His sound has matured considerably: he's less intent on blowing your ears off with dancehall's battery, than offering his own, still highly piquant take on slow-grind R&B.

The Dream is sensuous and seductive, but it often lingers on the borderline of turning into a nightmare.

A chamber piece that spills blood all over the hotel carpet, Room 29 is an understated triumph.

It may be resolutely old-fashioned and, for sure, we’ve heard it all before, but the sheer pleasure in Porter’s singing is all but impossible to resist.

Full of tunes and pizzazz, it's unexpectedly good fun.

The way their voices swoop and bend together is a delight.

It is another gem in an already glittering canon.

She elegantly smudges the borders of a brass and banjo-driven sound with sophisticated little experiments in rhythm, production and arrangement.

You feel each artist shares your yearning to hear Dalton sing each song herself. Haunted and haunting.

The collective’s strength lies in their snakelike energy: all coiled muscle, hypnotic sway and dangerous unpredictability. The flaw is that it can all get a bit lairy.

They're still chronicling gangster life, albeit a former one, but the beats are now funkier, offering a surprisingly accessible counterpoint to the cinematic, bloodthirsty narratives of star rapper Ghostface Killah. His caustic delivery propels the best tracks here.

The harmonies are gorgeous and the lyrics thought-provoking. A good start to the year for folk music.

Every track on Volcano flows beautifully, almost overloaded with hooks and harmonies, and charged with rhythmic intent. But the soundscapes are infinitely brighter and weirder and more thrillingly modern.

There's also something a little too contained, cling-filmed and... Keane-ey about it's measured percussion and guitar swells. Which leaves you feeling that although this is a very good record by a very talented young artist, it's probably not a patch on catching him live.

Fender is young enough to be immersed in the life he documents, not writing at a nostalgic remove. When he rises to longing high notes on weekend anthem Saturday, you can really feel him straining at the leash. I think Springsteen would approve.

His peculiar mix of antagonism and soul-searching may not be enough to convert non-believers, but this bold, ambitious debut suggests that grime has found its most accomplished ambassador yet.

It is music of emotion and imagination, shifting perspectives in ways that are deliciously intangible, intent on moving the heart rather than the feet.

It is the second half of the album that actually shows why country persists against all odds: at its best, it is unafraid of telling stories that dig deep into ordinary lives.

While some of the songs slip into genericity, such as the forgettable There’s a First Time For Everything, others are 80s-inspired, synth-led earworms. Smells Like Me stands out as one of the album’s highlights, a masterclass in pop writing with an ultra-memorable hook.

With Mirrorwriting Woon proves to be a genuinely exciting British soul star in the making.

It doesn’t let up for a moment: all 10 songs open with clever soundbite hooks as they push hard into verses that sound like choruses, bridges that sounds like anthems, and choruses that sound like Chris Martin, Ed Sheeran and Elton John got together to write the ultimate Eurovision jingle.

Process seems unlikely to make Sampha a household name in his own right. Yet it has a drama and intensity that should increase his influence on those who already are.

Backed by his father's old orchestra, Fela Kuti's son Seun shows how afrobeat should be played: its irrepressible funky surge offset by truly scorching brass fanfares.

Whatever your political convictions, it is impressive to see a veteran superstar doing something to challenge and potentially alienate listeners. Streisand's 36th album is at once an overblown, schmaltzy epic, and a bold rallying cry that has the courage of its convictions. You won't know whether to cringe or cheer.

The band add welcome bite to proceedings with the result that this album is immensely more satisfying than Garvey’s fussy 2015 solo debut, Courting the Squall.

The music is stark and edgy, with inflections from doo-wop and heavy rock. Songs are ephemeral, and not easy to decipher without listening to them repeatedly.

What Wet Leg have done instead is nudge their formula – and their image – enough to maintain people’s interest yet not enough to alienate those drawn to their innate weirdness in the first place. It was the right move

Sheeran has delivered a solid commercial showcase of the power of contemporary pop music brands. It is a case of Superstars Assemble. A fan base shared is a fan base multiplied.

At its best, Born in the Echoes is gloriously disorienting, restoring a woozy mania to a genre in danger of self-combusting in search of ever more euphoric pop highs. The kids will probably look on aghast. But old ravers will find themselves transported back to a time when electronica really did sound like the future.

The personality that emerges here is surprisingly gentle, with lots of slow jams about self-awareness, positive personal philosophies and respect for others. Musically, it would seem that Alicia Keys is a stronger personal role model than Rihanna. For all the swagger, then, Kehlani proves rather more sweet than savage.

