She certainly knows how to convey emotion.

Dreamy and digressive, Parker’s songs meander and drift as if going nowhere before suddenly switching track. It can be hard to get to grips with, but there is purpose to such apparent waywardness. Meditative lyrics grapple with the relentless passage of time, lending emotional grit to his woozily blissful jams.

Muse's rather absurd spaceship may be welded together from bits of other acts--but it still flies.

Eternal Sunshine is pop at its sexiest – 13 songs designed to lodge themselves in your head for eternity, whether you like it or not.

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.

The tension and ambiguity implicit in downbeat songs with upbeat choruses lies at the heart of an album that may not easily yield its secrets but will keep you singing as you try to work them out.

For Melancholy Brunettes is an odd, subtle, suffocating album essaying a complexity and ambiguity you don’t often hear in modern pop.

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

Sheezus should confirm Allen’s status as a national treasure, reason enough to be cheerful.

The Bridge is out of time yet timeless, pure pop class.

The Hardest Part doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It knows what it is: undisguised, accessible songwriting pulsing with country lifeblood which manages to avoid being swallowed by its own ennui.

There are a couple of lesser chug-alongs, but mostly it's as good as anything in the Motörhead canon.

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.

Showing little signs of ring-rust, Arirang is a great comeback by an outfit that even hardcore fans may have felt had lost their way across a series of increasingly syrupy releases prior to their hiatus. They have returned to their hip-hop roots and are re-engaging with their Korean identity.

Four is hard to dislike: it's cheery, uplifting, high spirited and good fun.

You can hear his love and enthusiasm bursting out of these grooves, not just in the way he roars over the top of melody lines but in the spaces he creates for other musicians to shine.

Overall the compilation makes its way towards a bigger story of many ideas, emotions and textures.

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

Any vocalist might thrill to engage with such sleek backing tracks, yet Shaw’s cool delivery and off-kilter lyricism occupies unusual spaces in the band’s arrangements, pushing the whole project into edgily discombobulating territory.

With Ross’s voice shifting from deadpan sweetness to striking shout over bare-essentials grooves adorned with just a twist of something startling on each track, I Am Moron is much cleverer than it would have you believe.

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.

Life has been a struggle for the son of Steve but the closing track, Looking for a Place to Land, suggests there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

Beyoncé impressively matches her superstar rapper husband in terms of lyrical swagger, rhythmic flow and verbal bounce. That she does it to a backdrop of samples constructed around her own extraordinary singing lends the record's mantric grooves the luxurious sheen of high-end pop.

The album is a beauty, none the less, the care put into it confirming Williams's exalted position in the tower of song.

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.

It feels remarkably intimate: a half-shuttered window into the world of the man behind some of the world’s most famous songs. If only Simon were to pry open said window slightly wider, one would feel more fulfilled – but there’s always future albums for that.

She's continued to move away from electronica, but these rich, emotionally sophisticated songs (which will appeal to Cat Power fans) still have a strong rhythmic core.

Through his distinctive voice and sound, Mustafa has carved out his own section within folk. Finding beauty in the ugly, this assured artist bared all.

Alexander’s fantastic voice is pushed to the fore, making the most of rich, appealing, high vocal tones reminiscent of Green Gartside of Scritti Politti or (in more modern terms) multi-billion streaming superstar the Weeknd. Even Dizzy sounds better in this context, a breathless banger that shakes off its Eurovision failure to spin around the dancefloor once more.

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.

Each track has a timeless quality, as suited to a Seventies mid-west saloon as a students' indie disco.

It's hardly a novel idea to cover these songs, but Isaak's versions succeed through skilful arrangement, vibrant recording (mostly at Sun) and above all some remarkable vocal performances.

Ellery and Skye have managed cohesion amid the cacophony. I Love You Jennifer B is a dramatic outing that combines the modern, the classical and everything else in between.

His harmonies have a louche charm, his trumpet sound has a fascinating vocal intimacy, and he makes lightning-fast interplay with the quintet, especially sax player Walter Smith III.

A great deal of care has gone into the record.

What is surprising is how seamless and integrated the sound is--a really luxurious, supple groove of sparkling electronica and sinuous, melodic vocals.

Sharp observation and emotional engagement raise her material above the level of celebrity Twitter spat.

With Williams it's classy and classic country. This is a very good album.

