A confident, interesting and accomplished album. But Marten is operating in a crowded field. Weyes Blood, Nina Nastasia, Lana Del Rey and Marling all plough similar furrows.

As a 40-minute listening experience, it’s equal parts eccentric and impassioned, thought-provoking and out-there – if not exactly fun, given the mental-health issues, then certainly liberating, nourishing and thoroughly memorable.

Goulding’s spectacularly tremulous vibrato, raw mid-range and fluttery high notes imprint unique character on everything she sings. It’s a voice that can make even her “least personal” record sound very personal indeed.

This is stand-up-and-listen music, commanding attention in surprising ways. Being suggests that far from mellowing with age, Maal – who turns 70 in June – remains as eager and excited to explore new frontiers as he ever was.

More than half a century later, those youthful ambitions are herein fulfilled, in 10 tracks of maturity and majesty.

The album sounds like something knocked out almost live in a spirit of excitement, rather than with objective vision or commercial muscle. I’d be hard pressed to assert that this (unlike CS&N) amounts to more than the sum of its parts, rather than a celebration of great parts. But it is impossible to argue that as a group, Boygenius are pretty super.

They have conjured a collection of really strong songs about big subjects, delivered with sensitivity and conviction. Memento Mori stands with the best of their career.

When Fall Out Boy are in top gear, they’re timeless: if only this whole album had cut some of the filler, it could have been a stellar return to form.

The crooning, woozy indie-pop of So Hard To Tell is reassurance Friday has a full spectrum of emotional arrows in her quiver and she’s going to hit all her targets.

It is either the sound of someone who has begun to believe her own publicity, or who has stopped caring what anyone else thinks and is determined to follow her muse wherever it wanders. There’s a fine album lurking amidst the indulgence but listeners have their work cut out trying to locate it.

Like Paramore Lite, the first half of this album bubbles and fizzes in a pleasing sugar-hit without delivering true satiety. ... If only the band had dared to follow this direction more consistently and thoroughly, it could have been stellar.

100 gecs can also be (perhaps willfully) irritating. ... At their strongest, though – as on punky standout Doritos And Fritos – 10,000 gecs is a wonderful exercise in letting creativity run amok with no rules at all and carefully catching the resultant gold.

Erasing the muscular power of an amplified rock combo, Edge explores ways to let other elements shine. In particular, the focus is on Bono’s older yet still powerful voice, devoid of posturing and mannerisms, really digging into meaning and melody. The subtle rumble of Adam Clayton’s bass and tastefully executed percussion from Larry Mullen Jr make themselves felt in all the right places, with full band arrangements breathing new life into a smattering of undernourished songs.

Her vocals remain powerful: from soaring operatic drama to persuasive pop melody and an ominous snarl; it doesn’t sound like she’ll take “nein” for an answer on the spacey synths of Gib Mir Deine Liebe. On the English-language tracks, her lyrics sometimes sound gauche, but the sentiments ring true, and her guest-list is enjoyably far-ranging.

Sleaford Mods have lost none of their political bite, humour, and astute observational skill. UK Grim will cement their place as one of Britain’s most influential – and successful – UK bands.

Morrison’s joy in tackling this rich repertoire is palpable.

Indeed, for all the slick but formulaic pleasures of the album’s mainstream pop push, it is arguably that Cyrus is at her most compelling when she dances like no one is watching.

All 12 tracks are undeniably well-made and catchy songs, but it veers into all-too predictable territory in places.

From the opening chimes and birdsong to her sultry vocals, the album cocoons you entirely in its plush, sensuous world.

Ugly makes for difficult listening in places, but that’s not to say it isn’t often brilliant. Experimental, disarmingly honest and conceptually tight, blending rap, alt-rock and electronica, there’s no denying that Frampton is putting in the work.

Brimming with both spiritual depth and astonishing musical dexterity, Shook feels contemporary and important, reflecting America’s present-day diversity and letting the disenfranchised speak.

Food for Worms is all the more exciting for its contrasts in brutality and beauty. It’s challenging, consummately constructed, and thrilling throughout.

Thirty years on, Albarn sounds just as dissatisfied with the state of the modern world, yet he still appears to have at least a cartoon finger on its pulse.

Come for the drama, but stay and swoon for Lambert’s intoxicating, heartfelt closer: Dinah Washington’s Mad About the Boy.

