JANUARY? Depressed? These self-pitying acts unable to see past their own dejected noses will provide the perfect soundtrack for your gloom: 

Echo & the Bunnymen

Even Liverpool’s all-conquering 80s success didn’t stop these Scousers grumbling about a killing moon coming too soon, as if there would ever be an ideal time. Not satisfied with their debut’s surface-level murk, the band decided to get into blues, mysticism and album covers of them in a boat in a cave. ‘I’m like that inside,’ their trenchcoat-wearing fans exclaimed.

The National

Lead singer Matt Berninger acts like getting battered on Beaujolais and dancing like a dick is bad, which seems more wine mom housewife than the ‘sad dad’ stereotype he’s built. Though much of the band’s misery these days comes from guitarist Aaron Dessner working with Taylor Swift and being a hundred times richer than the rest of them.

Nine Inch Nails

Listening to Johnny Cash sigh his way through Hurt is dire enough. Knowing it was originally by a wallower from the metal world who recorded in the Manson murder house? Exquisite misery. Though the real tragedy was that Trent Reznor ultimately inspired the whole nu-metal scene that created Limp Bizkit.

Porcupine Tree

Even if Steven Wilson thinks sad music is ‘the most beautiful’, that does not make it good. Especially boring prog projects about serial killers and TV being bad for you. It’s the musical equivalent of Bela Lugosi soundtracking an episode of Goosebumps.

Portishead

It’s laudable that artists can channel pained emotion with a few wispy lines and plodding drums. Even today it can make an adult man cry during a Nissan advert, as he realises the music that once changed his life is now being used to sell jeans. Only did three albums, presumably because becoming rich cheered them the f**k up.

Swans

They say Swans’ live experience is striking, but it’s Michael Gira cowering from the crowd and smirking, having tricked people into thinking bleak lyrics are poetry. The amps are so loud the music is undiscernable while the frontman dances like he’s celebrating a career of making you feel like shit time and time again.