It hasn’t exactly all been easy listening, but still definitely Lydon’s most approachable album ever. It sounds as though it was hard-earnt light relief for him, fun for its chief protagonist to make, and with repeat plays it only proves increasingly infectious.

The references are frank, from the satirical title (he made the album while receiving Universal Credit during the pandemic, and the cover depicts him receiving a giant cheque for £324.84, the current monthly allowance, from besuited men in celebratory style) to the succinct writing within.

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.

Distance Inbetween is by some distance the Coral's most muscular offering.

The 16-song set flows beautifully, carrying listeners on an emotional journey in which surprising musical twists and glittering barbs of lyrical empowerment cast optimistic light on a long dark night of Billie’s tortured soul.

Slipping easily between lush orchestral pop and electronic symphonics redolent of Air, she also keeps a firm hand on the lyrical tiller, occasionally even bearing comparison to the poetic pith of Leonard Cohen.

Blonde makes for sensationally beautiful background music that can morph into a bizarre hodgepodge of disparate ideas when you concentrate on bringing it into the foreground.

Overall, it's a good album.

This is Kasabian’s second album with Pizzorno on the microphone, so tightly honed that if it had been a young band’s debut, I think we’d be clambering over ourselves proclaiming Kasabian rock’s saviours.

She wields the survivor's axe of righteousness and you listen up, because she sings with the no-nonsense generosity of one who's telling you how to keep your own darkness at bay.

Like every previous Pet Shop Boys album, Nonetheless is clever, fun, and at times very touching.

She infuses this crepuscular collection of songs by the likes of the Rolling Stones, The Band, Neil Young and Gnarls Barkley with a compelling voodoo.

The more conventional songs radiate power too, from straightforward pop-rock anthem Hurricanes to the electronic thud of Holy — her It’s A Sin moment. The album’s final three tracks feel superfluous, but Sawayama ultimately succeeds where Dr Frankenstein failed: her creation greater than the sum of its parts.

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.

This is a laidback album, drawing on the dreamy Seventies milieu of Laurel Canyon with a touch of the easy listening sumptuousness of Burt Bacharach. It is about the ways lovers drift apart, evoking the fall of Autumnal leaves rather than blood on the tracks.

With Blake re-accessing his quirkier side after years of solid songcraft, and Childs guided away from his more loopy excesses. A hatful of memorable tunes, too.

After an opinion-dividing experimental phase with 2009's Humbug, roar back to melodic life on their fourth album.

This is an album in which Mumford embraces and forgives his own, to deeply moving effect.

Grande can really sing, which is a treat in this Auto-Tuned era. Her four-octave range has been compared favourably to Mariah Carey’s, but her style is far more delicate and understated. She rarely unleashes full power blasts but her delight in singing is transparent and her producers take full advantage, layering her all over the tracks.

Problems arise with I know You’re Hurting and Life Boat, a combined 10 minutes the album could arguably do without. The same could be said for the five minutes of thank you credits in Fin. Where the hell is my editor? might have been a more apt battle cry. Still, given its emotional heft and likely cultural impact, it’s an album that could turn Raye into Britain’s Beyoncé. It’s a towering achievement.

Death Cab are back with a bang and a new-found self-assurance.

There’s plenty of life in the old dog yet.

This is an album full of wistful, careworn emotions and a sense of quiet profundity.

In all it’s a fascinating mix, which should attract new recruits to Kokoroko’s ever-growing legion of fans.

It’s a fresh, raw and intentionally scruffy album.

A sensational debut from the British rapper. Tempah's wit, imagery and rhythmic flow is offset by schoolboy humour and a tendency to build raps from non sequiturs.

The power of West End Girl lies in the way it clearly presents itself as one side of the story: a woman trapped in her own head. Narrative tension builds because listeners can’t pull out for a wider perspective on the situation, allowing us to share in Allen’s claustrophobia and paranoia.

The 60-year-old producer has clearly been keeping an aficionado’s ear on developments in digital electronica, and there is nothing particularly retro or dated about this comeback. Thorn’s voice has a timelessness that will always sound contemporary. She never strains or overemotes but lets her instinct for elegant melody and the understated intelligence of her lyrics carry the dramatic weight.

There are duds, mostly when Aitch is chasing LA acclaim and aping US trap rappers on tracks like Cheque or Fuego. But when he leans into the silky, bumpy ’90s-era smooth-licking RnB that he raised himself on – see Sunshine or R Kid – he’s hard to beat.

