It’s all crowned by the confidence of I Got This, which reconciles Charlatans-esque country-soul Hammond to classy baroque-pop ba-ba-bas in a way that is unabashedly uplifting.

It’s far more satisfying musically, however, working as a good showcase for Jason Williamson’s stream-of-consciousness rants and Andrew Fearn’s unshowy but effective beats, from the frantic spleen-venting of 2014’s Jolly Fucker to the menace of last year’s OBCT.

The record is most effective when Lindén sounds more animated, as on I’ll Be the Death of You and the nimble, propulsive, Kraftwerk-influenced Neon Lights. Unfortunately these moments are overshadowed by lengthier excursions that give longueurs a bad name.

Sonically, it can blend a little into one, but the closing feature from the late rapper Lexii, a friend and collaborator of Kehlani’s, is a rousing, poignant end to a largely accomplished set.

Sometimes, everything combines arrestingly: sounds, words and resonance. ... Where this record falters is when Ghostpoet’s writing turns prosaic, and when the echoes of other artists become impossible to ignore.

The new styles don’t all gel.

Normally, you’d roll your eyes at such breathtaking derivations, but Marling’s record is so mellifluous and listenable, in part thanks to the unobtrusive string arrangements by Bob Moose.

If the grain of this album is purposely rougher-hewn, with boxy acoustics trading off with the odd sub-bass boom, the songwriting remains complex and elevated.

A low-key, slow-burn delight.

The production here is both crisp and sinuous; ethereal indeterminacy trades off with crackling attention to detail.

The New Abnormal remains a frustrating listen despite its gleam. Faster tempos would have helped.

The standout track is Cruel Disguise, where Harvieu’s melancholy, powerful vocal combines with a lithe bassline and baroque rock stylings. And while the singer may no longer be flavour of the month, this is still an impressive set.

The trio’s appetite for drugs, women and money never wavers from first to last track. Yet the more introspective songs, such as the spectral Traumatised and thoughtful High Road, tell powerful stories about their journey to success, and prove that D-Block Europe’s imperial phase is far from its end.

The drawback here is not that Bruner hasn’t made the out-and-out pop album his narrative arc as an artist might demand. Nor is it that he is showcasing his conservatoire-grade talents. It is, perhaps, that he doesn’t sit with one emotion, be it high or low, for a sustained length of time.

925 packs in more than a few disruptive ideas. But Sorry haven’t yet acquired the musical vocabulary to pull them off.

There’s a sharpness in these songs that still unsettles. It’s there in Crutchfield’s vocals, louder and fiercer than before, and on songs such as Fire, which is also difficult to love. Her lyrics, tackling subjects including addiction and self-hatred, often feel too verbose, but they become surprising and refreshing on closer listen.

There are so many good tracks on here that you want to say there is not a bad track on this outrageously fine pop record. But there is. Love in the Dark is a flaccid ballad [...] that almost undoes all the powerful work Reyez has done thus far. Almost, but not quite.

Electronics are very much to the fore. This feels like an analogue record, each note having a furry aura.

The palette of sounds she draws from on the long-awaited, and largely self-incubated, follow-up is familiar. ... She saves the most affecting song for last, Speaking of the End making its mark with just understated piano and her unadorned voice.

Aware that any language barrier can be overcome by a plethora of hooks and a prevailing atmosphere, Balvin adds a playful embellishment to each of the album’s 10 tracks, be it Amarillo’s kazoo-assisted beat, or the twinkling glacial percussion that tickles closer Blanco. A riot not just of colour, but of ideas too.

It’s a shame that the album overstays its welcome a little. As always, the Casady sisters are best in small, surreal doses.

These arrangements are never overloaded, the brass remains stately and discreet. If Reid never quite poleaxes you with her insights, this remains a thoroughly lovely record.

There are hints of experimentation, such as Nice to Meet Ya’s swaggering hybrid of Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian, but it’s the excellent title track’s flirtation with glossy, synth-tinged MOR that suggests where Horan might be headed next. Proof that it’s often the quiet ones you need to keep an eye on.

