Too often here Cara is let down by bland arrangements and underbaked melodies, from the Swift-by-numbers of opener Seventeen to the banal balladry of Stars.

The songs are invariably beautifully delivered--in a world of singers who feel impelled to express emotion by vocally doing their nut, Adele understands that less is usually more--but something is missing from them.

A Head Full of Dreams is frustratingly blighted by the sense that Coldplay haven’t fully committed to the album’s big idea: they keep deviating from the Stargate pop plan to knock out stuff like Amazing Day.

This is old-school R&B with a fine glass finish, the musicianship and production audibly expensive and the man’s voice so honeyed it presumably requires the attentions of worker bees.

Lindberg’s voice is not distinctive, and her lyrics are either indecipherable or wearyingly vague; in fact, there is really nothing arresting about her presence here.

Spot on for the sounds, but not the storytelling.

For all their apparent innocence, at the centre of many of our best-loved nursery rhymes lies a dark heart. This has been fully exploited by Scottish musician Bill Wells for these unusual reworkings with an impressive cast of special guests.

Her thickly textured voice anchors what might otherwise feel like a scattered collection of morose songs exploring insecurity, loss and a loosely nebulous sense of yearning.

He makes the odd misstep, with Hot Scary Summer’s slightly hackneyed melodies and The Soul Serene’s vague meaning lessening the album’s overall rawness. But, as with Bright Eyes, Damien Rice and other artists to whom Villagers are often compared, O’Brien shows signs of a visceral intensity.

Tolerance will vary for her reedy and slightly hectoring voice, and there are some this’ll-do melodies with no logic or engine. But she still hints at being the omnivorous pop star we need.

He’s got tunes when he wants them--Candy Sam, in particular, is terrific--but it’s an uncomfortable, dissonant record, a bad trip rather than a mellow high.

It’s pretty and well-crafted, but there might not be a volume setting loud enough for it to truly grab your attention.

It’s not that it’s bad, by any means, more that music that depends so much on charismatic performance for impact doesn’t really translate to the studio.

There are flashes of brilliance.

Perhaps tracks such as Lampenda veer too far in the direction of accessible arena rock, and the final double whammy (War and Peace) featuring poet Lemn Sissay jars slightly, after Maal’s own dulcet tones. But there are compelling fusions.

Whatever the album is trying to do--provoke, confront, horrify--it only partially achieves it.

In isolation, almost everything here would be a solid example of the songwriter-for-hire’s art: if nothing bowls you over with its originality, it’s hard not to be impressed by the pitilessness with which the songs sink their hooks into you. But taken collectively, you notice the big flaw in Furler’s approach.

This second album is laden with big, chunky riffs and swaggering anthems tailormade for waving scarves and throwing beer.

Despite these mis-hits, Skilled Mechanics seethes with low-level, lo-fi menace, its spare instrumentation creating an unsettling queasiness that will have been familiar to Tricky’s admirers since 1995’s Maxinquaye.

It’s hard to work out from its contents whether in a few albums’ time its author will be back to churning out neon-hued anthems or embedded even deeper into the musical leftfield, because its contents are neither the kind of unqualified success that confidently maps out a future direction or the kind of unmitigated disaster that requires her to beat a hasty retreat.

While his traditionalism can feel staid (even Ed Sheeran, Puth’s UK equivalent when it comes to lovelorn beta-male balladeers, takes a risk once in a while), the standard of his songwriting is consistently high, and his central theme--romantic obsession that verges on the masochistic--makes for a record that softly burns.

In an age where “indie” is a bit of a dirty word, it’s refreshing to hear something so seemingly guileless and uninterested in being blown by the prevailing winds. Perhaps, though, less would have been more: 10 tracks over 35 minutes might have left one wanting more; 15 over 47 minutes is rather too much of a good thing.

Swilling around in the reverb, allied by a choir of sunshine guitars, is the sound of everything indie ever, from Postcard to post-Britpop. It’s done with the calm competence of a man aware he is breaking no new ground.