This latest effort is more muted, but no less complete, with fabulous images of rustic solitude and existential dread married to smouldering country-rock.

It is a bold concept for a dazzling album, although I suspect most listeners would be hard pressed to make much sense of it without Boucher’s interpolations.

Splashes of new musical colour correspond with a growing confidence and maturity in the songs themselves, but the overall mood remains intensely vulnerable.

You have to be in the mood for Young Man In America but, when you are, you'll be rewarded by an absorbing album.

We are in the presence of mad, brilliant, soulful genius and there is no choice but to surrender.

There is no real attempt to deliver definitive readings, with the vocal interplay between Mitchell, Carlile and Mumford on A Case of You shifting from the original’s romantic intensity to loose and cheerful celebration. Nonetheless, there are moments that cut to the core, particularly when guest vocalists back off to allow Mitchell space to possess the song in a voice that may be lower and grittier than of yore, but remains supple, powerful and resonant.

It’s a remarkably polished debut.

Morrison outshines everyone, with a quality of relaxed joyousness, riffing all over lush, lively new arrangements with his band.

There is a lot to take in on this big, bold, madly ambitious album, but Rocky has made a frequently dazzling spectacle, another reminder that hip hop is currently setting the bar very high indeed.

The album stands as a triumphant poke in the eye to modern listening mores. It sounds like a leisurely road trip around the hazy fringes of the most intense summer of your life, back in the days when summers – like this album – comprised segueing chapters.

Daddy’s Home is further proof that St Vincent deserves to be considered in their [Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos] stellar ranks.

This is a very good project and will cement Digga D as a force on the pop charts, but if the 21-year-old wants to reach the next level and avoid becoming a pastiche like 50 Cent did, he will need to do more of the unexpected and dig a little deeper into his subconscious when it's time to drop that studio album.

Pop music has become saturated with soft, emotional ballads (the songs of Billie Eilish and Gracie Abrams spring to mind). McRae offers a welcome change – if you want tunes packed with snappy, catchy choruses and racy lyrics that make you feel powerful and sexy, then look no further.

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

Ten years ago, Icona Pop were electropop trailblazers: for the most part, this second album is a promising next step in their recording career.

It [TV Dinners] is one of a handful of exceptional songs that raise this album above Fender’s base level tendency towards passionate but undistinguished rocking. The most exquisite is the clipped guitar and synth mesh of the downbeat Crumbling Empire, that brushes against Springsteen’s Philadelphia with hints of Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer in a song about returning to the ruined scenes of his misspent youth.

If progress is their aim, then this is fine proof of how a softly-softly approach is often best.

The pair tracked down musicians who worked on Sixties spaghetti westerns, then added Jack White and Norah Jones as singers, resulting in a delicious album, redolent of easy listening but with all flabbiness removed and replaced by a modern warmth and elegance.

This is not jazz for the purist but it is a heartfelt and entertaining tribute to one of the musical greats.

This is some kind of triumph for Blige and for Britain.

Epic and intimate, serious and playful, Okkervil River's third album is genuinely awe inspiring, growing with each replaying.

I mean it as a compliment when I say I didn’t immediately recognise Green Day the first time I heard their new album. There is something positively gleeful about the American multimillion-selling stadium punk trio’s reavowal of the fundamentals. They exhibit the swagger of a hot young band discovering rock’n’roll for the first time, allied to the abilities of old pros who know exactly how to do it right.

Nike, a skeletal hip-hop number that hears Shygirl compare the joy of a fling to ordering a Big Mac, is one of a few dud moments. Otherwise, Nymph is a distinctive, sensual and striking debut.

It’s effectively atmospheric, giving a raw, insomniac groove to the gritty notes draining from electric guitars and a twitch of dirty old fluorescent bulbs in the glitchy drum beats.

The album’s inability to communicate with itself – each song an island – does bring some drag to the album’s runtime. Nevertheless, elegiac and anthemic, each song has spark.

Parping away beneath her synthesised fantasies and hypnotic dance floor dramas, you can also hear the unlikely stirrings of an Eighties sax-solo revival.

Beck has always been hip. Even on his 12th album, he manages to make the dawn sound like where it’s at.

It's a gloriously mellow record, the sound of an artist remembering there’s a life beyond her touring schedule and daring to enjoy it.

There is a joyful exuberance to Revival, which has U2 and Coldplay arranger Rupert Christie at the helm.

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.

