Ultimately, this is a brilliant record about clearing out the emotional crap and stripping things back to their essence – the perfect soundtrack to lull us out of our collective wintering and into some mental spring cleaning.

Playing piano and acoustic guitar, the 44-year-old takes listeners on a bittersweet journey balancing the melancholy of the medium with a healing message. Stand out songs Closer and Lose My Way have a meditative sadness but there is real warmth in choral backing vocals, subtle grooves and Brun’s melodic instincts.

Wrecking Ball may be his angriest and most overtly political collection, yet the fury is contained in some of his most uplifting and celebratory music, so you can never be quite sure if he has come to raise the flag or to burn it.

Accessorised with Staxy horns and handclaps, the resulting album has a genuine groove and glow.

Its low-budget weirdness will have you laughing into the new year.

The new Rolling Stones album is the best thing they have made since their Seventies glory days. Which, it might reasonably be argued, de facto makes it the best rock’n’ roll album of the past four decades at least.

There are many absolutely gorgeous moments, including a reconfiguring of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major as a ballad of gender fluid love, melancholy dance song Tears Are Soft, the lovely piano ballad Flowery Days and delicate electropop True Love (featuring 070 Shake). But the overwhelming mood is oppressive as it proceeds at a relentlessly mid tempo pace like a kind of stately march towards ecstatic sexual release.

This is an uplifting concert--and here's to the next 50 years of The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Her command over that mass of bodies remains.

Wild Beasts have shed a lot of excess, offering a stripped-back amalgamation of analogue Eighties synths, snappy machine rhythms and industrial rock guitar buzz, coloured with great swathes of harmonic panache, that is lean and mean enough to pass for modern pop. This newfound purpose is the real revelation of Wild Beasts’ strongest album to date.

They don’t quite sound like the finished article, but there is a virtuous sense of their trying to make music in service of something profound.

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.

The focus is always on the smart, economical, classically constructed songs, boasting memorable verses, catchy choruses, intriguing lyrics and peppered with tremendous instrumental breaks. This is an album of conviction and purpose, from a band you can believe in.

As if set free from seriousness, they knock out some polished, off-kilter pop gems about inadequate individuals.

Lisa Hannigan is on confident form in her second solo release since the split from Damien Rice.

Beautifully nuanced collage of soulfully rocking flavours.

With dreamy lullabies, hypnotic love songs and pointed politics all delivered with emotional stridency, Saint-Marie blends rich musicality with the force of righteous conviction.

Inspired playing by Sam Sweeney (fiddle), Rob Harbron (concertina), Roger Wilson (guitar, fiddle), Ben Nicholson (bass), Toby Kearney (percussion), and guests appearances from Jon Boden (guitar, fiddle) and Martin Simpson (guitar) add to a delightful album.

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.

The full band arrangements are tastefully understated, and the 47-year-old sustains a mood of gentle sorrow and hard-earned wisdom that is easy on the ear. It is well trodden territory but Jurado is a class act.

Her crisis of faith provides a sharp edge to Evanescence’s formulaic grandstanding.

Unfortunately, this time around, the lyrics tend to be too opaque to pack quite the same punch. ... That said, there are plenty of songs sure to please diehard Sports Team fans.

Technically Gibbs is a flawless emcee and it’s great to see more of his melodic range on SSS, something that will deservedly bring in new fans. But for his next album, it would be interesting to see Gibbs explore the roots of his “hustler mentality” even further, and start to subvert some of gangster rap’s more impish clichés.

The timeless appeal of Carnival is echoed in Keep Your Courage, which speaks volumes for the cohesive, eternal quality of Merchant's ability to weave romantic, folk-rock ballads rich with organ, brass, and tidal waves of strings all anchored to simple piano melodies.

If I have a caveat, it is that it is all so single minded, it lacks the dizzying splendour of Monae’s earlier epics. But on its own down and dirty terms, The Age of Pleasure is sheer pleasure.

This sounds like the work of an artist who knows he is at the head of the hip hop pack, laying down a gauntlet to the whole of rap music.

This confident and assured album surely ranks among his best.

Her charismatic force keeps things afloat. Music destined for a group workout class or M&S Christmas advert, maybe, but executed to a high standard and providing precious confidence and joy to a lot of people – and really, who can argue with that.

Little Rope is undoubtedly Sleater-Kinney’s most commercial album yet. Crusader, in particular, brings to mind the palatable grunginess of No Doubt, and lead single Say It Like You Mean It – with a video starring Succession’s J Smith-Cameron – echoes WH Auden’s Funeral Blues.

Her new album is a successful repetition of the formula: sweet, crisp country licks with witty twists of live-and-let-live philosophy.

