Wanderer is an album of peculiar little songs that you won't hear in anyone else's catalogue. It is ungainly, odd, and at times almost amateurish. For some, Cat Power will always sound slightly unfinished. For others, it is exactly that quality that makes her records ring with raw truth.

Now 70 years old, she is back on form with her 15th album.

She certainly knows how to convey emotion.

It's a loose album, an indulgent album, and not all likeable but, unlike any other outfit of their tenure, they maintain a raw punch as if recording in a local bar for the sheer blast of it.

She shows in Everything Changes that she can keep up with the times.

Young offers up rough and ready songs about the state of the environment, slightly mollified by dreamy ballads for his third wife, Daryl Hannah (the Splash star is characterised as “a mermaid in the Milky Way”), sung in a tender, trembling falsetto.

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.

Her songs may be about growing pains, but they’ve got timeless appeal.

Whether Pot Of Gold’s lullaby or any of Felt Better Alive is exactly hit material by 2025 standards is hard to say, but it’s wonderful to hear this wayward hero sound so happy to be alive.

Van the Man is back doing what he does best. Remembering Now, his 47th album, is 14 songs of beautiful and reflective music addressing aging, romance and a sense of yearning for the landscapes and landmarks that made us who we are.

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.

Power Up is as exultantly fierce, furious and – let’s be honest – belligerently dumb as anything in their catalogue. It is no-nonsense, headbanging, fist-waving, foot-stomping, raw-throated, hard-screaming, riff-ripping, pedal-to-the-metal maximum rock and roll all the way.

Their fourth album is their best yet: bright, poppy and exciting.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is up there with Boxer, the band’s 2007 album on which they thrillingly found their musical feet. This is the sound of a band who’ve honed their sound to such an extent that they’re now towing a whole new generation in their wake.

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.

Paul Griffith (drums); Amanda Shires (violins/vocals and a gifted songwriter with her own album Lightning Strikes just out); Chad Staehly (keyboards); Jason Isbell (guitars) and Mick Utley (vocals) add the expertly jaunty sound to Snider's ironic and enjoyably dark lyrics.

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.

While these songs are like discarded pub furniture, Bramwell sounds like a wiley old alley cat, sat on top of it and looking up.

At times she strives too hard for Tom Waitsian wonky Americana. But more often she makes the Canadian wilderness her own.

Producer Jacquire King, who worked on Tom Waits’s Mule Variations and Norah Jones’s The Fall, allows Della's gutsy sound to soar.

If Twice As Tall is Burna’s bid for global superstardom, then the music is polished to befit his aims.

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

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.

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.

As big and bold as any fan could hope for.

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.

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.

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.