A step toward the intimate clarity of Front Row Seat to Earth, it still didn’t foretell the use of more ambitious instrumentation on “Diary”, “Used to Be” and “Do You Need My Love”, embellished with brass, wire and ivory. Mering counterweights the classic touches with ambient drone here and electronic manipulation there.

With Great Spans of Muddy Time William Doyle has now become his own man, capable of producing work on an equal level to those who have come before. It’s exciting to think of what might come next.

By being unafraid to turn up the grit of the guitars and building the wall of sound above the foundations of their debut even higher, it manages to set a more recent benchmark for newer acts to reach, but is still similar to acts who have toyed with the genre before it’s more mainstream return.

It really is a stunning record, a completely unexpected treat and an album of the year contender, no doubt.

To Those of Earth...And Other Worlds proves Ra's Afrofuturistic vision was very much for real.

This is pop music as it should be: simple, unvarnished, young but world-weary, and ultimately timeless.

Their ability to drop a pop banger has been proven already – they can do it – but they just find reimagining what Cybotron would sound like as a future-punk band, and that exploration in sound proves to be a gripping listen here.

On Sound Of The Morning, Pearson proves she has much to show us, and should be recognised as a folk singer of real promise and singular talent.

It appears they have landed on something magnificent; symphonies of aching, internalised nostalgia and frequent beauty, bookended by hate, despair and some of their finest sonic experiments ever.

Although the songs are largely solid, there’s a recurring sense of deja vu. ... Being Funny in a Foreign Language sees The 1975 lose touch with the reality they are usually so skilled at reflecting. Ever one to over-intellectualise, Healy is wrapped up in so many repeating layers of fame and meaning and memes and buzzwords that any real meaning is out of reach.

So: Dance Called Memory is a very good Nation of Language album – perhaps their most tonally varied since the debut – and for many fans that will be more than enough.

Ddespite being a classically trained multi-instrumentalist who self-wrote, mixed and produced the entire record, it is her hypnotic voice which carries you through this album of self-discovery.

I Walked With You A Ways almost certainly won’t go down as the most definitive work of either Crutchfield or Williamson’s career, yet it is unmistakably the work of two phenomenal musicians at their peak. Tasteful, affecting and melodic.

You might miss the electric-burn intensity of the lead guitars from In a Poem Unlimited, or you might miss the Iggy’s The Idiot-meets-Marc Bolan-and-Madonna-on-a-Tarantino-soundtrack vibes, but ultimately, there’s just as much to enjoy here. Heavy Light is more subdued, more restrained, and certainly more beautiful than its big sister.

Alternately dreamily anxious and immaculately groovy it marks the stunning apex of an intensely satisfying record. Just don’t forget that what comes next will be different again.

Birth of Violence isn’t Wolfe’s best album, or her most intense, or her most accessible. But what it is is a combination of elegant songcraft, dread-fuelled musicianship and otherworldly vocals. ... Birth of Violence no longer stands in the centre of the crossroads, it opens up a new road... down.

Turning it up to eleven, PUP’s second album is a tongue-in-cheek rampage through everything that matters. The dream might not be what they thought it would be, but when they’re capable of a record as unrelenting as this one, then it’s certainly not over.

Wolfe has crafted an impeccable release here, building upon her existing methods and evolving as a songwriter. Things feel more confident – there’s more energy and oomph.

The economic arrangements make sure that every note counts.

Musically, it is not quite extraordinary, yet this could all change in a live setting, and it remains a more than worthy return for a group who are experts in their craft.

Far more than an angry reactive, Tudzin proves herself to be a wily observer and highly competent commentator, as capable of a considered repose as she is a cutting catchphrase.

There’s an enchantment in the album's pacing and sequencing that we journey with the band through each of these emotions and emerge from trepidation with renewed hope, feeling reborn.

If A Black Mile to the Surface was the band’s first record back following a rebirth of sorts, then as far as the difficult second album’s go, Manchester Orchestra have absolutely nailed it.

Sundara Karma have grown both personally and musically with this album and they have delivered a follow-up that is confident and utterly fearless. With more direction than their previous entry, Oscar Pollock’s weird and wonderful mind becomes the main spectacle and something to truly admire.

Tainted Lunch is an irresistible delight; once you taste it you know you can never go without it again. Seductive, inescapable, overpowering, and you might need to take a shower afterwards.

Other You isn’t quite perfect. The album leans too heavily on dreamy tempos; more of the ‘motorik’ reverberations of the Grateful Dead-jamming-with-Neu! gem “Protection” wouldn’t go amiss. Gunn’s step into the unforgiving glare of the spotlight as a singer coincides with some fairly densely cryptic lyrics, too. Such misgivings are minor gripes when faced with closer “Ever Feel That Way”, a life-enriching anthem for empathy and mutual care.

If IRL is not as consistent as her previous output, this new album still cements Mahalia as a major R&B/Soul fixture both nationally and abroad.

Crying the Neck finds him getting into his stride again. If he reins in his excesses, he may be in full flight on its follow-up.