Its highlights will do for now--there’s great stuff here--but it’s hard not to compare it to the days when you never quite knew what a Goldfrapp album would contain, or to hope they opt for another dramatic stylistic shift in future: it’s better to embody the idea of transformation than to sing about it.

The opening song here, Therapy, is a self-conscious nod towards Amy Winehouse’s Rehab. Elsewhere, things feel more natural.

66 minutes of this kind of overwrought caterwauling is a little exhausting. That said, there are great songs here.

Their no-surrender stance is admirable, but Black Rebel haven't a hope of leading the people's revolution because they are so self-consciously reverential, with each narcotic outburst owing its existence to the Pistols and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Paul Gregory's crackling electronic interventions and homespun production job--listen out for the creaking floorboards in Keep on Trying--do much to roughen the edges, but not enough to give this perfect music real character.

These are slow, loping, anxious anthems that bypass the drunkenness and muddle the brain like a hangover.

The fine line between cute and twee is ever present, however, and at times his tendency towards knowing self-assessment can grate. But he's certainly never boring.

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 end result is something that feels retrograde and entirely inessential, but enjoyable enough on its own terms.

Apart from the excellent No Care, a track almost Mogwai-like in its fidgety ferocity, Not to Disappear sounds like an expansive cave filled with the echo of its own emotion.

It's not like they intended to win over Lady GaGa fans with their scantily clad synth-pop, but ended up making a unremittingly gruesome prog-punk album by mistake. And there's no getting around the sheer power of the music, which grabs you by the throat and pins you against the wall, the better for Carter to scream in your face.

Palmer's style is overwhelming: she sings her poetry with such gusto that it crosses from enthusiastic drama to verbose pantomime.

Stranger moments fare better than the bluesier ones; they make you think of small-label releases, found in attics, which get reissued on 180g vinyl. More weirdness, more wonder.

The majority of Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran settles for gliding in one ear and out the other without leaving much impression, but without actively driving you up the wall either: the state of sublime mediocrity in which a lot of current pop chooses to operate.

Tunefulness permeates the intensity like rays of sunshine.

Packed with vividly coloured melodies, these songs have a luminous quality, but they also confuse the hypnotic with the repetitive, and richness of texture with gluttonous excess.

Until Snoop's next reincarnation, this is a welcome diversion.

The songs, it’s worth noting, are uniformly well-written, at least within their self-imposed parameters: they’re certainly melodically stronger than his brother’s recent experiments. ... It does what it sets out to do: provide Gallagher with material hooky enough that the arena crowds don’t storm the bars and lavatories when he stops playing Oasis songs. As Liam Gallagher knows, for his audience at least, that’s enough.

There is imagination to spare here, as well as the occasional winning lyric ("Get out of bed, it's the wrong one", fruitily sung as a three-part harmony) and tunes that get under your skin after one listen.

To really shine, Broderick needs more of that experimentalism, less awe at his ability to create beauty.

A leap out of their respective comfort zones has produced something really different.

As with such completist compilations there’s a fair chunk of filler here, and over time its 21 songs begin to congeal into each other a shade, but as an introduction to the band’s many charms, it’s solid enough.

At times, you get the impression their retro stylings could be deliberate--on Euromillions, echoes of the Clash’s Know Your Rights are too loud to ignore--but generally the critiques of consumerism and anonymous society feel generic and vague.

It’s all extremely radio-ready and sung with a breathy, close-miked intensity that gives the curious illusion of intimacy even when BTS are belting it out – a smart trick to pull off. Those charged with rapping, meanwhile, are more convincing than your average boyband denizen chancing his arm at the old lyrical flow. Nevertheless, anyone outside of the BTS Army might struggle to grasp what differentiates them from the rest of 2019’s pop landscape.

Boarding House Reach resembles less a coherent album than a miscellany of ideas--or a collection of B-sides, with all the good and bad that entails.

Infuriates as often as it delights.

Has the hushed intensity of a special occasion.

Several tracks are shapeless and patchy, and Mason's floating-in-space vocals sound cripplingly disengaged.

The unplugged format can get samey, but his delicate guitar playing is a joy and Via Chicago’s presumably metaphorical opening line, “I dreamed about killing you again last night”, never sounded more lovely.

