For all its despair at the cost of war, this is not a protest record, rather a consideration of our place in the greater scheme of things.

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 fizzy lifting drink of an album.

Another beautiful slice of country-tinged magic that never descends into nostalgia.

Ultimately, this is an album in which a troubled spirit seeks the relief of music to mesmerising and charged effect. And that is timeless.

Months from her 40th birthday, Ethiopian-American artist Kelela Mizanekristos has blessed us with a sexy, sultry masterclass in RnB.

Probing the paradoxes of someone who feels powerful in her art but vulnerable in her life, Welch’s masterful album affirms that she really is one of the greats.

Throughout it all, Sheeran stays true to the essential artistic notions of the classic singer-songwriter genre by treating his music as a vehicle for emotional veracity, personal revelation and universal inclusion.

The result is a 12-track riot of feisty, unapologetically forthright, dance-led pop that embraces femininity of all kinds.

There’s a wonderfully empowering sense of elders handing down sublime idealism and wisdom for our entertainment and enlightenment. Behind dodgy titular spelling, Renascence is top-class.

This is a record Guy Clark can surely be proud to have as a tribute.

Their return should be heralded from on high, because it is the boldest, smartest, most colourful and purely pleasurable dance album of this decade.

There’s not an ounce of fat on these eight, energised tracks. Everything is sharpened by the awareness of mortality and there is alchemy’s in Pop’s ability to infuse such resignation with real electricity.

It is, as ever, heart-on-sleeve stuff, with all of Coldplay’s musical diversions bound together by Martin’s golden gift for melody, almost simplistically direct lyrics and emotive crooning. But, oh my goodness, you’d have to be made of sterner stuff than I to resist.

Bush is still making music that intrudes and abducts.

Does it succeed in his aim? Triumphantly. With bells on. Tinker bells, even.

The best thing about Real Power is the way three perfectly balanced musicians concoct a sound of such thrilling dynamism, wit and energy without ever getting in each other’s way.

Clark never makes the mistake of letting an instinct for experiment detract from her elegant pop songcraft. All Born Screaming is an art-rock classic for the ages.

Radiohead's most melodically accessible collection, almost meditative in its ethereal mid-tempo loveliness, yet shot through with the kind of edgy details that never quite let a listener relax. It is chill-out music to put your nerves on edge.

The album is a melancholic masterpiece not for the fainthearted.

Delivers what most Sparks fans want from them most – a barrage of the kind of eccentric yet immediately connective synth-pop bangers, which only Chaplin-moustached keyboard maestro Ron Mael, now 79, seems capable of writing, and which Russell, 76, his sky-scraping high notes miraculously uneroded by passing time, delivers with characteristic theatrical gusto.

Sheeran sounds like a supercharged David Gray. Grown-up. Energised. Forget Autumn, this feels like an album of bright new dawns.

Scintillating and confident. ... This is music to bop to on the streets, to listen to in church with a big congregation, or to soak up alone in a room.

This album is a musical gumbo: a rich, surprising and ultimately satisfying stew of Simon's folk, rock and pop influences from all over the world.

On this album he is in especially playful and inventive form, perhaps because at a high school gig with no critics around he could afford to take risks. The numbers are nearly all those Monk standards familiar from numerous well-known recordings and endlessly replayed by later pianists, but they are reimagined in ways that make them seem utterly fresh.

It is no surprise that the sound is full of all the kind of clanking noises and sci-fi effects that have long steered Charli just left of the mainstream. Yet somehow this set of 11 short songs has a directness, immediacy and intimacy that has eluded her before. ... This album showcases the least mannered performances of her career. She makes you feel these songs.

I am blown away by this album, which will reward a lot of listening.

Deeply infused with rich, subtle hooks, Modern Nature is a patient album that warms the bones with a steady fusion of mid-tempo Curtis Mayfield soul (muzzy organ, bongos and funk guitar), with memories of Madchester club nights (baggy beats, chunky chords, shoegazer vocals) and tasteful string arrangements.