Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which back in pre-streaming, pre-discogs days of the early 1990s when they started out you had to be a proper nerd to have any grasp of.

“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however, necessarily say what Forster actually sees. These vignettes about encounters between characters come across as imaginary scenarios.

This contrasts with the former Go-Betweens lynchpin’s last album, The Candle and the Flame, which was a direct – albeit allusive – reaction to the diagnosis and treatment of his wife Karin Bäumler’s cancer.

Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct is up for debate. Known for her fiery rage-rap and punk energy, Rico tones things down here, trading some of her wild unpredictability for a more polished, trend-aware sound.

Metalhorse is a concept album that uses visions of a dilapidated funfair as a metaphor for life’s various ups and downs. It especially seems to concentrate on the downs though, especially when it employs opening lines like “My best friend’s dying” on “Nothin Worth Winnin”.

Danish singer MØ is a paradox. Initially she appeared to be another Scandi electro-pop princess of the bangers. The monster 2015 hit “Lean On” with Major Lazer jacked her profile, briefly, through the roof, but, while she’s worked with everyone from Iggy Azalea to DJ Benny Benassi, she seemed to step sideways from pure pop, tempering it with something more Nordic and melancholy. Her fourth album persuasively continues in this direction.

Over the years Slade in Flame has been hailed as one of the greatest rock movies (albeit rarely seen or screened), up there with Perfomance and That’ll Be The Day.

Like those films, it has grittiness running through it like barbed wire through a stick of Blackpool rock. It’s raw and dark; very dark. Not glam at all. And wrapped up in its singular brilliance is the grim rather than glam fact that Slade in Flame tanked at the box office and almost tanked the career of the band it – sort of – celebrated.

Following on from an impressive set with the Libertines – last year’s No 1 album All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – Peter Doherty returns to the fray with his first solo album in nine years. 

It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an anonymous metal band to become a social media sensation, but in early 2023 that's exactly what happened for Sleep Token.

I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I switch off.

There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022, the spotlight has been on her. She supported Halsey and Olivia Rodrigo on tour, worked with Beabadoobee, Skrillex, and K-Pop sensations Le SSerafim, and had a song on the Barbie soundtrack. It’s a lot. Perhaps, judging from this mixtape – a 20-minute filler release we might once have called an EP – she’s spreading herself too thin.