It’s never as transcendent as 1997’s When I Was Born For The 7th Time, but when Tjinder exhorts “amplifier to the echo chamber… mixer to the microphone” on St Marie Under Canon it doesn’t sound like a tired old rocker glumly gazing round the studio for ideas, it sounds like liberation, celebration.

The more direct songs work best – most notably the simmering Shadowbanned and the contrastingly carefree bonus track Juliefuckingette – but there is just as much to enjoy in the album’s hinterlands too.

The Long Goodbye can feel heavy-handed: even those phoned-in messages from famous friends (Mindy Kaling, Asim Chaudhry) sound jarring. Ultimately, though, Ahmed delivers, offering up some clever writing on this powerful concept album.

Heavy Light confirms a major talent.

Virile is the undisputed centrepiece of this stunning first section of græ, a sumptuous track in which Sumney’s falsetto, allied with waves of lavish instrumentation and pugnacious rhythms, breaks down ideas of masculinity.

An album overloaded with artfully polished tedium.

Miss Anthropocene is a deep, dark trip – shame the climate crisis bit isn’t also part of Grimes’s wild imagination.

It can feel a little lacking in direction – honed down from more than 900 home experiments, it’s eclectic almost to a fault, though there’s enough to treasure among its dreamy meanderings.

The final refrain of “please complete me” carries a powerful sense of hope – an end befitting an album that finds King Krule hitting a new stride.

Great art doesn’t have to come from a place of great discomfort, but it often helps. Always Tomorrow always chooses cosseting its audience over confronting more painful truths.

The Mayflower’s story is compelling, featuring hardship, hunger and the righteous pilgrims plundering grain from the Wampanoags, and is helped along by artful narratives spoken by the actor Paul McGann.

As The Slow Rush builds, you have to hold on tight to the idea that, despite the musical lengths Parker used to go through to camouflage his lyrics, he is actually one of our most intriguing confessional singer-songwriters.

The slightly leaden climax to Rearview aside, there’s barely a second wasted in Honeymoon’s 25-minute running time.

Pick of the bunch is Obongjayar, whose ode to the ongoing cataclysm befalling black youths, Dancing in the Dark, gives Dark Matter its moral high ground. Best of all is 2 Far Gone, where Ezra Collective’s Joe Armon-Jones arpeggiates magnificently on keys while Boyd shakes the rafters.

There are welcome changes of pace – the rib-rattling Forever featuring Post Malone a highlight – but the tempo drops again for a suite of acoustic sketches that touch on God (the title track), patience (Confirmation) and, on ETA, the joys of online surveillance (“Drop me a pin so I can know your location”). It’s a subdued end to an album that feels like a purely selfish endeavour on Bieber’s part.

Wayne’s unheralded 13th studio album proves that the 37-year-old’s flow can still be fearsome, even if his edit function remains iffy.

Green Day deliver everything with such panache that the songs’ limitations don’t really matter, especially when they manage to make tired old tropes seem fresh, as on the swooning brilliance of Take the Money and Crawl and Meet Me on the Roof.

Whether you meet All Or Nothing with the same energy depends on your hunger for more of a style already so thoroughly revived; for an album whose songs champion agency and resistance, its sounds are somewhat off-the-shelf.

Full of unexpectedly bittersweet horns and electric guitar, his mellow confidence here eschews clutter and bombast.

It’s just a shame that not enough of the flair she finds for juxtaposition reappears on this fourth album as memorable music.

Once again the songs are all traditional, while Lee has skilfully intercut some and “rewilded” them with the odd flourish – the “Old Wow” of the title is his name for an awestruck sense of nature.

The genre-hopping leads to the odd stumble here and there, but overall the never boring, often excellent High Road finds Kesha returning to the party on her own terms.

With none of the material really cutting through the production wizardry, this is another triumph for texture over songwriting.