She has drawn comparison with Kate Bush and Bjork, not because she sounds like them, but because she has a similar blend of extraordinary vocal ability, florid imagination, and genre-bending boldness. Desire is the album where it all comes together for this late blooming art-pop siren.

The quality wanes a little in the album’s second half, but there are four or five bangers, all told – ample firepower to win fresh converts while supporting both Harry Styles and Arctic Monkeys on the stadium circuit this summer.

Quest for Fire is still visceral EDM designed to get the pulse racing, but the whole thing has been given an ambitious refresh. The second coming of Skrillex starts here.

There’s nothing wrong with these songs, exactly – innocuous fare that’s catchier than you want it to be – but they’re a far cry from Pink’s attitude-laden early hits: misfit anthems about depression and divorce that elbowed her a place in the mainstream.

Vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Ira Kaplan, percussionist and pianist Georgia Hubley, and bassist James McNew sound as fresh and relevant now as they ever have.

Williams’s song C’est Comme Ça perfectly sums up the album: a reckoning with change, a refusal to deliver the same-old tricks even when it’s the easier option.

Months from her 40th birthday, Ethiopian-American artist Kelela Mizanekristos has blessed us with a sexy, sultry masterclass in RnB.

Forster all too humbly paints himself as a modest talent next to his late foil’s melodic genius, yet this eighth solo outing is packed as ever with minimal, carefully chiselled, acoustic-thrumming arrangements, topped by extraordinary lyric writing.

The songs are sufficiently sophisticated and winning that The Waeve keeps sweeping the listener along on its intoxicating journey.

Like FKA Twigs’s Caprisongs, Beyoncé's Renaissance, and SZA’s SOS, Raye’s My 21st Century Blues deserves to be listened to from start to finish, then again, and again.

An over eagerness to keep up to date has resulted in making Twain sound less mature than her successor. On Queen of Me, Twain comes across as Swift’s over eager auntie, charging onto the dancefloor, determined to prove she still has the moves to cut it with the kids.

Sutherland has absolutely earned the right to celebrate his success. It’s just a shame that, with 17 tracks to play with, Great is He doesn’t go a little deeper.

This album proves Lewis can master the mainstream, too, with earworms to soundtrack parties from Brooklyn to Brixton. So much more than “just a DJ”, one suspects that within a few short years, Lewis will be selling out stadiums.

The joy here is in basking in the creative process, how Dylan chipped away at differing tempos, alternate arrangements and revised lyrics for each composition, ultimately to arrive at the final 11 tracks.

Smith sings rings around themselves and the material, elevating both the banal and the sublime with smokey curlicues of tremulous falsetto.

Full of safe risks, Gigi’s Recovery is very much a transitional album as The Murder Capital look to evolve without alienating their fanbase. Doors are left wide open for subsequent reinventions but for now, the five-piece are comfortable sticking close-by what they know.

Whilst it is purposefully lacking in intention, the experimental album has its moments of whimsy but feels noticeably devoid of humour, surprising for a musician known for his zaniness. Still a cohesive affair, it’s an apt depiction of transience and Mac DeMarco is taking us all along for the ride.

This is Måneskin’s big strength. The songs on RUSH! may not be particularly original, reading heavily from a well-thumbed big-riffs-and-god-times playbook, but they write a very good one, and play them with an energy that frequently boils over with exuberance.

A brew of sinister synth waves nearly stagnates where we want it to cascade, and harmonies twine around one another where we want them to soar into anthems. In short, a potential blaze delivers a fizzle.

Mercy is not an easy listen, but it is nevertheless inspiring to hear an octogenarian artist declining the comforts of nostalgia, still forging his own wayward path, opening byways for others to explore at their leisure.

It’s a rarity to have an album in which every song could genuinely be a single, but they’ve managed it here.

This is a softer, more introspective approach than her barn-storming debut, but this 12-track album doesn’t lack the punch and bite of its debut in spite of this.

Coombes, a quite masterful musical auteur after three decades in the game, skillfully navigates the record away from one long mid-life nightmare. ... it’s another hugely satisfying listen.

Price’s fantastic fourth album, Strays, advances boldly into terrain occupied by such exalted US rock craftsmen as Jackson Browne and Tom Petty, with soulful vocal swagger, a widescreen band sound and a poetic lyrical depth that should leave most of her Nashville peers prostrate at her feet.