The melodies are lovely, if conservative: as elegant and classically tailored as her gowns.

As a generation of UK rappers comes of age, Hus still leads the pack with his pitless charisma, linguistic inventiveness, and musical curiosity.

His smooth but expressionless voice can be a little bland for a frontman (and is always improved by Thorn’s occasional harmonies) and his carefully considered lyrics have a tidiness that sometimes verges on the prosaic. Yet the gentle mesh of flowing melody, woven instrumentation and mood of hard-earned contemplation adds up to something quite profound.

Holy Fvck sounds like a genuine attempt to deal with a troubled adulthood and leave the past behind.

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

This record is undoubtedly their strongest offering since 2006’s Meds, strengthened by the inclusion of the sort of furious social commentary that made them such heroes to countless kohl-eyeliner-wielding teenagers in the late 90s.

This is not so much pop music, as music that might make your ears pop.

Ballads like Ripples and Lovesong barely make a dent, although the bossa nova lilt of The Perfect Pair and pop beat of Tinkerbell Is Overrated fare better. Matty Healy of prominent labelmates The 1975 co-writes a couple of tracks, but his influence overwhelms the album’s delicate palette.

As an art experience, Honeymoon is gorgeous, and needs to be heard in context with her atmospheric home-made videos. But as pop music, it can fall a bit flat.

They may have been left in the band's boot for a while, but there's nothing dead about them.

Inspired by his hometown of Torquay and musically taking a leaf from Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac, swapping his computer for the studio seems to have paid off with these brilliant, sunset funk songs.

To listen to Hold On Baby is to feel like you are really inside someone else’s world, their voice urgently delivering their most intimate feelings in your ear, transmuting them into pop gold.

This is a beautiful, beguiling, disturbing and rewarding album of love, loss, grief and recovery from one of the most intriguing singer-songwriters currently active in British music, of either gender.

Its 14 overloaded songs jostle awkwardly together in a cornucopia of conflicting impulses, shifting from beatboxing punk to beatnik poetry, ambient moodiness to sophisticated showtunes, peppered with snappy couplets and gilded with gorgeous melodies.

Four decades into their career, Soft Cell have rarely sounded more current.

The 58-year-old, who is writing his memoirs, is as busy as ever, and he's still got what it takes.

Despite having been layered and processed through Autotune, her voice conveys genuine intimacy. Cabello had a hand in the writing, and a few songs convey a charming honesty and vulnerability, perhaps a relic of the album’s original themes. But there remains a gulf between the craft of commercial pop and the artistry of confessional songwriting, and there is not much doubt about which has been prioritised on Camila.

Though consistently ground-breaking and lyrically challenging, Ritual Union never feels like hard work.

Knocking around for twenty years and now down to a duo, Cornershop are still coming up with brilliantly playful pop.

A treat.

Del Rey has sometimes been characterised as a modern day torch singer but on Lust For Life she sounds like she is finally ready to take that torch and burn down her ex’s house with it. Lust For Life lets a bit of light into the darkness of Del Rey’s moody past works, hinting at emotional recovery without drastically altering her sensuous musical palette.

On the strength of Tell Dem It’s Sunny’s liltingly exploratory grooves, a world-wide audience will surely start getting acquainted with this maverick icon-in-waiting.

There is nothing disappointing about the way he conjures art from emotional defeat. Toast deserves to be acclaimed amongst his finest works. Twenty-one years since the album was made, Young has reminded us once again why he stands tall amongst the greats of the rock era.

Some of the noisier blues are cheesy, but, in the main, this is a warm, authentic and durable record: the musical equivalent of a well-worn plaid shirt.

Metallica have made their Metallica record again.

Now he inhabits classic lines by songwriters like Johnny Mercer with weathered ease.

Hypnotically compelling.

Her soprano singing is a little derivative of Krauss's but is still sweet and clear and is surely a work in progress given her youthfulness.

There are neat pedal steel guitar threads, horns, electric guitar and it's clear she is entirely comfortable with her producer, Tucker Martine.

ere are a few moments of awkward student theatre wailing, but they're blips in an otherwise richly rewarding odyssey.

Deep-pocketed obsessives who’ve managed to keep pace with Young’s reissues may be disappointed to hear that most of the raw versions of these songs have appeared before. But for more regular fans, the music on this album is wonderful. It’s supremely chilled yet deeply soulful, a dream soundtrack for early-summer evenings

Raul Malo, the Cuban-American singer, has a wonderful voice but it's unlikely that his new album Sinners & Saints will bring him a host of new converts.

It’s refreshing to hear an album that so thoroughly ignores those strictures. That said, I doubt Cellophane Memories will ever be more than cult listening.

