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.