The widened musical palette helps to pull you in while the songs are digging in their hooks. Pollard's production is astute enough to know when the most potent thing to do is to fade away.

Like every great record, For Melancholy Brunettes fits well in its release’s social sphere. These poignant songs are as relevant as ever in the United States, now equipped with an insatiable leading figure who has become a patron saint of noxious male authority for the impressionables. It’s only a shame that the music, albeit beautifully composed, doesn’t feel as forceful as the subject.

It’s a special place, in which she has the peace and comfort to continue to snatch all those thoughts and feelings out of her head, and distil them into her signature, singular poetic epiphanies. Just like those that give Close It Quietly the huge depth that it has, and mark it as an indie pop album with a substantial difference.

Bang is a great album, but more crucially, it’s an important one.

It’s a fantastic example of how artists can still come to a project with tonnes of contextual flavour that they want to include and not have it overpower the entire dish.

Ultimately, for as talented of a musician as Miller is, her greatest feat on her first proper LP is creating a distinct feeling and sense of place that's possible only because every element here works in sync.

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.

There are certainly more strong points than weak points to be concentrated on here. All the tracks that centre around Posdnuos, Trugoy and Maseo see De La Soul at full strength with their rhymes as sharp and playful but seemingly wiser than ever before.

We are never out of surprises on Windflowers, as it has that gift to reconnect you to the essential, with the help of sweet pop as contagious, varied and comfortable.

Greene dials down, as was the case with the preceding LP, Notes from Quiet Life serving as a comedown equivalent to the sonic swelter of the former.

The subtleties written into the album's DNA make all the difference (with the mention of the album's title in so many of the lyrics acting as unifying sentiment), almost to a faultless degree.

Making experimental music is certainly a noble calling. Sneaking the adventurous spirit of improvisation into a relatively conventional song-based record such as Eyes On The Lines, however: that's truly radical.

Ultimately these songs work their sly magic in subtle and nuanced ways and here may lie the risk for BODEGA. Their, at first seemingly modest, charms need re-evaluating when on the third or fourth listen it all clicks and you realise what appeared modest is in fact pretty sublime.

The final 2 minutes of the [last] track feature a stream of guitar-generated distortion dotted with melodic hints that quickly rise and pass. It’s a glorious coda to an impressive return, a reemergence that shows the band at their most versatile, free to be themselves.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is yet another dose to remind you why – and how – the band have managed to carve their own special place out in the cultural landscape.

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.

Ash & Ice ultimately represents the contemporary tension of two talented artists finding their way back from the brink by leaning on each other as well as their music.

Clearly five CDs is way too much musical despondency to take in on one sitting, but this compilation does comprehensively show that for a genre known for an insular outlook, there was a surprising amount of scope musically from the bands involved.

Ultimately Drunk is an impressive record which commands multiple listens as much by its quality as its complexity. It shows off Bruner at the height of his powers as an artist shapeshifting through genres but always leaving his scent in the air.

Hot Snakes are as dry, dented and slightly demented as ever.

Sampa The Great's latest offering ensures that she will remain a beacon in her home continent of Africa and beyond.

Bird Songs of a Killjoy is a soft filter through which to view the world. It is a record to lean into, a brief respite from the daily grind to catch your breath and find your own peace and understanding.

Flowing effortlessly between melodious vocals and blistering guitars, between reflecting on past feelings and accepting new eventualities, the majority of the album feels weightless.

A four-track run from “Spider” to “New Magic II” – which includes the title track and “St. Francis Waltz” – proves a career best for Rose, housing her most affecting tunes yet.

Tracey Denim manages that difficult task, of creating an album that feels like a self-contained world without losing sight of songs that really work in and of themselves.

FREE SPIRITS brilliantly represents the pairs growth into themselves and into the reality around them. It’s as playful as you’d expect – the features all doing their part to add to the dizzying hold on to actuality – but beneath the smirk lies something more deliberate.

Elsewhere is a compelling debut, on which Moore has successfully revitalised the folksy feel of some of her earlier work. For a first album, it’s certainly a triumph.

Has God Seen My Shadow? seems similarly poised to wipe out Lanegan’s reputation as a perennial sideman: on this showing, he must count amongst the most compelling voices currently in circulation.