You’re left with an album on which smug self-indulgence is matched with genuine inventiveness. Painting With won’t change anyone’s mind about Animal Collective, or even help the undecided make theirs up.

Intangible and atmospheric, but not a lot to latch on to.

It doesn’t all come off. The Aloe Blacc-penned Tomorrow has a bit of the self-help manual about it, and Nick Cave’s Jesus, Lay Down Beside Me never quite lives up to the mischievous title. Staples is at her best when there’s a hint of agony amid the ecstasy.

Flowers might pay tribute with a sound that’s appealing, but they exist in a world of hindsight that isn’t.

Her lyrics may be personal, but the package as a whole feels disappointingly generic.

The formula is working, but for fans using his albums as a way in, they’re missing a big part of what makes Future so intriguing.

Their big moment in the sun has long gone, but there’s enough here for an Indian summer.

While there are great lines and verses here, not least the funny, smart No More Parties in LA – which features Lamar – you’re occasionally struck by the sense that West doesn’t really have that much to say this time around, or at least not much that he hasn’t said before.

It still feels like clubbing music, and perhaps best heard live, but plenty of house and techno fans might be surprised by how good at partying three closet-jazzers can be.

Across two hours, there’s plenty of dross: techno-leaning tracks lack danger, while others could soundtrack the bland aspiration of a duty-free shop. But just as he sampled Steve Winwood for his number one hit Call on Me, Prydz knows the value of a yacht-rock vocal.

An album that feels entirely of the moment in a way that isn’t entirely satisfying--and, of course, with vast commercial success, which feels inevitable.

A subsequent stretch of pleasant but generic cosmic disco coasts on the listener’s sangria-fuelled goodwill. But the urgency of the final two tracks suits Thomas, as pace brings them into focus, and clouds of minor chords send the sunbathers scurrying for cover.

For those who loved 2008’s sun-dappled breakout album Alegranza!, the more abrasive Hiperasia might not digest as easily. But its restless experimentalism is typical of an artist unwilling to sit still.

It’s an album that feels insubstantial at times, but is a lot of fun nevertheless.

Coherence is not this album’s strong point, then, but it all hangs together--just.

The results are perfectly listenable, but it feels like Weatherall’s coasting a little here.

It’s less experimental but still impressive, for Lynn, who is 83, is in remarkably powerful voice, mixing nostalgia with new songs.

Hills End is workmanlike, which is both its strength and its drawback: everything is in the right place, but who was ever overwhelmed by competence?

The brilliant, difficult, 16-minute Pink Fruit features a combination of Leonard’s aggressively mournful vocals, a story about a girl with a squid in her stomach and long periods of general cacophony, all held together with a small, bright riff that keeps returning throughout the song like an old friend. Elsewhere, the meandering feels self-indulgent.

Music for Listening to Music to borrows a little of Morrissey’s lyrical melodrama and a lot of Johnny Marr’s mellifluous guitars, which provide some of the album’s most arresting moments.

The best tracks are at the end, with the bluesy Mani, featuring the Malian guitar hero Samba Touré, followed by Los Muros, a meditation on the wall built around her homeland.

Låpsley’s own attempts at Adele-sized mainstream hits are a bit too obvious--see Operator (He Doesn’t Call Me), bred in a Petri dish with Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse and some cowbells. Better are the moments when it gets a bit brooding.

While the likes of Stormzy and Novelist have concentrated on harder, myopic tracks that reference their world and little else, here Kano offers more accessibility. Some of that jars, including a slow, trudging ode to his sibling (Little Sis), but others--such as standout A Roadman’s Hymn--show an MC who has become an artist.

It’s never poor, but never quite scales the heights you want. It’s a shrug, and Iggy Pop should never incite shrugging.

While the intermittently minimalist production sounds vaguely voguish in a trip-hop kind of way, that sparseness often gives the songs a slightly anodyne quality. It makes for a record whose potential power feels dampened, if not neutralised altogether.