'Balloons' and 'Cassius' will prompt widespread jerking movements on indie dancefloors, but it would be nice to hear them let their hearts rule their heads for a change.

When they relax, they settle into settle some of the best music of their career.

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.

Whether its dreamy palette is progressive or pacifying, Kazuashita undoubtedly brings moments of beautiful respite.

Redeemer of Souls is a return to thunderous and unrelenting anthems delivered with all the subtlety of an axe to the skull.

There are some real turkeys here.

That it's derivative isn't that much of a stick to beat them with, though--they've produced 30 minutes of glossy, singalong, preppy pop-punk.

More displays of his guitar skills would have been welcome, but this is an assured and entertaining set.

The fusion is at its best on Poze, which eases from chanting vocals to a blues-rock guitar riff, and Pa Bat Kòw, which includes a rousing percussion workout.

Black Honey have lost as well as gained, but this is a confident comeback.

Although Endless Scrolls suffers from a lack of musical variety or sophistication, there’s a brilliant curveball in the yearning, melodic Charlie, a prettily haunting ode to a friend who died by drowning, which hints at emotional depths to come.

Belfast's most cantankerous son is in a mellow mood, looking back languidly over the blues and soul music he grew up on.

Bubblegum is the key word: the sweet streak that runs through these songs, predominantly written by Childs, is a mile wide.

On 'Vaka,' the experiment yields real dividends--with the echo stripped away, Birgisson's vocals take on an unexpected visceral intensity--but the rest sounds homogenous: like beautiful background music.

It's all lovely, if a bit aimless--the most distinctive element is Anna Fox Rochinski's breathy soprano voice, which should be more of a feature.

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.

During Dear Heather, it becomes hard to escape the sensation that Cohen is expending all his energy on the words and losing interest in music.

While still unpredictable, this is Shikari’s most mainstream, self-contained record to date. Some will appreciate its ambition, others will balk at its commercial feel, but it marks a real and definite evolution nonetheless.

Egypt Station is not without flaws. Quite aside from the misstep of Fuh You, it could use a trim. ... At its best, however, Egypt Station is an affirmation of an enduring talent, the work of an artist who has no need to try and be anything other than what he is.

In making a more personal record, Katy B has somehow ended up putting less of Katy B on it.

He's still worth checking out, though more for the musical experiment than the admirable, though now predictable, message, which veers towards easy sloganeering at times.

Future Politics succeeds in conjuring the current feeling of exhaustion and the modern malaise--but is more like the confused anticipation of the present every day rather than the post-apocalyptic future.

Only a certain sheen that turns her vocals into a generic hybrid of Sia and Kelly Clarkson stops Confident from being one of the pop albums of 2015.

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.

She's always interesting; for all the nonsense, Spektor is a writer with something to say.

At times it feels just a little too on the nose, more a lovingly recreated period piece than something adventurous and new.

Of Montreal's enjoyably bizarre 10th album fuses funk with indie, and sees Kevin Barnes taking his R&B-styled falsetto to unpredictably provocative places.

[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.

A pretty well-executed genre album. Just don’t compare it to the rest of his mighty oeuvre. Should Kanye’s interest in gospel music prove temporary, this is likely to be remembered as an oddity rather than a baptism.

It’s pleasurable, but it’s hard not think that a little varying of the approach might pay dividends.

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

It's impressive - but so cool and calculated it can be hard to like.

Encore is at its best when it leaves the Specials’ past behind and faces forward.

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.

They're superb when they stick to hoedowns and hillbilly music, but much less convincing when they lurch towards the middle of the road.

As if fearing she might be overtaken in the sweet-nothings department by the even more whispery newcomer Melody Gardot, Krall here breathes her way through an entire album of songs about love and loss, mostly restricting herself to a smoky middle register--with a little samba-sensuality on the side.

Even at its most jagged, however, Gimme Some comes across as power-pop by numbers, the effortlessness with which the Swedish trio spin cheerful melodies and ineffable hooks making almost every song sound uncomfortably derivative.

There are a few groovers, such as the rock-meets-flamenco account of the 60s surf hit Pipeline, and a tranquilly pulsating visit to the 70s Stylistics hit Betcha By Golly Wow.

It's fun, but never more than fun.

