Given its gestation period, it’s hard to not feel a little disappointed with Joyride, where, in a painful irony, there are just too many “album tracks”. Instead, it might work best with its highlights scattered across a bedroom playlist.

Sol Invictus is not quite Faith No More at their eccentric peak, but Matador, Sunny Side Up and From the Dead see them get close. A welcome return from the band that refuse to be bland.

The record ends just as the party’s getting loose, with Londoner Josh Caffé commanding us to “Work! Serve!” over a deranged synth – more in this late-night ballroom house vein would be welcome.

At times the dreaded accusation of self-indulgence feels appropriate, and some of the songs here feel like sketches that still need fleshing out.

There are instances when the songwriting isn't that exciting, when the choruses don't ascend quite as stratospherically as they're supposed to, and you're left listening to what is, in essence, an MOR pop album.

It’s a pretty album rather than a potent one, but there is genuine ambition in this small-town boy’s debut.

Not all the tracks hit the spot, and some of her edge has been dulled by studio sheen, but the album is bookended by two songs from her top drawer.

As the disc wears onwards, MacIntyre's pallid voice and incontrovertible wimpishness can sometimes bring on mild sensations of nausea.

Although they count Fleetwood Mac as inspirations, the suave, soft-focus tint to Conversations is a lot like a vintage episode of Top of the Pops 2 featuring St Etienne, Sade, Simple Minds and Vanessa Paradis.

It’s just about enough to keep you browsing, but never enough to inspire.

It's all very respectful--the attention to period detail sees them drop in a none-more-65 bossa nova instrumental--and all very pleasant. But there's no single killer song, no moment where they add anything to their borrowings to make you sit up and take notice.

There is merely a niggling sense that certain songs could be better.

It's delightful background music, but it never quite slides into focus.

For much of The Future Will Come, however, Maclean frustratingly boxes himself into the synth-pop format of the Human League.

This album celebrates sex with an infectious joie de vivre, while tracks like Cool Girl--a sarcastic ode to no-strings romance--prove she’s not just posturing.

Long, luscious songs and cinematic melancholy are their usual preserve; their eighth album see these traded in for short, sharp shocks, metallic percussion, bullet-brusque sound effects, and frequent references to war, hate and death.

Things bounce around so much--from the Vegas piano-meet-Neil Young's Trans of Superstar to the dippy funk of the Jonathan Jeremiah-sung Good Riddance--that the overall feeling is close to that of an Aeroplane-curated Kitsune mixtape. By no means a bad thing, but hard to treasure as a whole.

It makes for an intriguing, though at times overcomplex and unfocused, blend.

Rebel Heart is that long because it is essentially two separate albums. One is wistful and thick with reflections on failed love affairs and intimations of self-doubt....The other offers dirty talk and defiant I’m-still-here snarls set to EDM-inspired productions, frequently the handiwork of Diplo. There’s obviously no reason why an album can’t contain both. But on Rebel Heart, the two don’t quite gel.

What they lack--excepting the surging Devil's Trident and Trilogy's brilliantly sinister, sub-bass-heavy narrative--are genuinely killer songs. If they could add more to their beguiling sonic invention, they would be the toast of their increasingly talent-packed neighbourhood.

He is yet, however, to enjoy a mainstream moment like those had recently by Stormzy and Skepta. The reflective, ambitious Hoodies All Summer isn’t likely to change that, but it will cement his reputation as one of grime’s wisest truth-tellers.

Between those two poles ["Bound For Glory" and "Kingdom Of The Lost"] falls plenty of enjoyable melodic hard rock, never poor, though not always scaling the heights.

The 15 songs feel overloaded with glam-ragtime-Vaudeville rockers. Still, it’s hard not to cheer when This Is My Tree sees the long-suffering antihero returned to his natural habitat.

Barn highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of this set-up: They Might Be Lost barely feels like a song, just the same chords Young has been strumming all his adult life, yet it manages to be eternal and deeply moving. Equally – and this is a little like complaining fire is too hot – one can’t help but feel some of these songs sound as though they were being written as they were recorded.

[Efterklang] glisten on the restless, bass-led groove of The Ghost and rack up the tension on a nourish Black Summer. Their eclectic style, however, demands space to breathe, and shorter songs, like The Living Layer and Dreams Today, which starts as a sprint but ends up puffed out, are left wanting.

You find yourself pleading for some of that wild profligacy he has been criticised for on past records.

The feeling that, yes, there’s something attractive here. But, on record at least, the spark of individuality is missing.

A gentle, powerful and personal lament for London.