Best Albums of May 2018: hmv.com previews the top 10...

It’s been five years since Arctic Monkeys unleashed AM, their all-conquering fifth album, five years they’ve filled with starting families, revamping side projects and some much needed time off, but they finally return in May with the wonderfully named Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

The album has been produced by James Ford and Alex Turner and was recorded in Los Angeles, Paris and London.

The Scottish trio follow up 2015’s acclaimed Every Open Eye with a new 13-track effort.

For their new LP, the band have drafted in hitmaker supreme Greg Kurstin, the man who has helped P!nk, Adele and Kelly Clarkson craft some of their biggest, to serve as their first outside producer.

The album includes a duet with The National’s Matt Berninger on ‘My Enemy’ as well as a collaboration as well as new single ‘Miracle’, a track produced by Olly Murs/Ed Sheeran frequent co-writer Steve Mac.

Love Is Dead sees the band embracing pop fully, as you hear on lead-off single ‘Get Out’.

The last time Snow Patrol had a new album on the shelves, it was 2011 and Donald Trump had just decided that he wasn’t ready for a run for President. A lot can change in seven years.

In the time in between, the Northern Irish troupe have put out a ‘Greatest Hits’, scrapped an entire album that was all set to go and seen keyboardist Johnny McDaid become one of the world’s most in-demand songwriters.

Now though, it’s back to business, with Wildness, which has been produced by longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee and inspired, according to frontman Gary Lightbody, by both “the wildness of the modern age, all it's confusion, illogic and alienation and a more ancient wildness”.

Another long-awaited return, this time it’s Plan B, who has left us without a studio album for six years.

For new album Heaven Before All Hell Breaks Loose, the singer has drafted in outside help for the first time, with Beyonce collaborator, Arrow Benjamin, Ed Sheeran disciple Foy Vance and Kid Harpoon, who has helped Florence and The Machine and Jessie Ware with some of their biggest tracks, all on duty for this new album.

Unlike his last LP, iLL Manors, which was entirely driven by grime and hip-hop, this new album features no rapping, with the singer returning to his more soulful side, as we heard on The Defamation Of Strickland Banks.

Slowly and steadily, the Australian metalcore stalwarts have built themselves up from the lower vestiges of festival bills and tiny clubs into the kind of band that can fill arenas.

Now, with their sixth album, they’re aiming for the big time. Produced, once again by George Hadjichristou, the band’s power and precision is front and centre, with Winston McCall’s uncompromising vocals still as harsh as ever they were.

Now shorn of his long hair and done with his beloved hat, James Bay looks a whole different man as he returns with a second full-length effort Electric Light.

Recorded in East London’s Baltic Studios, Bay has turned to Paul Epworth, the man who helped Adele, Florence + The Machine and Coldplay turn in hugely successful records, for production.

Bay has talked up new influences, mentioning Frank Ocean and LCD Soundsystem as particular ones, but has also promised more energy and a slight move away from guitars.

The tenacious troubadour makes it seven albums and counting in May with his new LP Be More Kind.

Be More Kind sees Turner moving into new territory with keyboards, loops and electronics fully embraced and the stripped back folk of his previous effort Positive Songs For Negative People.

The album has been produced by Austin Jenkins and Joshua Block, formerly of psychedelic-rock Texans White Denim, and Florence And The Machine and Halsey collaborator Charlie Hugall.

The eccentric songstress scored worldwide acclaim for her 2015 debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit and now moves on to her second LP.

Produced once again by Burke Reid, the album finds Barnett once again in a typically blunt mood with her lyrics, with songs like 'Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence' and 'I'm Not Your Mother, I'm Not Your B**ch'.

Hopkins returns five years after his last studio album with another collection of quirky electronica.

The LP will consist of nine tracks and clock in at over 62 minutes, including 'Everything Connected' and 'Luminous Beings', which both come in at over 10 minutes in length.

No guests feature on this new album.

The Danish punks drop their fourth album next month, their first since 2014's Plowing Into the Field of Love and a return to the gnarly punk of their early work.

Singer Sky Ferreira guests on ‘Pain Killer’ and the album was recorded again by longtime Nis Bysted.