The result is an album that’s alternately charming and cliched, that involves boilerplate beats and sparky musical invention. That said, nothing about it is going to turn off the teens that constitute Aitch’s fanbase.

For the power of revenge as a notion, it’s a limited emotional palette for a writer as gifted as Darnielle to work with. It feels more like a brilliantly conceived and executed exercise than something to return to.

The Alchemist’s Euphoria is rarely dull, and often hugely entertaining. But one still longs for Pizzorno to make the album that is as great as the breadth of his imagination suggests.

The issue is that none of the songs that all this gorgeous production whirls around are actually any good.

18 is a peculiar and hugely uneven record.

Beatopia is an enjoyable sojourn down a well-travelled sonic avenue, but not the most memorable of trips.

It’s noisy, jolting and filled with gruesome imagery, but somehow arid and remote, music presented with a self-satisfied smirk (“idiots are infinite, thinking men numbered”, drawls Greep at one point) that prevents wholehearted commitment. Maybe it takes on a different, more direct power live.

The Other Side of Make-Believe has its longueurs – the lumbering Mr Credit among them – but it also has its pleasures: it doesn’t sound phoned in, which is much to its credit. Long past the point where they’re in the business of attracting new fans, they nevertheless keep moving, albeit subtly.

Progressive to the very soles of its nine-minute songs, and characterised by a level of instrumental proficiency that is, occasionally, emotionally detached.

Honestly, Nevermind therefore offers a weird combination of the unexpected and business as usual. ... There is something really admirable about Drake’s desire to reach beyond the music his audience expects, and to do it well. You just wish he would apply the same restlessness to his persona.

Magic Pony Ride excels when it is carefree and cantering, losing its allure when it stops to let reality sink in.

Gold Rush Kid gets better the further it moves away from the standard blueprint, into emotional territory that, if it isn’t exactly dark (happily for him, Ezra seems to inhabit a world where every problem comes with a resolution) is certainly more overcast.

You would struggle to describe The Versions as anything other than a mixed bag. The weird thing is that it somehow works as a tribute to Neneh Cherry regardless of the contributions’ quality: the good tracks emphasise what a fantastic songwriter she is, and the less successful ones make you feel her absence and underline her uniqueness as a performer.

When it reaches its most pumping, Baby, We’re Ascending tends to sag; these songs feel slightly untethered, or even half-hearted, next to their spirited, amorphous cousins. Occasionally, Throssell finds a balance to the two warring halves of Baby, We’re Ascending.

There are nice sonic touches here and there: the off-key slide guitar that opens Folding Mountains; the filtered house squelch of Best Feeling. So on its own terms, Mellow Moon succeeds. Even so, you wonder if it might not reflect a young artist pulling his punches.

By the end it's impossible to ignore the fact that this is a long record with flagging momentum. But it's also impossible to ignore this intriguing debut's promise. Preacher's Daughter has lyrical richness and atmospheric potency to spare.

If We isn’t a return to the standards Arcade Fire reached on their debut album Funeral or 2010’s The Suburbs, it’s an improvement on its predecessor, and quite possibly enough to avert a slow slide down the festival bills.

On their eighth album, the lyrics are again in German, the riffs again pound and all you might expect is present and correct. At times it’s so on the nose you all but roll your eyes.

If you’re willing to meet Bob Vylan on their rough-and-ready terms, The Price of Life offers a decent return on investment.

Pillow Queens add a few more extended shredding sessions to the template, but they largely stick within the bounds of this classy, serious style. It’s not one that gives the group a particularly distinctive flavour, but it is at least able to contain all the feelings of confusion, fury, outsized desire and whatever else the listener wants to extrapolate from this evocative if slightly nebulous record.

It’s all well-trodden stuff, and Kelly adds nothing new, but Mainstream Sellout is so much fun that – as the title suggests – it’s easy to leave your integrity behind and mosh along.

They’re past their best nowadays, but this is a decent effort after a quarter of a century.

In/Out/In isn’t a “new” album by any means so much as tracks that remained underdeveloped or unfinished at the time. ... [Basement Contender is] easily the gem here and provides a tantalising glimpse of what might have been still to come.

Crash is at its best in its subtler moments.

At his best O’Connor seems to be part of a lineage of pop craftsmen for whom melody trumps everything – you don’t need edge, experimentation or lyrical fireworks if you can come up with a tune as strong as Open the Window or as cute as Making Time. But at his worst, it sounds limp and insubstantial, compounded by the thin production (a sonic link to the days when O’Connor was uploading his bedroom-recorded songs to Soundcloud) and his voice, which can tend to the nasal and whiny.

Some of the arrangements are too middle of the road, but her piano runs are glorious, her voice still as pure as mountain air and – with a second collection apparently following – she is far from done.

It occasionally feels demo-like, half-finished: the corroded electronics on Louie Bags are intriguing, but the song features what sounds like a placeholder vocal. Great lines are few and far between.

Few Good Things sees Saba resurface, moving beyond the acceptance stage on an album that sounds and feels like one long exhale.