While this album invigorates and intrigues, in future I would hope to hear her expand lyrically, while exploring the hauntingly melancholic sounds her violin can produce. For now, at least, the defiant joy her work evokes is a stimulating jolt to the senses.

Mabel also retains the tender, thoughtful quality that infused her debut album High Expectations (2019), and this makes for an impressively nuanced flow.

The 12 tracks that make up Expert in a Dying Field are lean and propulsive, with hooks that get under the skin.

He's made the kind of record that every kid rummaging through boxes of Seventies vinyl at the car boot sale hopes to find. One that lovingly reassembles a 21st-century impression of that era's warm autumnal hues and tactile textures.

This would all be simply infuriating were it not for the melodiousness that binds these strange sounds and images together, the feeling stirred up by Vernon’s voice, and his gift for chord progressions that sweep you along almost against your will.

The kids might not understand, but rock fans should be delighted that Kerr and Thatcher are still in the ring, giving it everything they’ve got.

Sharper production focuses the singer's woozier tendencies, revealing a succession of hooks to adorn his take on Neil Young's grooving folk-rock and Blur's twisted indie.

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

It’s infested with the collective naughtiness and layered irony of a B-movie all-nighter.

This is an album of mature, accessible pop-rock. The singing is beautiful, the playing immaculate, the sound warm and rounded, with nothing to scare the horses.

These are songs rich in detail, soul deep, often burdened with worry and a lifetime’s baggage, yet it’s the hazy sense of a drifter’s freedom in New Magic II which wins through, lifting your spirits time and again.

Her command over that mass of bodies remains.

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

She really does sweep the listener away, spinning wild webs of sound and carrying us off to her own aural dreamland.

It is as if one of the saddest albums you will ever hear is masquerading as a set of party hits. Nevertheless, No Shame should be compulsory listening for every young wannabe who still thinks pop stardom will be a panacea for all their problems.

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.

Dark Times undoubtedly makes for more challenging listening than Ramona…, but for listeners willing to put in the time and effort, prepare to be rewarded.

The Civil Wars offers up 12 perfectly elegant, subtly arranged Americana songs of bad love, misplaced emotion, cheating hearts, fighting and fleeing.

Dealing frankly with love, rejection, frustration, self-doubt and self-acceptance, almost every one of the 10 tracks is catchy and distinctive enough to become a hit.

A defiantly bravura set of melodic metal on which the 73-year-old genuinely sounds as though he’s having the time of his life.

A side project should be challenging and unusual; it should stretch the boundaries of the artists involved. Since that is what this characterful, strong, self-contained album does, you really have to like it or lump it.

The result is furiously syncopated, no-holds-barred rock made marvellously strange by Camara's squawking fiddle and invocatory singing.

Given the circumstances surrounding its creation, there is unsurprisingly a sadness at the heart of Two Ribbons, but even in quieter moments such as the acoustic Strange Conversations, or the atmospheric interlude In The Cemetery, the air is of light breaking through. And, equally often, there is a redemptive clarity and a wonderful sense of healing.

With the right collaborators she can conjure golden moments.

The Secret of Us marks her move into a more anthemic sound – one that sounds remarkably Swiftian, ready to be blasted out in larger venues. .... The album also features Close to You, a track Abrams teased seven whole years ago but never released – and it’s the clear highlight, all deliciously retro-synths and introspective lyrics that refrain from taking themselves too seriously.

Thoughts on suicide, homelessness, injustice, heartbreak and mortality are framed with supple grooves, melodious chords, gorgeous harmonies and lushly detailed arrangements.

It’s the same mix that made their Mercury-winning album so irresistible, but the range of musical references from jazz and West African Highlife and the London street is even bolder, the solos from keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones and trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi freer and more generous.

Sour is a melodramatic pop opera of broken teen dreams: right now, it puts Rodrigo in the driver’s seat, and woe betide anyone who gets in her way.

There’s so much to enjoy here for long-standing fans – a mellow soundtrack perhaps for the four-wheel pilgrimage down to Glastonbury, with some fittingly thought-provoking messaging on automotive responsibility going forwards.

His pensive, personal songs often evoke nocturnal drives on dusty highways with hypnotic allure.

Muse are a blockbuster band, and this is another box-office-demolishing spectacular – it would feel like self-denial not to surrender. Honestly, the end of the world has rarely sounded like so much fun.