It's simply a great album from start to finish - wonderful tunes, superb musicianship, star guests and a unity of purpose about delivering a fitting tribute to the music he loves that raises this album to such a high level.

This is an album of rare truth and grace.

If (oh dear) you haven't got a Richard Thompson album in your collection, then this is a great way to get to know a truly inspired songwriter. But even if you know his work inside out, then you will still find much to enjoy listening to a master re-touch some of his best works.

Recorded partly in Senegal with contributions from Youssou N'Dour and Orchestra Baobab, the good hearted energy of this second album announces him as a potentially major figure to watch.

He brings his expressive voice and interesting lyric-writing to traditional-minded Irish ballads.... Class.

At times you might wish for a bit more sonic edge to match some of the biting lyrics, but this is a solid debut from exciting young talent – there’s little evidence of any teething problems here.

This is Jacklin’s most personal offering yet and while the pain of mining her soul for such material is clear, through these diary-like confessionals, so too is her catharsis.

This record is rammed full of fantastically fresh and challenging beats and bears the hallmarks of Cherry's streetwise style.

Protest albums don’t come more subtle and moving than this.

Ugly makes for difficult listening in places, but that’s not to say it isn’t often brilliant. Experimental, disarmingly honest and conceptually tight, blending rap, alt-rock and electronica, there’s no denying that Frampton is putting in the work.

In weaker moments he veers into mawkish troubadour territory, but Blake's musical alchemy can be capable of matching the urban, nocturnal beauty of vintage Massive Attack.

To some tastes, Sheeran will be corny and trite. Yet what he does well is essentially inarguable: provide songs that fulfil the emotional needs of universal moments.

From the opening chimes and birdsong to her sultry vocals, the album cocoons you entirely in its plush, sensuous world.

Here’s what I Inside the Old Year Dying is: beguilingly atmospheric, beautifully crafted, and yet more proof that PJ Harvey is one of our most idiosyncratic artists. It’s wyrd, for sure. But it’s also lwovely.

Avonmore is classic, if not quite vintage, Ferry, lacking the distinctive songcraft of his finest work.

Always Ascending is every bit as smart and dynamic as their acclaimed debut, but familiarity has dampened its dramatic impact.

Trio The Bad Plus are joined by saxophonist Joshua Redman, and the intricate compositions challenge and inspire the soloists.

It's great to have Lee Ann Womack back with such a sad and lovely album.

If sensuous, whip smart R’n’B rocks your boat, Victoria Monét’s debut album, Jaguar II, is a luxurious treat.

Its low-budget weirdness will have you laughing into the new year.

Above all, Joy’All seems like the work of an artist content with floating through life, just having fun – and she’s brought us along for the ride.

Like his misogynistic streak, his sound is stuck in the past. What keeps our attention is his exuberant delight in language itself, such as his geometry pun in River: “this love triangle / left us in a wrecked tangle”. (Say it aloud).

The music is astounding, threading erudite raps through ghetto soul jams and panoramic orchestral interludes.

An album that ultimately serves as both an emancipation and a proclamation, Grande fully bending her collaborators to her will instead of merely playing in their sandboxes, and creating a blissful fusion of pop and R&B that is entirely her own.

Pound for pound and hook for hook, Duck is as strong an album as they have ever made: a bright, giddy, colourful collection of pop anthems to raise the spirits.

There's a real grace about The Longest River, the debut album from self-taught multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney.

Inevitably, 51 minutes of melodrama becomes draining. But it captures Del Rey's mystique perfectly.

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.