The Invisible are to be found exploring more interesting areas--working up a noise they can justifiably call their own.

At its best, shimmering and Balearic, the process makes dreamy summertime listening, but when it misfires, it may as well be sent straight to your local winebar.

Linden's songs are structurally simple yet too busy, layered with rolling, bending, juddering, chiming, spiralling, crackling electronic noise.

If only she had skipped the sub-Beyoncé jam, the Get Lucky-style one and the Rihanna-ish trap track featuring meme makers DJ Khaled, Migos and Missy Elliott. Beyond those fairly obvious pop bids, the empowerment ballads are pleasingly understated.

The band’s wash of guitars and vocals tap into the renewed interest in shoegaze while also channelling Pixies/Breeders grungy pop and mournful Cure/New Order basslines; their youthful energy and production gloss gives 30-year-old sounds and styles a more contemporary reboot.

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.

There are certainly moments when the writing sparks: the New Orderish riff of Chicken Dippers crashes into an addictive chorus; Step Up for the Cool Cats maroons a fragmented ballad over see-sawing organ and explosions of frenetic drumming. But they are outweighed by moments where things seems to gutter in a mass of half-formed ideas.

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.

The Game has a lot to prove, but rather than establishing his own style he continues in the west coast tradition, with G-funk's squealing synths and endless references to "the chronic".

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 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.

Gilmore is always worth hearing, but this one is for completists only.

It doesn’t sound like Def Leppard, but it is reminiscent of that band’s willingness to smooth off metal’s rough edges and boost the melodies.

While some lack musical polish, the brilliant 'Spiral'--with its images of Americans hiding away with guns and in churches and heading towards heart attacks and extinction--furthers his metamorphosis into one of the country's great musical elder statesmen.

Fizzing along spitefully, Final Straw is a fine start to Snow Patrol's second chapter.

Mostly the songs chug along exuberantly, jangly melodies and bouncy choruses marrying the energy of youth with the finesse of age. It's not radical, and quality varies, but their sharper moments are glorious.

Though their daft interludes and kitchen-sink production sound too familiar, Crazy Itch Radio can still surprise.

Six years is a long time in pop, and the Go! Team seem to have grown old.

Their confident, complex textures hew to similar structures across Sistahs’ 11 songs. More of them could do with the indomitable payoff of It’s You, which seems to exorcise the feeble lover they indict in the verses.

Intriguingly, the record manages to wield this extended 90s palette without becoming encumbered by nostalgia, and its uptempo passages enter warp speed without slamming into undue intensity. But it’s held back by the moments in between – the troughs, where bluesy pads plod in unmemorable cadences and obscure the clarity of vision elsewhere.

This fuzzily recorded album shows he's got a deep well of hooks to plunder, and he knows when to stop.

For the most part, there’s a distinct lack of joy, discovery and invention here.

The most interesting aspect of this uneven album is Henley’s lyrics: he’s by turns peppery (“Space-age machinery / Stone-age emotions,” sniffs the honky-tonk swingalong No, Thank You) and unsentimental (“Time can be unkind / But I know every wrinkle and earned every line”)--and enjoyably so.

There’s a hushed stillness to the way Lowe’s words glide over the stripped-down, becalmed grooves, before gentle soul gives way to more uptempo beats and sentiments. With that template, it’s a varied mix.

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.

At times, it feels far too self-consciously hip; at others, the roughness of their songs is fantastically ready.

They’re not always as adept at mixing the myriad of disparate elements into great pop music, and at times the relentless sonic trickery can seem gimmicky, either masking the lack of a killer tune or, more frustratingly, detracting from one. At best, though--the giddily self-mythological SPRORGNSM or the ethereally lovely closing standout Night Time--it’s sharp, clever, experimental, oddly charming contemporary pop.

Stadium Arcadium boasts virtuoso musicianship, lustrous arrangements and unpredictable flourishes, but inside all this breathtaking sonic architecture it is strangely empty.

Clocking in at little over half an hour, the record is pleasingly deft – because, let’s face it, even from a songwriter as sharp as Brewis, the phrase “Donald Trump funk musical” doesn’t promise the most thrilling of listens.

Slowly but surely, the Coral are learning how to sound both mature and mercurial.