Lion King: The Gift is a great example of Beyonce’s fantastic taste, and of her ability to oversee an album that doesn’t focus on her while also cementing the soundtrack as a worthy substitute to the original. Most importantly, it puts a spotlight on artists from the continent in which the movie takes place.

Soaring closer ‘The Room It Was’ reminds us that, even after 10 years in the game, there’s enough punch and gusto behind this band to swerve overall disappointment, despite a lack of inventiveness and some lacklustre songwriting. ‘The Shadow I Remember’ undoubtedly packs enough muscle to excite at Cloud Nothings’ return to chaotic live shows.

The dark and sexy new songs shine their brightest when coated with a layer of her previous sparkle; which makes the artist’s second album a fine but frustrating release.

Welcome Home offers both a different approach and a welcome return.

Sadly there’s only one track here where singer Tigs’ urgent purr and the subtle combination of electronica and bouncy indie pop matches either of those two tracks: the mesmeric ‘Slick’. The rest is solid, but with New Young Pony Club back on the scene, tracks like ‘Two Hands’ feel unremarkable.

These country-blues laments are seriously sleepy-eyed. [10 Sep 2005, p.66]

His new set is disarmingly jaunty, occasionally odd – as on the scratchy electro-folk of ‘Don’t Want To Sleep Tonight’ – and frequently lovely, chiefly on the parched reverie of ‘Ballad Of Fuck All.’

It's all rather one-paced and sags badly after tenth track 'Lick Up Ya Foot' but, by crikey, the likes of 'Big Tings Redone' and 'Dutty Rut' provide the perfect soundtrack for out-on-the-stoop sunshine boozing.

The demo vocals she’d already recorded are pretty much album-ready, their slightly unpolished edge even helping throw back to the band’s 1992 debut album ‘Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?’, home to the immaculate-if-overplayed ‘Linger’. It’s rare indeed that a farewell brings a career so neatly full-circle.

It’s honest, personal and wholly relatable. Rostam may have defined Vampire Weekend’s sound, but with Half-Light he begins to define himself.

If 'Let's Get Out Of This Country' was a person, you would want to hug it until its big doe-eyes popped out. [10 Jun 2006, p.41]

While there’s a comforting familiarity that comes with all things Suede, it’s wonderfully shrouded on The Blue Hour by a very new, romantic and alluring strangeness. These are not hits to shake your bits to. Nor will these beats shake your meat. Rest assured, Suede remain the beautiful ones, but are just looking for beauty in ever more curious places.

I Never Learn is an album about love, but not a record to love.

Their sixth album is also as pretentious as you would expect a record named after a novel by Austrian feminist author Elfriede Jelinek to be.

It’s lyrically weak, however, (sample: “The moon falls in your doorway”) and although there’s sparkle in the production, Johns reveals himself to be a far from charismatic singer.

At times, its a record that feels slightly lacking in range as a consequence; as this album chugs on, Night’s wittiest turns of phrase can’t help but take centre stage against a familiar backdrop.When The Regrettes shake things up, they’re most ferocious.

It shimmers with wonky ’90s-indebted pop smarts, a daisy-chain of balmy nostalgia with blissed-out guitars, hushed vocals and kaleidoscopic lyrics.

Canta Lechuza deflates its ambition by bleeping and whirring in every direction at once, landing in a confused heap of awkward samba jangle and rippling steel drums, a curious and compelling mess.

Tracks like ‘Angels On A Passing Train’, swoon with religious imagery and elevate in their choruses, nodding unashamedly to Dylan and Springsteen, while ‘Jesus In The Temple’ is a BRMC mosey into the sunset, delivered with adventurous gusto that’s matched by anything found here.

‘Freakout/Release’ certainly isn’t a complete misfire. Its loose premise of retooling negative feelings to a positive end is sometimes realised, though it was always going to be difficult to evoke the sparkly catharsis of its dizzying predecessor.

What these tracks are, though, are lovingly programmed, laser-dappled, preening--thanks to Sampha's buttery soul voice--and glossy reduxes of late-'90s two-step and twitchy post-house that should be filed next to James Blake and Jamie Woon.

This is clever, girl-led guitar pop.

Overall, ‘Reprise’ is full of dignified reworkings that don’t offer too many surprises.

‘Mutator’ might well find favour with fans of his distant descendants like Squid, Perfume Genius, Sleaford Mods and Black Midi. A quarter of a century on, this lost rumble from post-punk vaults finds new context, as a lesson in uncompromising art from an old master.

His taste for sonic jumble can be overwhelming.

All of which is to say that ‘The Great Dismal’ sounds big, and far grander in scope than anything the four-piece have done before. ... There are points, however, where the record gets bogged down under its own weight, where a wave of noise subsides without doing any damage.

The frame is there, there's just not enough meat on the muscles of their Euro-jitter-pop.

A little shade among the sugary rays might not go astray, but maybe that's just the goth in me talking.