It's all wrapped in a leisurely vocal style that recalls Jack Johnson--in a good way, if you can believe that.

That tension between sweetness and distortion lurches across the album, coming together best in Chaeri, a gothic house devotional to a destitute friend. Tenenbaum seems to writhe through her agonies as she wonders whether she could have done more.

Mostly No's sound is a pretty familiar one – the Jesus and Mary Chain loom large in particular – which does burst into bloom here and there... but there's also a sense of pedals unstamped-on and wigs unflipped that makes you wonder if it could all have gone further.

Certainly, Hey, I’m Just Like You has a cracking backstory, but the album’s workaday synthpop means it struggles to make much of an impact based purely on its sonic appeal.

There’s a lot that’s laudable about Caprisongs. Not least its desire to keep moving and changing – enough that complaining about something as straightforward as a paucity of memorable tunes almost feels miserly. But equally, it’s something that ultimately impedes your enjoyment of the album. As a soundtrack for the start of a night, it doesn’t quite pan out as you might hope.

It’s hard to overcome the feeling that this kind of finger-wagging is fine if you’re Crass, living off homegrown vegetables in your anarcho-syndicalist commune, but perhaps a bit much if your music has been used to advertise everything from Vodafone to Debenhams. Still, there’s something fascinating about the way Two Door Cinema Club have become a band in a position to offer lofty pronouncements while remaining weirdly anonymous.

Songs from dustier corners of their back catalogue and guest appearances from Jack White , Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera pique the interest but don't dispel a sense of overkill.

Working Out seems to ache for more expressive vocals, and a little less of the primness exhibited by Girardot and Sheppard.

It's unfortunate, then, that the veteran Seasick Steve is making bigger waves with a similar sound.Nevertheless, while Cavalli's thunder has been stolen, lightning remains in these woozy, boozy stompers that aren't unduly burdened by the familiarity of howling winds and the obligatory appearance by the Devil.

It may have been born from a place of disruption in Rose’s life, but Something’s Changing is unabashed easy listening to its core.

It sounds as if AIM was made exclusively for MIA’s benefit: one final eruption of inventive and sometimes incoherent ideas.

In their bid to become suave and seductive, they sacrifice the energy and rapturous pop hooks of their debut: apart from the heady live favourite Bang That, there are no surprises, no risks.

The spiky threesome have made a very decent fist of sounding like their twentysomething selves.

As an album it’s slightly uneven, but Jones clearly has plenty of gas left in the tank.

Well-manicured music that cannily plunders contemporary chart sounds and plonks a pitch-perfect harmony on them.

It offers a potted career history and a guided tour of the music that inspired the transformation.

Toy sound cheeringly like a band who are slowly maturing, working out what they want to do and where they want to go.

So there's ambition, here, yes--but where there's ambition, there's often overambition, and so it goes here.

Lounge-pop numbers reminiscent of Air or early Goldfrapp aren’t quite as arresting, but the whole album casts a lingering spell.

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

For Bread and Circuses, Morris has been replaced by Youth, whose first job was to ban alcohol from the studio. For the most part, it seems to have helped.

If they [the songs] are fiction, this is a triumph of storytelling. Where things fall down is in the production: the howling blues-rock of The Voice of My Doctor aside, her singing is pulped into a girlish murmur, which is no way to treat one of pop's great voices.

There's none of Franz Ferdinand's sexiness, funk or swagger here, nor an undeniable hit along the lines of Take Me Out.

There are songs from China, Chile and Algeria, along with Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers, at one time banned by the BBC. It’s unfortunate that A Matter of Habit, a powerful antiwar song by the Israeli singer Izhar Ashdot, is marred by swirling orchestral backing.

Their second album is an assured, intriguing collection of songs that constantly changes direction, from delicate shimmering guitar work and brooding ballads to sturdy riffs and post-bossa rhythms.

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.

The results are decidedly retro-modern--that bit too well produced to have been authentically blaring out of a roadside bar in the 1960s--but are steeped in blues and soul and a lot of fun.

It’s the most chart-friendly songs, such as the swaying Ed Sheeran co-write Say You Love Me--still whispery-smooth, but a bit more “there”--that immediately register; the rest of this intriguing album takes its time to blossom.