Despite all the biting character sketches and evergreen dancefloor nous in evidence (both at once on Will O’ the Wisp), Hotspot has its cooler passages.

Halsey is less a pop chameleon than a musical magpie and Manic is a pristinely produced album that sounds a bit like everything you know, but better (Still Learning is a banger, like Evanescence with steelpan).

Despite a couple of nicely turned meditations (the title track, A Meeting at an Oak Tree), Raw Youth Collage mainly transmits a confusion that is less generational than solely Mura Masa’s.

Though at times songs and sentiments blur a little forgettably, this is an impressive statement of intent.

The poem isn’t great, but the music is as electrifying, unpredictable and chaotic as ever.

If Swimming felt contemplative, Circles feels even more like a singer-songwriter album than a hip-hop joint – a tendency most likely amplified by Brion’s treatments.

Overall, an enjoyable, imaginative and at times uncanny assault on the senses.

No one could ever mistake this band for sonic outliers, even when they hit their distortion pedals, but Walking Like We Do sets the Big Moon up for much bigger, more mainstream things.

While the elastic basslines of the Talking Heads-indebted Only in a Man’s World and Money Is a Memory stand out, Making a New World works best as a single piece of music, not least because some of its interstices are too fragile to stand unaided.

Seeking Thrills sounds full-fat, not free-from. Awash in euphoria blowbacks and pre-loved synth-pop, this is a record that proves the dynamics of a good time benefit from a clear mind.

Bevan has jettisoned the sleep paralysis pop of his early work for something even more dissociated and peripatetic. You might head for the vicious rave of Rival Dealer or Nightmarket’s sumptuous, pealing melody first, to swerve some long, austere, beatless passages, but this is a compilation of rare bravery and beauty.

While this album’s rotating mic-spot keeps things moving like a playlist, the memorability of these tracks bobs up and down like the waves off the coast of Free Nationals’ native California.

Fine Line is a confident step in Styles’s whimsical musical adventure.

The spaciousness, punch and depth of these productions is telling, but it is a mark of the album’s artistic integrity that Stormzy manages to transcend genre (again) without sacrificing his core griminess, or losing too much in the way of accent, word choice, content or theme.

The trio remain in a tradition of avant gardists such as Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane and Can, but totally of the now. One of 2019’s best.

Spread over 17 songs that tick off genres with all the flair of an automated Spotify playlist, Payne’s anonymity remains the album’s default through line. Occasionally painful yet weirdly Payne-less.

On the unreleased tracks, genuine surprises are few. But the campy prowl of My Oh My and the high-stakes breathiness of Bad Kind of Butterflies keep the balance tilted away from syrupy dross, in favour of fun.

Broadly speaking, After You succeeds as a rich, expansive set of sophisticated classic pop – but, unlike Peñate’s early work, it feels somewhat irrelevant to 2019.

It’s an album that draws you into Diamond’s world, full of real, 3D emotions.

Its 10 songs are stark but powerful, their anguish and insight given a deft, minimalist treatment by producer Kenny Greenberg. ... An aching, moving testimony, beautifully realised.

Once the lyrical sorrow and apocalyptic visions hit home, Hyperspace is revealed as a bleak, spacey R&B tour de force.

Arabesque is as good as anything they’ve done in the last 10 years, with French lyrics and echoes of the intensity of Primal Scream’s If They Move Kill ’Em refracted through a skronking jazz filter. But they’re rather less engaging when they hit the stadium preset buttons.

These tunes relish their flutes and organs, horns and strings. Crucially, hope plays off against the bleakness.

A talented interpreter, Dion comes unstuck when she can’t overcome the source material.

It’s a boldly idiosyncratic collection, and generous in its aims, but it’s also an unsatisfyingly structured racket.

These moves are still tentative, and talk of artistic progression is often the kiss of death, but Girl Ray have moved out of a place of limitations into more kaleidoscopic musicality.

