Rainbow is a muddled hotch-potch that offers little beyond the fact it heralds her return. It's great to have Kesha back--it really is--but let's hope the quality improves in future.

Album closer ‘Joy Ride’ does exactly what it says on the tin; it’s a joyous, perfectly assembled pop track. That’s not to say that the Kickstarter-funded LP is hit after hit--the bright and brash ‘It’s Sunny’ with its oddly theatrical tropes is a cheesy misstep.

Despite these few fleeting moments of greatness, Everything Now feels like the band's first missfire record of their career, with its lack of a focused concept, cohesiveness and heart.

French’s flow and character may be the same as his previous works, but his stature within the rap world has rocketed.

For such a young talent, his lyrics are strong, but give him a few more years of life experience and they could be in a different league.

Bloated at 16 tracks, it could have been a genuinely strong EP that formed a platform for Dizzee’s return to the sound he helped birth.

‘Run Me Dry’ plays a la mode with a loose dembow rhythm, but, as with the rest of the album, there are plenty of others out there who’ve not only done this already but done it more engagingly.

Unfortunately, with much of the record polished to a dull gleam, there’s little else that succeeds in rising above a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable album.

In aping the sounds that made early rave great--hardcore, breaks and hard house--Vibert has sucked the soul from the genre leaving just a smattering of style. If this is an ode to rave, then it is a hollow one.

The band’s approach to music-making has always been as eclectic as their references, but generally they’ve stuck to one approach per album. Unfortunately this is where Home Counties comes a bit unstuck. There’s quite a lot going on.

The majority of Grateful is forgettable at best.

The dirges are ditched, yet the previous elements they made their name with are overdone.

I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone sees the Seattle group recede deeper into their comfort zone with a batch of tracks that are lukewarm at best.

As a musique concrète or experimental electronica album, Burials In Several Earths is an above average attempt that contains myriad intricacies and points of interest. As something to carry on a peerless lineage, however, it feels like an unnecessary move.

It seems to fall between two stools, not supplying enough arena-filling arrogance while never truly indulging the more surprising elements of their record collections.

Most of the tracks’ narratives are undecipherable and consistently scatterbrained. Not to mention that the panoramic mixing of the guitars, while being a band trademark, make it difficult to focus on more than one aspect of a song at a time.

Season High is a pleasant ride--a breezy escapade through dreamlands and ultraviolet meadows. It’s a sometimes sickly-sweet concoction that’ll leave you once or twice with the feeling of overindulgence.

Booming walls of sound are favoured at the expense of nuance, leaving Belong too regularly thirsting for a banner hit, and ultimately, offering a perfect example of why bigger isn’t always better.

Longevity is often characterised by reinvention in music, yet The Ride stalls in its attempted inventiveness, instead finding success in its most pared down and familiar moments.

On Automaton, the band falters under the weight of its previous singles, leaving any possibility for chart success mired in a sound that comes across as tired and unoriginal, and the album listening experience as a monotonous ordeal.

Despite the two opposing moods of the album, the candid and dark lyricism is the only consistent effort in the album. It’s a massive shame, considering how much headway the band made with ‘Asymmetry’, but Mallory Knox have found themselves half a step behind their peers once again.

Whilst production and rhythms are excellent, the hooks (barring the album’s final lyric: “There’s so much bullshit comin’ out of your mouth”) often fall short.

Its straightforward, no bells and whistles approach is at once its greatest appeal and its most obvious shortcoming. Doris & The Daggers is deliciously satisfying beer rock--nothing more, nothing less.

The Incessant has a wealth of great ideas baked into the sediment of a wholly unremarkable collection of songs but boasts enough personality to still be worth giving the benefit of your doubt.

There’s nothing that lifts it from being middle of the road Einaudi. Then again, standing on a cliff listening to middle of the road Einaudi is never a bad place to be.

While there’s certainly more emphasis on melody this time around, it’s brought about through noticeably more mature, more refined compositions.

Little Fictions, in the end, though a welcome sign of elbow gently progressing with their formula, is a step forward feels too hesitant.

It’s overwhelming in its grandiosity, and though it has its virtues, Foxygen’s latest LP is best enjoyed as a bite-size hors d'oeuvre instead of a main course.

Following the trend set on previous effort ‘Olympia’, the beats continue to become crunchier, direct and undoubtedly more contemporary--but unfortunately less interesting also.

Ultimately, Graveyard Of Good Times is too much of a mixed bag to be considered a great record.

There’s barely a convincing lyric in the album and by the end you’re wondering whether the title itself has been chosen based on the sheer novelty.

This won’t run as smoothly as her DJ-Kicks bow of 2015, and it’s not a mix you’re allowed to get comfortable with, the Siberian’s non-conformist stance playing fast and loose with the ideals of cohesion, and letting the faders lead punters astray.

