his world-class band, at once unifying and annihilating his own history, putting a concept on a fire and letting us hear it burn.

Truly establishing themselves as the bright possibilites of guitar music, and blurring lines along with setting new ones out, ultimately with Blue Weekend, Wolf Alice continue to be the very essence of what is to be a band while also remaining - more importantly - human.