It seems churlish to complain about songwriting and production as madly ambitious as this – filled with nuance and detail, sweeping and dizzy in its self-absorption, it builds at moments to an operatic grandeur.

It is arguably a better collection than the original Tension but lacks wow factor and a solid gold banger. It’s good enough to keep the Kylie show on the road, though. So release the tension, enjoy the ride.

To have four songs over 10 minutes on your debut is brave; when the record recalls Neil Young's sadder moments and explores the anguish of a break-up, it is foolhardy.

The album is full of great music, the sort of bluesy, R&B material master guitarist Cooder does so very well.

Fans will miss the mordant voice and songwriting of Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin (whose 2014 solo debut Odulek found him pondering how to recover your youth and giving up the booze: “What have I got to lose?”) But the brothers acquit themselves well here.

There’s nothing challenging about this record. But it offers undemanding companionship, toe-tapping tunes and a timeless reminder that all you need is love.

It's all precisely mixed and impressively textured, but lacks Blake's more raw, emotional connection.

Given Lewis’s age and retro-musical instincts, major stardom may now be beyond her grasp, but if you like your pop music grown up, she’s up there with the big boys.

The Decemberists blend rock and folk well (there's even a nod to the famous Raggle Taggle Gypsy Man in a riff on Rox In The Box) and the songwriting crafts pastoral and emotional imaginery into tight-knit, attractive songs. This album is an unexpected treat.

Garratt still has a tendency to overelaboration, compressing armchair techno, James Blake-like digital manipulations and McCartney-esque flair into lush, shapeshifting tracks replete with pushy synths and layers of harmonies, where every sonic space is stuffed with activity. The effect is quite prog rock, reminiscent of such busy 1980’s synth songwriters as Nick Kershaw and Thomas Dolby.

From the full tilt title track, the echoing twang of The Buzz, the strutting rock reggae of Lightning Man, the swoonsome torch soul of You Can’t Hurt A Fool and swaggering rush of I Didn’t Know When to Stop, it is a Pretenders album that sounds like it could have been recorded in their first flush, a perfect blend of sensuous vocals and blazing guitars.

Sonically speaking, Weller seriously kicks it.

Humanz is a giddy celebration of unity in difference, the sound of eccentrics, weirdos, outsiders and freaks partying together in defiance of convention. It is music where anything goes, as long as it’s got a groove and a heart.

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.

Welch still has the love--and the tunes--we need to see us through.

This album proves his talent is timeless.

Kiss Each Other Clean recalls Scritti Politti, or Sufjan Stevens--perhaps not what his folky fans were hoping for, but it's an impressive makeover.

Track for track, it’s the equal of anything Petty has released in a long and righteously distinguished career.

It's something of a connoisseur's collection (steering clear of some of the big hits such as Release Me) but has treasures such as Making Believe.

It's frustrating, then, when Swift reverts back to type. Too many of the songs on this bloated 16-track album revisit the gently strummed verses and characterless choruses of her previous work.

The songs on What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, produced by long-time collaborator Tucker Martine, are more intimate and personal than some of the early Decemberists narrative songs.

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.

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.

The Gift is a quixotic compilation of tracks. ... One of the things that comes across most impressively in this afro-futurist mix of hip hop and R’n’B is that it all sounds fresh and exciting but not remotely alien or intimidating.

Kehalni’s lubricious vocals and tender slow jams are not for the faint-hearted, but there is a real core of emotional truth burning through these X-rated grooves.

Only the schmaltzy If I Could Believe left me unmoved. Otherwise, this is a very cool, politically charged collaboration which finds the Roots and Costello at their thrilling best.

Record’s producer Ewan Pearson pushes her back, fruitfully, into an electronic setting. This creates quite a retro, Eighties sound, linear and stratified, with pulsing bass synths and tidy drum machine patterns. But it lends Thorn’s wry, sharp lyrics a welcome sparkle.

When you rouse yourself from Gardot's dream, it can be hard to recall any individual song, but the reverie is beautiful.

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

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

The excellent Sara Watkins joins on fiddle, guitar and vocals for an eclectic mix of songs.

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.

Seven-minute mantra There Must Be More Than Blood is the standout, where Toledo’s vocals are absorbed into a motorik groove, his quest for meaning somehow dissolving into an act of musical surrender. Not all the songs reach these heights, however; too many run out of ideas very quickly. But at their very best, Car Seat Headrest are reminiscent of such fantastic bands as The The, LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads.

It’s an impressive, tantalising work from an artist who has dared to take the path less travelled.

Foals’ fourth album is an exciting, immersive experience that picks up where 2013’s Mercury Prize-nominated Holy Fire left off, adding epic arena rock muscle and lustre to their previously rather winsome and overly-cerebral style.