Upon the first few listens, it’s a confusing album: there’s plenty of their usual sing-song melodies and musings on modern dissatisfaction, such as on When We Were Very Young. ... But it’s the synth-laden, poptastic I Don’t Know What You See In Me that seems glaringly out of place.

There is nothing particularly original or surprising here, yet in a pop market that is all interesting edges, self-enclosed scenes and leftfield genres, Ryder offers a hearty return to the reassuringly obvious, pitched straight into the mainstream. A star is born.

Every Loser is a great, energising opening blast for 2023, a loud and lairy rock album jam-packed with the lust for life that has characterised Iggy’s whole wayward career.

Protest albums don’t come more subtle and moving than this.

The brilliance of No Thank You is how Simz uses her brazenly unapologetic narrative to spin out larger points about institutional and generational racism, the danger of business practices indifferent to their human impact, and links all of that to contemporary mental health crises.

[Wizkid's] finest body of work so far, showcasing a maturity and an artistic vision that cements his status as one of the most influential people in pop music today.

Most of the songs here do somewhat merge into one, long, party soundtrack that is enjoyable to listen to and yet entirely forgettable.

It’s an expansion of her wonderfully experimental R&B, with all the candour listeners expect from this masterful songwriter. ... SOS is well worth the wait.

Behind its rather mundane title, This is What We Do contains multitudes of grooves, with both a positive spirit and a physical imperative that are nigh-on impossible to resist.

Premonition is a finely wrought, searing career-coda, determined to take a sledgehammer to the cliché that growing older must result in complacency.

Their tenth studio album kicks off in fine form with the first single, San Quentin. ... If only the whole album was like this, but instead listeners will get whiplash from all the genre changes, which spans American rock, country and frat-boy pop.

Divine Symmetry shows that this metamorphosis didn’t happen without a good deal of huffing and puffing. Therein lies its intrigue, as the groundwork is revealed. ... It’s a fascinating journey.

This is What I Mean completely abandons the often very macho bullishness at the heart of hip hop, to show rap at its most sensitive.

This live album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience is a compelling and beautiful tribute.

When you are as talented as Fousheé, the temptation to show you're a jack of all trades must be intoxicating, and it's one of the reasons softCORE is such an unpredictable thrill ride.

It's sexy, restless, and perfectly suited for creatures of the night to writhe their glittery, glossed-up, bejewelled bodies to for all the ungodly hours.

It’s a brave band that unleashes such an extensive body of work. It’s lucky, then, that it’s all so eminently listenable.

The 17-track record is as hyperactive, heartfelt and honest as we’ve come to expect from the group.

World Record is classic Young: passionate, direct, ragged and beautiful.

Like our planet, this album is a rare thing of wonder.

Although King’s Disease III might have some tonal missteps, Nas and Hit-Boy should be applauded for bringing warm soul samples back into hip hop culture at a time of such darkness and uncertainty. This is Godfather: Part III if Michael Corleone retired without all the treachery; music about being comfortable with your place and making it to the other side.

There are glimmers of his facility for earworm melodies and nimble grooves, but they tend to be overwhelmed by an air of bombastic stridency.

City Planning certainly conjures the feeling of a commute into a sprawling metropolis, while Die Cuts is a supple collage of contrasting voices. But, sadly, neither will have you wishing you could listen to everything again.

Throughout, the music remains a bit distant. It’s as though Hakim, despite all he feels, is making a comment on the otherworldly and ineffable nature of love. Like a kite itself, love doesn’t stay still. It floats, moves and pulls you in different directions. Just like this collection of songs.

Springsteen has charisma and conviction to match anyone who has ever picked up a microphone, allied to a dynamic grasp of exactly when to ramp up and when to hold back, and he delivers these songs like they mean the world to him. In other words, he’s got soul.

It is, rather, an hour of wonderfully immersive music, which moves from dancefloor physicality to spiritual meditation with the dexterity – we can confirm – of a true master.

What’s new is the subtly layered sound, which embraces a string quartet as naturally as street sounds, and has an intriguing unpredictability. Sometimes a number will launch off with a call-and-response simplicity and then take an unexpected turn.

