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.

It is edgy fun with pitch-black humour masking real emotional content, although the tension between the darkness of the lyrics and sweetness of the vocals wears thin over a whole album.

Each thoughtful sonic soundscape washes elegantly into the next, toward the long, lush finale.

The result wittily, emotionally and triumphantly affirms his position at the head of the British rap pack. Like many of our most fascinating pop stars, from John Lennon to Robbie Williams, Stormzy lies on a knife-edge between ego and insecurity, self-confidence and self-doubt.

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.

With a rare display of vulnerability and contrition, grace and grown-up wisdom, Jay Z has delivered one of the most mature albums in hip hop history.

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.

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.

This certainly isn’t an indie-sleaze revivalist album, nor is it an effort to prove their relevance. Cool It Down puts words and music to fears and concerns while shaking you into feelings of some radical hope.

Black Terry Cat makes confident use of R&B grooves as a base from which to explore more exotic sounds.

You can hear the ghostly outline of OK Computer looming amid the gloom and distortion. Also palpable is a growing ambivalence. ... For every scratchy, hissing road to nowhere, there’s a sublime bit when Jonny Greenwood’s guitar cuts through and York starts to howl like a sad but vaguely vengeful pop demon. And suddenly all your misgivings tumble away, and it’s a privilege to be lost in the labyrinth of Radiohead’s collective subconscious.

For an album that brings together so many threads of Weller’s career, there is not much in the way of rocky guitar drive or punk energy. Yet there is an open-minded spirit in the way Weller mixes songcraft with ear-catching sonic details and structural adventure.

Gifted keeps giving: Koffee achieves a brilliantly confident debut with the promise of more good things to come.

Stunning. ... With slick, tasteful production from Jack Antanoff built around shining guitars and perfectly balanced vocal arrangements, this is a powerful addition to the genre.

Grant brilliantly skewers his own depression, addiction, bitchiness and heartbreak throughout a record which finds him mixing his penchant for corduroy, laid-back melodies with a new, rawly exposed synth-pop that feels like it's seeped up from an underground carpark, all hard concrete and cold, flickering fluorescents.

A straight-ahead album of gorgeous, elaborate, amusing and affecting songs.

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.

He seems to have found a new and more sincere voice, less bullish than we have heard him before, whilst using a fantastic roster of contributors to push the mood and narrative.

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.

It's a journey in which you don't need to know the words: this music is a licence to feel without prejudice. Like prayers or poetry, the potency is in the cadence, the rhythms, and the stirring of memory and imagination.

The album is both consistently breezy and emotionally upfront, going to-and-fro between galvanising dance anthems and gentle, psychedelic country ballads à la Kacey Musgrave’s Golden Hour.

If this was a debut, we would be hailing Andrews as a precocious young genius. But perhaps, in this age of acceleration, amid a pop blizzard of viral memes and instant digital fame, the slow maturing of a truly substantial talent is something to really celebrate.

He’s released a peach of an album.

It's simply a great album from start to finish - wonderful tunes, superb musicianship, star guests and a unity of purpose about delivering a fitting tribute to the music he loves that raises this album to such a high level.

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.

Espresso shot Carpenter into the spotlight, but Short n’ Sweet shows she is here for the long haul.

From exquisitely tender, elegaic ballad Only Children (“‘Heaven’s wasted on the dead’ is what your mama said / When the hearse was idling in the parking lot”) to self-questioning anthem What I’ve Done To Help, Isbell and his band are firing on all cylinders. Honestly, if you like this kind of thing, the guitar sounds and solos on burning rocker Overseas are worth the price of entry alone.

At times, Koenig is reminiscent of Paul McCartney in nursery rhyme mode--tunefully sweet and silly. Yet Koenig’s pithily epigrammatic lyrics throw a bit of intellectual grit in the mix, even if they possess all the clarity of a cryptic crossword.