Magdalene is a much starker, more emotionally direct album than 2014’s LP1, most noticeably in twigs’s voice, which moves with sleek power from delicate operatic acrobatics to muscular intimacy. It’s also bracingly frank.

The endeavour has clearly proved liberating, and prompted a renewed sense of creativity.

You relish every syllable as their dizzying flow piles dazzling images, metaphors and puns on top of each other.

The only downside is that Kiwanuka could have been even braver.

The songs often lean more towards the arty end of the mainstream, losing touch slightly with the startling radicalism of Sudan Archives’ early sound.

Pony meanders, seemingly uncertain of its purpose, but Rex Orange County retains enough charm and honesty to remain engaging while he figures himself out.

There is certainly greater focus this time around: only the eco-aware She Showed Me Love breaks six minutes, and it revels in the space it’s afforded.

This record is just shy of being truly groundbreaking. Polachek remains too much of a class act, a little too wedded to conventional beauty on songs like Look At Me Now, to really take her pop to the bleeding edge.

Beautifully crafted, Crush unsettles with its quiet, fervent chaos bubbling beneath its surface.

It’s the knockout closing pair that illuminate the band’s mastery of dynamics, unbearabletension and cathartic release.

These punishing, three-dimensional soundscapes connect 70s No Wave with the mischievous end of contemporary digital production: quite a feat.

Giants of All Sizes is not an album to be filleted and squashed into playlists; it’s the sort of deeply serious and carefully crafted work that would sprout a beard and a cable-knit jumper if you turned your back on it for a second.

Two Hands is more earthbound than UFOF – in that there’s nothing here that quite matches that album’s astonishing peaks.

The result is a brief but serious retrospective treatment of five pieces, going back as far as 1958. There are two versions of Naima and three of Village Blues, but they’re all different, and every performance is complete, no odds and ends.

It all adds up to yet another winning set from a band still to release a subpar album in a 25-year career.

Ultimately, all are visions, alternately haunted and comforting. Subtle evolutions in mood and instrumentation come to peaks that are made all the more stunning by their scarcity.

Brown’s storytelling is as witty as ever, with pungent bars that pop like pimples, spattering tracks with quotable filth. His best work by a distance.

Even though these arrangements are not gratuitous, and All Mirrors is beautifully wrought, it never quite devastates. More weirdness would have helped, and less default goth-pop. Strangely, Olsen’s voice gets a bit lost in the mix, a little too ill-defined, atmospheric and understated to stand up to the operatics surrounding her.

The result is a clear-headed amalgamation of their two eras, veering from stomping emo (opener Hold My Breath Until I Die; I’ll Be Back Someday’s Avril-isms) to sleek, synth-led pop (the pogoing You Go Away and I Don’t Mind).

It’s an intensely, intentionally stressful listen, the occasional victory of thumping, clanking grooves over the scraping, grating racket offering an illusion of normality before snatching it away again.

Throughout, a commitment to heartfelt songcraft remains the most “country” thing about Sound & Fury.

There’s so much to take in that it requires many listens before all of Metronomy Forever’s charms reveal themselves, in part because of the palate-cleansing interstitial drones spread across the album. It’s worth the wait.

As always, Liam’s greatest asset is his astonishing voice, all yearning and defiance. Still, his songwriting has improved. ... Sadly, most of the new songs peddle tame, low-stakes nostalgia, swimming in cliches and drowning in sentimentality, as satisfying as trying to get relationship advice out of a cashpoint.

The National’s busy polymath Aaron Dessner is producer, bringing this excellent album, full of fear and succour, into focus.

The smoothness of Hval’s musical vehicle, this time around, allows her ideas to slip in softly, almost subliminally: humanity as a virus, technology’s role in romance, bereavement, panic attacks. It’s an eerie sort of euphoria, but no less of a rush for it.

Charli, her third official album, finally hits a noisy, sweet spot. It is, hands down, the best iteration of XCX yet, the one where Aitchison’s pop capabilities line up most persuasively with her avant garde ear.