The Magic Whip turns out to be a triumphant comeback that retains the band's core identity while allowing ideas they'd fermented separately over the past decade to infuse their sound with mature and peculiar new flavour combinations.

The results are fantastic: an album of world-beating standard yet still intimate and friendly, an epic of the everyday, a romance of the real.

Clever, sexy, angry, soulful, witty and fantastically bold, Beyoncé stirs up the western and puts the you know what into country. I think it’s a masterpiece, but don’t expect to hear it at the Grand Ole’ Opry any time soon.

The lads have given this album everything, everything and then some.

From DNA’s punchy electro mantra about identity to LOVE’s tender sing-song reggae pop meditation on fickle emotions, DAMN is an album of surface sheen and hidden depths, where words and music operate in beautiful synchronicity, a constantly unfolding dance that lends each new approach a sense of investigation and revelation. It is dazzling.

Now he inhabits classic lines by songwriters like Johnny Mercer with weathered ease.

There is something so cathartically bleak about Songs of a Lost World, so epically pessimistic and emotionally wrought, that the results are perversely invigorating, transmuting powerful feelings of loss, grief, anxiety, anger and self-doubt into a work of such grandeur it leaves the listener strangely exhilarated and uplifted.

This anthology provides a marvellous opportunity to revisit Mitchell in her glorious prime. Indispensable.

She has drawn comparison with Kate Bush and Bjork, not because she sounds like them, but because she has a similar blend of extraordinary vocal ability, florid imagination, and genre-bending boldness. Desire is the album where it all comes together for this late blooming art-pop siren.

Some will scoff, but imagine a beloved grandfather at a family gathering singing ballads of love and yearning from his lost youth, and you will get some idea of the power of this extraordinary record.

The movement back and forth between the chiselled simplicity of the core Suite itself and the freedom of the improvisations that spin out from them creates a sense of epic scale. It’s a more than worthy addition to the Coltrane recorded legacy.

For a flag-waving LGBTQ artist riding the transgender express, the secret of Letissier's crossover charm is that she never lets polemic get in the way of a slick hook. It may be pop with a purpose, but first and foremost it is pop with a damn catchy chorus.

This set is a fine reminder of his magnificent legacy of film work.

Amaarae – real name Ama Serwah Genfi – has crafted and compiled 14 captivating and refreshing tunes, touching on topics from sensuality to spirituality.

A lovely, and rewarding record.

If you like quality songwriting delivered with panache, On The Line is on the money.

Dirty Computer establishes itself as a contender for album of the year, in more ways than one. The witty, interlinked songs tackle subjects that have fuelled much of the discourse around “woke” social consciousness in the age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

The album offers a rousing, belligerently upbeat response to global crisis, albeit at the time of composition they were addressing climate change, environmental activism, the impact of austerity and rise of fascism. ... This is the sound of a group breaking out of their shell and demanding to be heard.

The effect is classic Suede, with mature moments of recollection in tranquillity.

[James Blake's] most fully-realised album to date. ... Dizzyingly romantic.

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.

A brilliant tribute album, showcasing properly Lead Belly's cultural legacy.

“Wow” seems an appropriate response to this sublime album. ... Sam Lee’s Old Wow is a spine-tingling collection of traditional songs, artfully reinterpreted for contemporary ears and concerns. It is folk music that demands to be heard in the 21st century.

The songwriting class shows. In addition, the musicianship is top notch.

The wild, rattling bawlers are each distinctively turbocharged with reckless and richly textured energy, while the ballads run poignantly on their rims, leaking emotion.

Because there’s a rap-type of percussion to her music, it’s hard to tell whether she’s ready to break into an indie harmony or some lo-fi poetry – yet this unpredictability is what makes PAINLESS so exciting to sit through. ... This should rubber-stamp Nilüfer Yanya as a generational star.

A long, sad, brooding mediation on grief, the 17th album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is simultaneously their loveliest and most terrible.

Assured and still in thrall to the spinning lights, Little Red confidently and unpretentiously reflects Katy B’s transition from eager young clubber with a curfew to a mature young woman with a home of her own and the ability to hold a little something in reserve.