While nothing on the album differs dramatically from previous entries to the Half Japanese canon, Perfect offers a solid addition, thirteen new songs to shuffle into a deck that is already rife with heartbreak and ardor.

The album digs for transcendence by jackhammering away at the ills and addictions that afflict individuals and hold us back collectively. Uniform’s journey to zen through anger leads to draining music for the morning after.

Musically and thematically, everything about Little Fictions’ gestation has conspired to create arguably the most taut and urgent album of Elbow’s career.

Show Me The Body make music that isn't easy either; what's so important about them is their ability to drag your gaze in those uncomfortable directions.

Most of the songs on Air Con Eden are enveloped in this haze of hallucinatory imagery and soporific instrumentals. The wrenching “Water” is a shock to the system. Grounded, unironically sentimental, and unlike anything else on the album, it’s a gorgeous piano ballad about unbearable loneliness.

With multiple writers Sideways to New Italy perhaps lacks the focus and clear direction that the music deserves; stark changes in vocal styles can break an aural ‘fourth wall’ and remind the listener that the songwriters, while complementary, are also competing with one another for our attention.

A record full of handsome brass parading around an etch a sketch of ever changing life and love, Weeks holds the frame and with each listen you hear something you didn’t the previous time. A Quickening is your own bundle of joy you can love time and again, minus the diaper changes.

Someone New has a presence that lingers long after it’s finished. This is an album that demands your full attention, sucking all the air out of the room and leaving you to drift in the grey matter of Deland’s mind. After the last notes fade to black, the ghost of Someone New continues to haunt you — it’s an utterly unforgettable record.

Though the EP doesn’t quite feel like bold new territory for the band, it does find them equally blunt and blistering.

While lockdown may have forced Albarn and many others through a dark period, it’s produced some of his most awe-inspiring work.

Each half of the album ends with a relatively sudden shift in pace (“Body Suit” and the contrastingly acoustic “Too Much Colour”), and when you’re consistently bopping along to track after track (which does also risk becoming monotonous, I know) it can be a little jarring rather than the breather they intended.

Each of their songs still contain enough depth of cultural heritage to fill several essays. Persisting too are those harmonies: one of the most distinctive sounds in music today, muscular and powerful when necessary, graceful and hushed otherwise.

Palomino is a return to their familiar and comforting poetic and melancholic storytelling powers.

The ten songs that emerged from that process are a compassionate exploration of selfhood that rewards patience and resists easy answers.

Heartfelt stories such as these show – not tell; King of a Land does so in the last leg, but there’s always a nagging wonder of what the record would’ve been had it done so throughout its entirety.

The record is quietly confident; Gunnulfsen can belt, but she doesn’t need to shout to be heard.

I'd Be Lying If I Said I Didn't Care is not an easy listen. It's a cold lake on a summer's day – not immediately comforting, but if you commit to the activity, you'll be unaware of how long you've been enjoying it. The overarching feeling of optimism keeps the record above water and prevents it from falling into an unenjoyable experience.

The album fades out gently, a dissipation of tension and emotion that you don’t realise is cathartic until it’s over – for this reason, Big Sigh doesn’t just feel like Hackman’s best, but it feels like a distinct chapter marker in her catalogue. She closes the last decade stunningly, and nudges open the next.

Gartland’s songwriting remains occasionally obscure but is sweetened by the record’s focused storytelling.

The sheer volume of material on offer soon succumbs to the law of diminishing returns.

Unsurprisingly, there’s an overarching sense of melancholy, but the more you listen, the more you realise that she’s deftly poetic with her words in a way that’s clearly inspired by some of the great writers of the 20th Century.

All in all, Big Black Coat is another strong release from Junior Boys, a much needed warm hug during these cold winter nights.

At its heart, Tell Me How You Really Feel offers a sense of encouragement, finding reassurance in transience and seeking out a little beauty amidst chaos and turmoil.

The result is an intelligent and thrilling collection of existential punk-rock that has so much more to offer than those two paltry words, “punk” or “rock” could ever suggest.

Ruinism does, at times, often feel more like an experiment than a cohesive whole; a criticism sometimes levelled at Lynch. ... And yet, there’s something about Ruinism that sucks you into its world. It’s beauty amid chaos and it’s easy to let your inhibitions go and just fall into it.

Their execution is highly impressive, Bedroom may be retro in its thinking, but on this debut bdrmm have proved to be forward thinking in execution. An assured and brilliant debut.

The direct intimacy with Slone’s inner-thoughts, witnessed both in terms of its creative flourishes and depressive ramblings, is also indicative of this vividly local feature. It'll be the challenge of managing this aesthetic as they continue to grow, especially following the release of such an excellent record, that could prove central as to where they head next.

Friedman and Weingarten’s friendship remains an ever-constant reference point in their most confessionally open offering yet, the core chemistry between the two leads pulling the disparate and shared pasts together in a unified voice.