Quirky yet profound, playful but often deeply moving, Light Verse is a record to savour in one sitting, its ten tracks comprising a seriously impressive whole that’s considerably more potent than the sum of its unfailingly impressive individual parts.

The Car flickers between solemn nostalgia but also having a blast – a journey which can be unsettling but fun and surprising in a way that you wouldn’t expect.

4:44 offers renewed hope for fans who, since Kingdom Come, have felt increasingly disenfranchised by Jay-Z’s loss of touch with his roots and apparent marginalisation of his rap career.

Deafheaven are the masters of tension and release, and this record reinstates that less is, in fact, more.

These songs are indubitably vigorous and youthful. Moreover, there’s also a fleck of Slowdive's nostalgia and urgency spattered on them, like the golden sky at sunset, whose warm-coloured canvas quickly loses its treasured vibrance to nightly darkness.

t's ultimately perhaps telling that the most compelling departures from set templates are more naturally aligned with the territory of Washington’s past triumphs.

Tight melodic fare is coupled with less conventional overtones, interlacing with each other in an alchemical fashion that proves both breezy and combustible; a hypnotic tension that continues to reward on repeated playback.

It achieves the toughest task for a soundtrack--to maintain interest independent of the images it was built to accompany and accentuate--with impressive ease.

There’s something remarkable about Staples’ ability to display such emotional complexity within a relatively brief 35-minute runtime. It is an art he has mastered over the years, yet on this album he manages to pack an immense amount of content in that space – more so than ever before.

Whereas the less compelling stretches of its predecessor found Wagner seemingly bewitched by the new gizmos at his disposal, favouring texture and tone over tunecraft, This is more readily recognisable as a collection of Lambchop balladry, albeit one decked out in technological finery.

Like recent releases by Robyn or Solange, this expansive and beautiful record shows Vagabon as an expert at creating pleasure and soulful reassurance from electronic pop – a surprising but welcome heelturn.

Cool It Down is not only timely but a necessary album in evaluating the feelings of the present and looking ahead towards an uncertain future.

This record is a creation: you can hear the adventure in it.

Throwing in references to various Farrow and Ball paint colours, Asos, estate agents, and thoroughly unsavoury characters such as Heroin Stan (stabbed his mam), this is middle-aged angst set to music. Both World of Twist and Earl Brutus have a classic album to their name, and now, so do The Pre New.

Despite the fact that the future caught up with them, this collection shows that there remains nowt so queer as The Human League.

There is a murkier, hypnotic side to the band’s frivolities and the human habit of despising routine until life strips it away. It is this bittersweet thread through Other People’s Lives that makes it so instantly affable and ultimately, relatable, even with Seed’s observational alienation.

The album marks a significant advance for A Winged Victory…, in accepting the challenge of unorthodox inspiration, and doing musical justice to it in highly convincing fashion.

On Sunset could be viewed as an album reinstating Weller as the keeper of mod musical tradition, but it’s also an album that sees him taking a rare glance into the rear-view mirror as he speeds into the '20s.

Twin Flames sees Postdata at his most carefree, in this sense – a split-tone successor to the tumultuous nature of its two preceding albums.

Bad Boy Chiller Crew have taken inspiration from music that was around when times were a bit simpler and having a good time became a whole culture in itself.

An album as intimate as it is cinematic. Rose-tinted melodies wrap around delicate harmonies and show off Jónsdóttir’s disarming vocals as she chronicles her experiences of falling in and out of love in the digital age, and 12 tracks feel not quite long enough to experience the ethereal beauty of Laufey’s sonic universe.

The London-based trio use corrosive riffs, candid lyrics and pop hooks to deliver their most direct statement of self-autonomy yet.

There’s an underlying recognition here, particularly on the part of Miller: parties end. The most opulent train can go off the rails. It’s this juxtaposition – brashness and vulnerability, abandon and a recognition of impermanence – that makes No Hard Feelings an arresting sequence.

It is an impressive, exciting and moving album with slick production, accompanied by thought-provoking art (the interpretative dance performance in the “Black Swan” video, the CONNECT BTS art exhibitions), but it is so much more than a shiny pop album. It is a love letter to pain, to the shadows that live within us.

After Laughter is a deep album with plenty to say. It’s easily the most honest and mature Paramore have sounded yet and also probably, one of the best pop albums you hear all year.

L.A. Witch has managed to capture lightning in a bottle with enough space for you to stand back and observe without getting singed.

Even with the online version trimmed to his ex-label's liking, LP! is a riveting display of hip-hop steeped in its future while also embracing all the music Peggy has consumed up until this point.

The shockingly personal look at every contour of this lofty title FENIAN – all the happiness, empowerment, community, successes, sacrifices, disenchantment, confliction, grief – makes for a far more interesting, humanising record. Kneecap’s fire understandably dimmed, but it never sizzled out.