A dazzling introduction to new fans, and a crystal clear familiarity for fans that have been here from the beginning.

Instead of striving towards a perceived notion of happiness, Soft Landing is simply the crescendoing finale of a journey towards contentment.

With sonics so extraordinarily ornate and a soul-stirring sentiment to match, three men and their producer have successfully taken the listening world to church, and left it there waiting for its next sermon.

Love Hallucination ultimately feels like an artist riding on intuition.

With Eye on the Bat, it’s as if the 29-year-old Kempner shares the pages of their diary, revealing their reveries, fears, and embarrassments. Kempner may be now-oriented, but they’re also the beneficiary of a newfound and bigger-picture awareness.

Sunburn is a delightful entanglement of love, introspection, and nostalgia, married together by slick guitar licks, preppy notes, and delightful beats that make for Fike’s most impressive project to date.

When Horses Would Run relies on its all-over-the-place ideas for humorous purposes and while it might make for a confusing listen at times, there is fun to be had in its zaniness.

The Feminine Divine can’t match those first three deathless classic albums and falls just below the convincing return that was One Day I’m Going to Soar. Still, there’s enough of their unique brilliance on display to make this a qualified victory.

Though the album can feel dangerously repetitive at times, slower takes like ‘So What’ act as a reprieve from these moments.

For all its pomp and broad appeal, it brims with the artist’s personality and is a delight to connect with.

As Albarn croons, “Every generation has its gilded poseurs” and The Ballad of Darren prove that Blur are some of the best ever to do it.

Barbie the Album dashes headfirst for airy joy and low-key festivity, all hyperbolic and glittery when its primary focus should be on elucidating the film’s feminist thesis.

Cut Worms, now Clarke’s third record under this moniker, arrives as handsomely as the tidal waves that ramble onto the shore: high-spirited yet uncompromising in their force.

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

Shows Hus display his greatest quality - his music. Straightening his ‘darling of UK rap’ crown, it is an album that experiments with a variety of sounds and sonic styles, in a more dynamic way than previous offerings.

While glaive clearly still has the chops to record something great, his debut falls short of the creativity that marked his meteoric rise to fame.

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.

Though acoustic tonality may appear muddy, the confident voice of Supermodels reigns loud and clear.

It may be a hard record to get a finger on, particularly compared to her last decade or so of releases, but I Inside The Old Year Dying, is another strong record in a discography already stacked with classics.

These songs feel as if they only exist as a reference for performances, rather than for their own good. Not to mention that the point of a house show is missed if I am forced to put the record on in a crowded metro just to imitate the feeling of getting thrown around in a drunken haze before work.

The instrumentation on My Back is gentle, self-conscious, and loose in structure while that on her earlier works is poised and intricate. This rawness doesn’t make it any less powerful; it intensifies the despondency haze that hangs in the air of each song like a yet-to-rain nimbus.

Despite that blemish [changing a lyric in “Better Than Revenge”], Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is a cathartic release of pent-up frustrations of things she never had the confidence to say at 19 that are now stated proudly at 33.

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.

Toil and Trouble excels in emerging from imagination with a realistic moral of the story; it accepts that peace comes from within – that even if the world’s been set aflame, one can learn to achieve tranquillity amidst the fire. Debatable, of course, but practical all the same.

Where previously The Japanese House has sometimes found itself overwhelmed by production that is a little too misty, In The End It Always Does sounds like Bain stepping into the sun.

Everything here works, but that’s hardly great praise.

There’s an air of mystery that surrounds Sternberg and their songs – as if you’re encountering someone who is both stronger and more fragile than they appear. It’s this elusive quality that prompts one to visit and revisit this music. As much as Sternberg reveals, that much – and more – roils beneath the surface.

No matter how disorganised Olivia Dean proclaims this album to be, she doesn’t miss a beat – and instead generates a record with just about everything to deem itself ‘perfect’.