Lover does not sound like the work of someone desperate to command the pop zeitgeist and yet is all the more likely to do so. Instead of trying to be all things to all audiences, it plays to the strengths of a witty songwriter in love, eager to tell anyone who will listen exactly how she feels.

Crash is clever and fun, as her admirers have come to expect from XCX, but until Charli scores a bona fide smash it is going to feel like an art project commenting on the state of pop rather than the real thing.

Every tiny detail is in aesthetic congruence with the initial feelings that birthed these songs – all of which you’re made privy to in violently vivid detail. Broken Hearts Club is an expertly sequenced, perfectly packaged ode to a lost love.

[Houghton's] first album of idiosyncratic banjo pop has been worth the wait.

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

There is ultimately something sketchy about Boarding House Reach, pulling in so many directions that it suggests rough drafts for more fully formed work to come. But for all that, there are so many rich ingredients in the mix, even misophones should find something to soothe their troubled ears.

You don’t need to be in an altered state to become overwhelmed by his mastery of controlled cacophony. It is a pleasure to report that everything is still beautiful in Pierce’s strange sonic world.

Their ambitious double may aspire to the eclecticism of The Beatles’ White Album, but it remains resolutely, if sweetly, sepia-toned.

[Even] if Alabama Shakes do nothing original, they strike classic poses with real guts.

Put simply, the album blends gospel, blues and rock but with some exciting interpretations of interesting old records.

This is the darkest Fontaines DC album to date. But what drives it forward isn’t morbidity or anger, but a search for connection. It’s this that makes it not a dirge, but an oddly bright snapshot of life’s confusions from a band capable of capturing them brilliantly.

This is one of the most incendiary British records of 2022.

Barnett’s fourth record Creature of Habit sees her replace rip-roaring rock with earnest self-reflection, all while leaning into a softer sonic palette.

She wants to deliver good, solid, heartfelt slabs of it. And on those terms, her fifth studio album is her best record in years.

Dawn FM is his most ambitious album to date, and one that shows welcome signs of emotional and psychological growth.

While this is in one sense African music like they don't make it any more, there's nothing precious or retro about it: its energy feels entirely modern.

These are great musicians and great songs, assembled for an even better cause.

Using entirely analogue tape, Vig, together with top mixer Alan Moulder, brings a deliciously lump-free production consistency to the Foos, who have often erred between the indigestible extremes of thrash-metal and acoustic angst.

Utopian Ashes, then, is a marriage made in musical heaven, conjuring marital hell.

Coming Home is a hugely impressive reminder of Usher's pop skills, and another testament to the enduring appeal of high class RnB.

Songs maintain a facade of well-mannered, old-fashioned structures (waltz times and Fats Domino-style “swamp pop” piano bass) that gradually reveal murkier interiors restlessly inhabited by Jones’s unique, meandering ghost-child of a voice.

On a set of compact, meaningful songs about surviving in the age of anxiety, the sympathetic weave of the reunited band embodies the very spirit of empathy and togetherness for which Steadman seems to be reaching.

It’s a detail that in outlook and delivery brings to mind the offbeat confessionals of the late Dory Previn. Mitski’s a rare talent.

As protest music goes, it is not particularly uplifting. Yet despair is kept at bay by the sheer majesty of the lush, dense, beautifully sculpted, wonderfully alien sound.

A very fine debut album from Californian singer-songwriter, who has a wonderfully rich and mournful country voice.

He’s released a peach of an album.

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.

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

While this pastiche is obviously intentional, it never really feels like one. It also creates a much more romantic and intriguing world to fall into than the closed-curtains one of its predecessor. Josh Tillman remains a curious cat, but here he also sounds like a much more contented one.

Wuthering Heights consists of just 12 songs, clocking in under 35 minutes. But songs like Dying for You, Chains of Love and Always Everywhere pack such a punch that their conciseness never feels like a curse.

It is another fine album from one of the country’s finest singer-songwriters, quietly but productively ploughing his own fertile furrow.

The 11 songs here are another slice of juicy joy, and the final track implies that it won’t actually be the last we hear from him.

O'Donovan knows how to sing perfectly with sparse and delicate arrangements and the album, which also features Tucker Martine (the Decemberists), shows she can create some magic of her own on this her second solo album.

She's made her best, most accessible record for years.

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.

Arrangements are marked by clarity, one thing easing into another in a beautifully measured fashion.

Songs And Stories is plenty good enough to be going on with.

The result is as swaggeringly confident, brash and modern as any mainstream hip hop being produced anywhere in the world right now.