More of this crooned gothic gospel, like a Nick Cave/PJ Harvey murder ballad, would be welcome in an album that can dip too often into cheesy, handclapping sentimentality. First Aid Kit have the dynamic songwriting and performance mettle to deliver more nuanced, exploratory terrain than Palomino offers.

Alpha Zulu is a robust addition to their already acclaimed catalogue.

As so many are today, it’s a lockdown special, and this shows both in its more ambitious production and its slight air of self-indulgence.

Over 13 songs, it’s almost impossible not to fidget and move to glitchy drum’n’bass (Kammy), dreamy dub-step (Bleu) or echoey R’n’B-meets-soulful house (Kelly). Fred has done it…(dare we say?) again.

The new version certainly sounds fuller, brighter and deeper, but unless you are a committed audiophile with studio standard hi-fi, most listeners could achieve a similar experience by turning up the volume, or perhaps investing in a pair of decent headphones. All interest therefore lies in extra tracks, which are not so much outtakes as works in progress – as the Beatles settled on arrangements, they would continually build on their chosen version. ... The truth is that the Beatles released everything they considered worthy whilst they were together, leaving nothing of outstanding quality in the vault.

At best, its familiarity is warm and inviting for seasoned fans; for some it will feel lazily identical and lacking in ambition. But it’s an overwhelmingly powerful and energetic musing on the never-ending anxieties and strain of life that don’t leave just because you enter adulthood – exactly what keeps their fans coming back.

As a record, Time isn’t just a sonic heart-swell for listeners, it’s the latest shift for a singer-songwriter who seems as if she’s constantly stretching toward the most whole version of herself.

This sprawling, tender lucid dream of an album morphs into various shapes: angular and jagged, lush and distorted, Twin Peaks-esque surrealism, wistful and surrendering. Whether Shaw is proposing friendship or not, Stumpwork offers us more than enough.

No tracks are particularly surprising from a production point of view, but it’s the affecting lyrics which have always been Carner’s strength. ... The newfound sharpness in Carner’s delivery has brought a much-needed grit to this album – it’s exciting.

An English one-off, in fine voice.

The Car feels warmer and more soulful than its predecessor, in its orchestral sweep not dissimilar to Turner’s first side project as The Last Shadow Puppets, 2008’s The Age of the Understatement. As such, it may be more a solo album than an Arctic Monkeys record, but it’s a very good one nonetheless.

Midnights represents Swift at a turning point. I am not sure if it is the sign of a curtain falling on her imperial phase or a new pop dawn.

Lasting a little over 30 minutes, See You In The Stars is almost cocky in its brevity. There’s not an ounce of fat on it, and it’s all the more satisfying for it.

As a package, Angels & Queens Part I is a soothing and soulful antidote to life’s slings and arrows, of which there are many right now.

As you’d expect from one of Britain’s most cerebral and celebrated sonic adventurers, this isn’t the kind of music you can hum in the bath. It’s challenging, other-worldly and thought-provoking.

The result is a 12-track riot of feisty, unapologetically forthright, dance-led pop that embraces femininity of all kinds.

Mildly soulful, rarely unpalatable, the Chili Peppers keep delivering American fast-food for the ears, even as they enter their sixties.

Fifth time around, The 1975 get the equation right: pop first, art later.

On the pulsing, electronic slither of Vendetta X, on which Astbury speaks menacingly of “sucking on a dirty blade”, it’s closer to his work with Unkle than stadium rock. In these moments, and on the glorious, closing title-track, Under The Midnight Sun is brilliant. For much of its second half, however, its magic doesn’t catch quite so well.

On Out of Heart, Flohio deserves credit for bridging the worlds of rap and electronica, but you’re still left wondering: who is the human being behind this aesthetic? If she’s to truly level up artistically, Flohio needs to give us a clearer idea of what the reflection in the mirror looks like.

N.K-Pop will be a treat for Heaton’s fans. But it could probably use a little K-Pop power if he harbours any desire to reach and preach to the unconverted.

In Coping Mechanism, we see the singer becoming bolder and braver as she departs from mystic R&B and soul roots. In just 11 full-throttle tracks, Coping Mechanism gives us a glimpse at the future of rock.

It remains a fairly relentless listen and at least a couple of tracks too long. Yet the album’s tale of survival against the odds has powerful personal relevance beyond its often clumsy social commentary.