Though the record as a whole is weaker than its predecessor, there’s enough flashes of career-high brilliance to keep The Wharves on the right path of progression.

There are enough hair-raising moments here to anchor your skin and stop it crawling quite so much.

While there’s nothing really here to ignite a flame of revolution, or indeed get fists in the air to be honest, Peace Trail sees Young doing what comes naturally, soundtracking tumultuous times with some confident and easy songwriting.

The problem, however, is that the record suffers from a lack of variety and an overkill of nostalgia, while of a raft of identikit, if solid, guest vocalists it’s only Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor who really stands out.

At times Letherette overreach and their ambition to contort every trend of the last decade into a singular structure feels forced. The album flourishes where the beats are fortified by accompanying charisma.

‘Broke Me In Two’, which you can already find online, is a good place to start if you’re looking for a sampler. Overall though, it’s a case of ‘good to have you back Joan’, and ‘next time, let’s have a bit more you and little less Lazar Davis’.

Unfocused, inconsistent and underwhelming, The Heavy Entertainment Show is homogenised pop at its most stupefying.

Keys fails to emulate these peers and instead only succeeds in certain apt production choices and the partial development of her earlier sound. She becomes yet another voice unable to deliver its message.

The album can become at times feel too self-involved and unsettled, in regards to the fluidity of the tracks and the thorough examination of emotions, which at time has the tendency to sound a little forced.

Welcome To Sideways sits comfortably amongst older material, but is more regressive than revolutionary.

Although this album does replicate almost everything they’ve created it has that sense of maturity about it, showing that over the sixteen years they’ve moved on from their rebellious teen stage.

Lady Wood proves Tove Lo is one of the more interesting characters in what is often a personality-less genre, but unfortunately, her unique perspective is diluted by fairly humdrum electro-pop production.

It’s an accomplished if somewhat safe set of songs; a JoJo on the cusp of finding her range.

You can't help but feel that the teasing at euphoria on Slow Knife would be a little less frustrating if the thing were allowed to crescendo further, and for some of that drumwork to be incorporated accordingly.

There are sludgy, down-tuned power chords, there are whiny lyrics about how life is constantly unfair (reminder: Korn frontman Jonathan Davis is 45 years old), there is even that vocal tic where Davis sort of cackles like a disturbed demon.

Every Now And Then takes the form of a transcendental equivalent of the longest summer. Wavelengths stretch leaving you feeling worked over, fatigued and ready for a taste of something new.

As a whole the LP’s similar tempos and approach cause the whole thing to float by like a long-lost memory, nice when you’ve clasped on to it but soon it’ll be running through your fingers and out of sight.

Head Carrier is far from triumphant, it’s by no means a failure.

One for the fanatical only.

There simply isn’t much to latch on to here, and certainly nothing to suggest that Still Corners aren’t completely out of ideas.

The spark of unpredictability that defined his previous records is sadly lacking.

AIM may be not the magnum opus that Mathangi Arulpragasam is capable of, but the music world would be a good deal less colourful and quirky without her in it.

On this record Leftwich has managed to turn tragedy into uplift using a consistent sonic formula.

Glass Animals should definitely continue tinkering with their sound; they just haven’t yet earnt the right to full reinvention yet.

Foreverland embraces the clichés and largely follows a formula. Certain subject matter and song titles perpetuate a particular illusion and the middle of the road radio play has trickled in according to plan.

There’s still a fair amount of self indulgence, and the rare occasion on which you wish he’d stuck to the old habit of micro length tracks (‘HER’ being one such example), but on the whole it’s a well selected body of work.

Between Waves is an album created by a man who knows what he’s doing; and that’s the problem. He could create satisfactory albums till the end of days, but he’ll need to rip up the rulebook if he’s to grab people’s attention in this fickle age.

While by no means poor, this album does little to advance the reputation he has already secured, as one of the UK’s most reliable rap suppliers.

The backbone is Allen’s afrobeat vibe, on top of which ten Haitian percussionists have piled on the voodoo grooves and chants. Pretty krautrockarama.

[Patience] boasts several colourless, uninspired tracks.

He should be commended for going light on the MC features--the bluntly-titled ‘Grime’ is proof enough that he can hold his own on a beat.

The Dreaming Room is an enormously frustrating record, as Mvula clearly has it in her to be an incredible artist. But at this point in her career, she remains a orchestra in need of a conductor.

This album demonstrates that the desire disappeared long ago and that they were simply prolonging their career to delay the inevitable. For Hot Hot Heat, the fire has definitely gone out.

This album unfortunately lacks the depth of both the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

The departure comes with tracks like ‘The Bee’, itself a pastiche of the trip-hop genre, while tracks like ‘Melifer’ fuse the distinctive Plaid sound with pretty Balearic guitar melodies to keep things interesting.

