Opening with “I lie awake at night cos I listened to a guy theorise about the rise of the Reich” and closing in sweeping falsetto "They don't believe, I can't breathe / All they see, is the skin I'm in / If All Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter,” this and everything in between is passionately despairing, explicitly delivered with emotional rawness.

Hawk writes like a poet, and as such you often have to dig harder to find his meaning, or even better apply your own. But these are everyday tales dressed up in finery that will embed them into your mind.

A solid enough collection of songs, each with a tight synthpop beat and strong vocal performance, but it isn’t necessarily a career-maker.

The album has excellent high points – tracks that showcase what brought RAYE to the forefront in the first place.

Were Twain willing to engage with additional genres, it’s quite possible Queen of Me would hold up as a more engrossing listen. Instead, what we’re given is the audio equivalent of speed dating. The songs hint at Twain’s vivacious personality, but never quite let us in.

Ultimately, Fragments highlights the solidly sound judgement that Dylan and producer Daniel Lanois applied when assembling Time Out of Mind: despite the merits of many of these alternative versions, you’re unlikely to want to argue with selections for the majestically atmospheric original album.

This album is diverse, thoughtful and – most importantly – rewarding. It’s not the strongest work of Fucked Up’s career - but it may very well be the most thrilling.

It is music capable of helping us to navigate the world around us, and within us, with greater clarity and depth of meaning.

Easily overlooking the occasional overindulgence, AudioLust & HigherLove offers no lacklustre moments to speak of. If you love the dancefloor and are willing to expand your tastes a little, this is the album you need to blast on repeat.

It’s more than a taster but leaves plenty of room for development in the future, maybe experimenting with different instrumentation and letting the songs stretch out and breathe beyond their sub three minute durations. Until then, let Bubblegum ever so sweetly tear you apart.

While it’s not his greatest studio album, or even his best since the turn of the millennium, Mercy is a great example of all that Cale does well, and a real triumph. It's one of the most tonally consistent albums he's ever done.

The band's signature swagger and theatricality is present throughout, but there are moments of vulnerability and lamentation that add depth in all the right places.

Defying the years and possibly expectations, Time’s Arrow sees a band revitalised, creating music with those rare qualities of nuance and complexity, flowing in a dreamlike state where, just maybe, darkness loses the battle against light. Or, if you prefer, it’s simply a collection of damn fine synth-pop.

Whether he is the influencer or the influenced, there’s such a clear creativity and worldliness in his music, that Radio Songs should be listened to multiple times to really get the depth of where he’s taking his sound.

Gigi's Recovery is an excellent record, and The Murder Capital have laid the first real claim to Album of the Year.

While perhaps not the return to bigger records that fans of Salad Days might have hoped for, Five Easy Hot Dogs stays true to the linear, if unexpected, evolution of Mac DeMarco’s music. Each iteration is somehow even more sparse and experimental; it seems this record is the result of DeMarco slowly whittling down his sound until it is just its own essential core.

With no fillers in sight, Joesef’s musical talent is consistently reinforced with versatility that never sounds out of place.

While her vocals ground her in a country vein, her sonic contexts borrow from and integrate blues-rock, classic-rock, and pop sounds. The result is her most freewheeling sequence to date.

All things considered, there are far more winners than losers here, and that's nothing if not a pleasant surprise.

It’s something self-indulgent that few could get away with, but every song finds its place effortlessly. So, rather than feeling too self-indulgent, it feels far more like we’re the lucky ones SZA has chosen to share so much with.

Horse Lords fare even more impressively with the minimalism that sets in during the second half of the album.

While well-refined, the composition of some of the tracks sometimes comes off as slightly formulaic and a little predictable.

The blistering sounds are as sabre-toothed as ever.

Magnificently composed, Weyes Blood reaches out to cast your loneliness away. Feeling like a timeless classic, this record is one that you can revisit whenever you want to hear the comforting sounds of another soul trying to figure it all out.

A casual dance music fan may find the lack of variety in terms of tempo somewhat cumbersome, but if you look at this through the prism of Honey Dijon as a DJ it makes total sense.

It sounds like The Family was BROCKHAMPTON’s most overtly challenging album to make, saturated with honesty even when it’s difficult. But there’s a sense that going out with intention freed them up creatively like never before.

Rose is at her most confident and relaxed, navigating country-and-pop-inflected hooks while addressing a range of perennial themes, including love, uncertainty, and the need for self-care in a world gone mad.

The frustrating thing about Past Lives is that it simply sounds like good music. It is not bigger or smaller than the sum of its parts – it’s exactly that. The members got the recipe just right, but it doesn’t leave much of an aftertaste.