The trap style that made his name is falling out of fashion, and his stabs at en vogue sounds like trop house (Body) and UK garage (Way from Me) are a little tepid. He also clears out space for on-their-game vocal guests including MIA and Pusha T--but not quite enough, resulting in some diverting but ultimately earthbound rap tracks.

Classy and entertaining.

Tthe Joy Formidable are at their best when they switch off their default setting.

This being late-era Weezer there are of course some erratic songwriting decisions--the dorky half-rhymes of Thank God For Girls--and a fair bit of filler (Jacked Up, (Girl We Got a) Good Thing are entirely unmemorable), but there’s also enough here to stir feelings of nostalgia in anyone who fell for the band the first time around.

It’s less musically focused than their debut, but also less inclined to lapse into straightforward pastiche.

It all probably sounds immense and all-engulfing live, but it feels a little anticlimactic at home.

He’s an efficient musician who can mix echoes of Tinariwen and Farka Touré with a dash of reggae, and switch between romping electric blues and reggae to acoustic styles. But for much of this set he sounds as if he’s on autopilot.

It’s futuristic and often dystopian.

Good as they are, there’s nothing like Calling Your Name or Don’t Know here, and its shorter tracklist means you’re just getting teed up for the back nine when time is called. Having said that, it’s free to download and another interesting release from hip-hop’s most idiosyncratic talent.

Their songs are both catchy and as casual as a shoulder shrug, but you just wish those worms had dug a little deeper.

By turns Maroon 5-jaunty and Ed Sheeran-reflective, the album has him making the best of every situation rather than yearning for something better.

It’s fantasy stuff--evocative rather than perceptive, and awfully cheesy. But it’s also incredibly refined.

Disarmingly pretty tunes provide innocuous preludes to creeping aural dread and the best tracks conjure up movies in your head, with White Pulse and Dark Blues in particular conjuring imaginary terrors.

For the most part, he remains in relatively banal lyrical territory on this fourth album, but what he’s able to do with some aplomb is capture the majestic effortlessness of the Motown sound.

All Saints were never your orthodox pop act, with their luscious, layered songs built on a hybrid of adult themes and girl-group camaraderie. Parts of their fourth album don’t always match up to that former savvy style, however. Experiments with world rhythms sit next to mellow ballads of varying degrees of schmaltz.

It’s certainly an adult-oriented, mainstream affair, pairing her with producers who have also worked with Adele and Florence and the Machine.

Affectation is part and parcel of Ebert’s work with his band, and this fourth album sees the group continue to trowel on the rustic glaze.

There may not quite be the soaring quality of songs here that Hollywood Town Hall or Rainy Day Music offered, but its pleasures are manifold.

Not every experiment comes off, but when they do, The Ship is as idiosyncratic and enrapturing as anything Brian Eno has made.

The narrative she introduced with her first single Katy on a Mission--the story of a prospective dancefloor tryst--still dominates, and it’s a subject that barely contains the emotional mileage to sustain a single song, let alone a whole body of work. Her vocal melodies, meanwhile, can feel almost abrasive in their mediocrity. Instead, it’s left to the production to provide the wit, amusement and emotion.

This cool, classy set is accompanied by an ambitious if uneven spoken-word album, in which writers and musicians reinterpret the songs in English.

Much of the music here is less unearthly obscurity and more relatively straightforward indie, dressed up in a rainbow poncho.

Despite this being a record that speaks pretty explicitly to 40-odd years ago (the most obvious comparison would be to a loafing Rolling Stones, although at times the band sound slightly like a het-up Lemonheads), the clattering exuberance of both the sentiment and the sound means it feels far from stale.

While this first solo album in six years is elevating, and intricate in its elegance and rhythmic propulsions, it remains uncluttered by the chaos of true, visceral emotion.

