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.