The album retains the competent aura of Sigrid’s debut, if not always its punch. Her unrelentingly talented vocal performances on tracks like piano ballad Last To Know strip her back to the artist before the fame, the artist at her piano at home in Norway. But high-octane pop remains the place where she really shines.

Four decades into their career, Soft Cell have rarely sounded more current.

WE is their sixth album, and every bit as good as their best. ... With a work as ambitious and boldly realised as WE, Arcade Fire know they have nothing to fear by inviting comparison to rock’s all-time greats.

There is a clutch of fine songs here written for Nelson by some of Nashville’s leading contemporary tunesmiths, including the title track (a celebration of life on the road) and elegiac ballad Dusty Bottles that are surely destined for classic status.

At its best, it’s like a movie soundtrack. String interludes behave like camera pans between scenes; fuzzy production gives everything a dream-like quality.

Alpha Games should please their established fanbase, but Bloc Party still sound strangely ambivalent, trapped between the visceral thrill of lean, modern guitar music and their doubts about its form and function.

Given the circumstances surrounding its creation, there is unsurprisingly a sadness at the heart of Two Ribbons, but even in quieter moments such as the acoustic Strange Conversations, or the atmospheric interlude In The Cemetery, the air is of light breaking through. And, equally often, there is a redemptive clarity and a wonderful sense of healing.

This is one of the most incendiary British records of 2022.

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.

You don’t need to be in an altered state to become overwhelmed by his mastery of controlled cacophony. It is a pleasure to report that everything is still beautiful in Pierce’s strange sonic world.

It may be billed as a tribute to a lost star, but this Winter wonderland serves as a reminder that the blues is still very much alive and kicking.

This is a very good project and will cement Digga D as a force on the pop charts, but if the 21-year-old wants to reach the next level and avoid becoming a pastiche like 50 Cent did, he will need to do more of the unexpected and dig a little deeper into his subconscious when it's time to drop that studio album.

SERPENTINA isn’t a coherent whole but rather a doggerel and ill-considered mishmash of disparate parts.

Tempest’s turn of phrase is constantly arresting.

It is an absolute blast, a crunchy, punchy, smart, deliciously goofy charge through new wave pop rock. It bursts with earworm hooks, snappy choruses and the delightful sense that the duo at its heart are having such a hoot they don’t really care what anyone else thinks.

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.

Every tiny detail is in aesthetic congruence with the initial feelings that birthed these songs – all of which you’re made privy to in violently vivid detail. Broken Hearts Club is an expertly sequenced, perfectly packaged ode to a lost love.

They exhilarate and seduce the listener into a world that makes enduring and acknowledging turbulent times a bit more glamorous.

The sound is lean and clean, sharply separated with individual instrumentation shining through and not a lot of over-dubbing or effects.

This record is undoubtedly their strongest offering since 2006’s Meds, strengthened by the inclusion of the sort of furious social commentary that made them such heroes to countless kohl-eyeliner-wielding teenagers in the late 90s.

Gifted keeps giving: Koffee achieves a brilliantly confident debut with the promise of more good things to come.

Mainstream Sellout portrays MGK as a victim of success; it gleams like a fancy ornament on an industry merry-go-round – then the music hits you, not with a roar, but a very loud meh.

There are a few moments here that feel like major label fodder, sure, but on the whole Kojey Radical deserves enormous credit for putting out an album that remains thoughtful and spiky despite its clear intention to get people dancing.

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.

The songs themselves may not be complex but the simple and sincere emotions expressed on anthems such as the chiming indie epic Forever, the rip-roaring AC/DC-style rocker Running Round My Brain and the Rod-Stewart-flavoured piano ballad Every Dog Has Its Day carry a potent weight of feeling and offer euphoric release.

As always with Mehldau ambition often tips over into pretentiousness, but one forgives him because there’s a real musical sensibility at work.

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.

The pure beauty and emotion of Rosalia’s vocals and the sensational grooviness of her rhythms all speak for themselves, offering a fantastically fresh take on Latin flavours and modern urban pop.