Do You Ever Think of Me, with its shifting chords and sweet falsetto peaks, treads a little too closely to Curtis Mayfield’s The Makings of You for comfort, and other tracks tend to drift so smoothly they can pass you by. But on Caramel, her soulful vocals are given space to bloom over a billowing pop backdrop.

The arrangements aren’t faithful in any way to those that made these songs famous--That Old Black Magic becomes a rockabilly shuffle--but there’s a certain loveliness to them.

Cut and Paste’s melodies are glorious--single Daffodil Days is surging and swoonsome--but with lyrics so surface, you sometimes wish he’d get out a bit more.

There are outliers such as the horrible Britpop-by-way-of-Pet-Shop-Boys punchy greyness of Hold On, and the grating synth stabs on opener Out of My Body, but generally Ashcroft manages to relive his heyday nicely.

Earrings Off! is as much art project as it is pop album, though, and three of these seven tracks are brief instrumentals that don’t attempt to soften their avant ambitions.

The duo’s tendency to drift towards cliche (has there ever been a more Kills track title than Hum For Your Buzz?) is still present, and feels increasingly tired.

Fading Lines is a sustained exercise in restraint, De Graaf’s airy voice anchored by backing from assorted US indie luminaries, who provide just enough muscle without overwhelming her.

It’s broad, sweeping and at times epic in scape, but those influences never really leave the picture, and most songs feel as if they are trapped in the shadow of much grander fare.

Toussaint’s intimacy with classic R&B, soul and funk inflects all his jazz playing, even if American Tunes is for the most part a low-key (and perhaps faintly wistful) look back at a wonderful musical life.

Inevitably for a debut album, Tell Me If You Like To leans heavily on the singles already released--Demons, Who Are You?, Rectifier, The Summer and Detroit, which is a lot of previously released material for a 10-track, 36-minute album--but it’s all delivered with intensity.

In its second half, Piano begins to suffer from its stripped-back simplicity, when its sparse arrangements and slow pace start to feel plodding rather than profound.

There are some fine songs here, from the bluesy, harmonica-backed You’re Right, I’m Wrong to the stirring folk-gospel Tell Me Moses and the gently pained country weepie You’re Still Gone.

Much of the album has the subtlety of being trapped inside a panic alarm.

It’s polite punk: impossible to feel either alarmed or electrified by, but an appealingly ghostly listen nonetheless.

There are many quirks to this glossy, compelling record, but unlike Justin Timberlake, who forged his name as a solo act by his affiliation with the Neptunes, it’s not savvy or strange enough to stand out.

Clunky metaphors and couplets all too often come along and puncture the pensiveness.

Sometimes the resulting tracks are just cringeworthy – such as the astonishingly cack-handed hip-hop of Ain’t No Rhyme. Elsewhere, though, they turn out to be quite endearing.

The title envisages a blend of Ibiza and California: dancefloor funky pop merges into balmy, sunshine-soaked grooves, although at times the band seem to be feeling the effects of that long gap.

It’s often passionate, illuminating and fascinating, it frequently bears the hallmarks of self-indulgence, and some of it, you get the feeling, might only make sense to its author.

The 808-rattling Old Skool is playful stuff, but the best moments seem more wistfully personal.

It’s I Decide’s grainy post-punk claustrophobia that leaves you wishing they’d ditched some of the beehive-coiffing bops in favour of something darker.

It’s never less than intriguing, and certainly unique, but Take Her Up to Monto is diverting rather than stunning.

The echo-laden drums of The Wolf threaten to pummel any briefly escaping melody. Elsewhere, Cistern can be more traditional sounding than its experimental beginnings suggest.

More a showcase of his production wares than an album, this collection still suggests Clams might produce a pearl yet.

Her slightly Alanis Morrisetteish voice can sound too mannered in places, and the songwriting is occasionally uneven, but the best moments--such as her whispered cover of the xx’s Angels--are truly lovely.

Look Park is understated to the point of diffidence, but recommended for those who favour the song over the sonics.