Furnaces is an album of bold and brutal self-examination of masculinity’s darkest aspects, in which Harcourt seductively acknowledges the appeal of giving vent to selfish impulses while implicitly acknowledging their devastating effect on others, and indeed the world.

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.

Hannigan rewards close attention, though. Lyrical phrases float up that demonstrate she is a writer of great care, with an eye for an arresting image.

There’s plenty to applaud on a promising debut, but, as yet, not enough to believe in.

Wild Beasts have shed a lot of excess, offering a stripped-back amalgamation of analogue Eighties synths, snappy machine rhythms and industrial rock guitar buzz, coloured with great swathes of harmonic panache, that is lean and mean enough to pass for modern pop. This newfound purpose is the real revelation of Wild Beasts’ strongest album to date.

A very fine debut album from Californian singer-songwriter, who has a wonderfully rich and mournful country voice.

This is an album that sounds like a world of music in itself.

He knows how to fill a dance floor. But his music comes with the sharp awareness of how it feels to stand, alienated and feigning aloofness, on the sidelines.

This is a beautiful, beguiling, disturbing and rewarding album of love, loss, grief and recovery from one of the most intriguing singer-songwriters currently active in British music, of either gender.

Black Terry Cat makes confident use of R&B grooves as a base from which to explore more exotic sounds.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in the snap ’n’ flex with which Kiedis flips out this nonsense. He and Flea (now 53) clearly know how daft they are yet you can also hear how happy they sound to still be pogoing along.

It teases and satisfies at once, which is why, unless you’re allergic to Snarky Puppy’s special charm, you’ll want to play this album over and over.

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

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

His weary regrets are cradled in a simple, swaying hammock of piano, violin and mournful horns. ... It’s a miserabilist masterpiece.

Sturgill Simpson has recorded an interesting album about the lure of home. Musically, it's a bold step away from the excellent Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (there's more soul and brass in A Sailor's Guide to Earth) but the songwriting remains strong and beguiling.

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.

It may be resolutely old-fashioned and, for sure, we’ve heard it all before, but the sheer pleasure in Porter’s singing is all but impossible to resist.

Twelve top-class tracks also feature Chicago-born guitarist Dennis Cahill.

Lemonade is by far Beyoncé’s strongest album.

Views genuinely makes for mesmerising listening, even if much of the album seems to consists of lazy meanders through Drake's psyche.

[Willie Nelson] brings feeling and charm to these 11 covers.

The songs Memphis Women And Chicken, Tuscaloosa, 1962 and Foolish Heart are highly enjoyable, but the highlight is the complex and moving Errol Flynn.

This began life as an art project at Somerset House, with Harvey composing and recording in a makeshift studio before a viewing public. Such pressurised circumstances might explain the absence of any sense of real pleasure in the finished work. I don’t hesitate to hail it as impressive but it does feel more civic project than classic album.

At times, though, the bleepy, burbling “fun” gets too wacky and cheesy for even PSB’s long-standing irony to uphold.

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.

Distance Inbetween is by some distance the Coral's most muscular offering.

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.