The frustration bubbles under the surface for the listener, that, competent and effecting as this album is, it could have been so much more. Here’s to next time.

There's parts of On Desire that feel all too familiar, and there's parts that simply don't work. For every negative though there's a melody or lyric that makes it shine, and for that, the band are worth sticking with, at least for the time being.

At worst, it’s forgettable--at others, it’s actually annoying in its repetition.

The unerringly loyal will find enough here to sate a hunger for anthemic bobbins drenched in atmospheric production, but there’s little to match the handful of magical songs for which he is known.

Her history and significance is rooted in rebellion--but that’s easy to overlook with a record this diluted.

Unfortunately their laudable desire to sound like the future rather than the past seems to have backfired, leaving ‘Paradise' a crop of good ideas that wear quickly on the ears. On the plus side this overly polished sound might help convert at least a few godforsaken You Me at Six fans onto real punk (that is, if real punk will have them).

Views packs much less of a political punch than Bey’s must-hear epic, and at 20 tracks, Aubrey for the most part provides a rather overweight and lethargic waltz through his musical comfort zone.

Pity Sex may have taken few risks to make a breakthrough album and they’re hardly re-inventing the wheel, but White Hot Moon is a solid effort and a worthy follow-up to debut ‘Feast Of Love’.

Considering the lucid, poignant albums to come to fruition from cabin writing retreats (Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ etc.)--Standards is an album that is almost completely devoid of such clarity and space.

Distortland may not see them return to the genius pop level they had up until 2003's ‘Welcome To The Monkey House’. But it is much closer.

This album works best when those ideas are allowed to flourish and persist. When the arrangements get too embellished and full, they veer too far away from what makes Carpenter’s economical gestures so enduring, relying too heavily on virtuosity for comfort.

Hold/Still conjures up the existential mood of floating in deep space. Lonely--but also out of this world.

Despite the vast flavours Bibio is presenting throughout this record, so much of the quality production is slighted by tracing the same predictable frequencies and manoeuvres as so many servile songwriters leagues below have made prospering careers out of.

RJD2 has made a bold statement with Dame Fortune but sadly one lacking in much resonance.

As debut offerings often go, there’s a fervent desire on Mind of Mine to stretch so far and wide that the cohesiveness of the record is lumbered as a result. The tracklist could have been refined to ten good tracks (most of which are on the bonus edition).

Commendably still opting for spontaneity after all these years, the lads have whittled down some dance-tinged jams into workable songs and the result is an LP that, while unfocused, still has plenty of drive and energy.

If imperfection is what Baauer was looking for, then he has succeeded; but that doesn’t resolve the disappointment with what could have been a brilliant album.

It remains a fun and enjoyable pop record, even if its creators do seem more reluctant than ever to venture from their well established comfort zones.

A new chapter for the band perhaps, which may lead to some great results in the future. But whittle away the highlights and you realise Grasque perhaps works better as a great EP.

We get a less focused effort, with peaks and troughs in its quality. Yet the best tracks off the album are better than any of the band’s previous work. It’s just a shame that the weaker songs fall below the standard The 1975 set for themselves.

On occasions it’s a disappointing walk through ‘hardcore by numbers’ routines peppered in clever imagery and breakneck instrumentation.

So long as you can tolerate the musical hopscotch that a Barry Adamson album always represents, Know Where To Run is probably as good an introduction to this peripatetic musician as you're ever likely to need. Just make sure to expect the unexpected.

Macklemore remains unsure of himself throughout, lacking the rapping skills and natural charisma needed to get things onto a surer footing. In the end, it’s a sadly fitting album title.

When it’s good, it’s very, very good, but for most of the time it’s really quite bland.

At times you wish their sound was edgier, that they'd go in the direction of their zanier peers Hot Chip and BadBadNotGood. Despite that minor criticism, their unique, funky take on pop is rarely less than fascinating.

A record that has moments of brilliance but by virtue of trying to be a novelty record, actually comes closer to being a rehash of their previous work.

Begin may be more of a reverential piece of art than a novel creation, but there is enough substance here to surmise Lion Babe’s future promise.

This is electronic music both messy and menacing. Listen if you dare.

While one half of Phase sounds complete and polished, the other sounds unfinished, and unsteady. But the songwriting quality of the better cuts and the raw talent that underpins their delivery brings a fire to the record.

While sweetened by a potent handful of emphatic guitar romps, DIIV’s latest record quickly overstays its welcome, and ultimately would do well to be remembered as more than just a watered-down collection of indie rock songs.

A band mentality may of allowed the material to work some new ground but as a solo project we’ve a dense collection all sticking to one vision. One to dip into when the storm clouds are approaching.