Not bad, and nice for Nick. But for every good 'un, there's a dull 'un too.

Themes of lust, power politics and rebellion are smuggled in via unusual locutions, de-synchronous beats and treated sample-loops – interesting stuff, though occasionally one yearns for a decent tune.

Thanks to her faithful for enabling the rest of us to enjoy Correa's gauzy, melodic dream-pop.

His ambitious arrangements need more disarray, and less sweetness.

The emotional turmoil is better served by the more introspective balladry of “Various Storms and Saints” and “Long and Lost.”

Guillemots have never been short on ambition, and Walk the River opens accordingly, with trepidation and expectation wrapped up together in the title-track's foreboding intro riff, as Fyfe Dangerfield sings of "backing out of the race".

Oddball fun, and educational too.

There’s unintended comedy and a few overlooked gems amongst the lesser lights unearthed here.

With the striking falsetto of Peter Silberman dominating their songs, The Antlers may be America's equivalent of Wild Beasts.

Adele's engaging ebullience is powerfully persuasive on this DVD/CD package.

The interpretations range from the admirable to the abysmal.

This music’s unhinged, pinballing molecules have a wild energy, here and there.

[The hammered piano is] a slightly overdone element, but there’s much to enjoy here in the group’s disenchantment with the dubious benefits of email, blogs, search engines and telecoms.

While there are high points – many of them, surprisingly, found in their Unlocked iteration – the album fails to leave an impression in the same way as the singer’s previous releases. You’ll like it, for sure. But you may not remember it.

It manages to grip the imagination for a while but ultimately, not knowing the root cause of the action, leaves one adrift in amorphous emotional distress. But there's much to admire here.

There is a lot to like about Rare. But it never quite gets out from beneath the shadow of half a decade of behemothic bangers.

Paul Simon's ruminations here on love, age and encroaching mortality have a valedictory flavour about them.

In large part a break-up album, Rare Birds finds Wilson picking through the romantic embers and taking tentative steps forward, over arrangements reflecting both his recent position in Roger Waters’s touring band and his need for healing.

Jay-Z, being Jay-Z, spends most of the time banging on about how rich he is, how brilliant it is being married to Beyoncé, and how irritating it is that some people don't find him quite as wonderful as he does.

Her first album of new material in seven years finds Tracey Thorn in feisty form, bashing out “nine feminist bangers” with a relish reflected in the confident, striding electropop settings of tracks like “Queen” and “Air”.

Perversely set to chortling, bustling electropop synth figures, these songs present existence as “bounded by brackets of life and death, alone from first to last”, delivered in Middleton’s glum brogue, with only the most wafer-thin hints of humour tempering the onslaught of self-recrimination and hypochondria in a track like “Steps.”

Why Are You OK finds dad-of-four Bridwell reflecting honestly on the ennui of everyday, surburban life. Unfortunately, the result is largely forgettable.

Unfortunately, outside of those songs [Humility, Hollywood, Tranz, Sorcererz, and Lake Zurich] (which would have made for an excellent EP) The Now Now falls short, the grit and grandiosity of other Gorillaz records is absent.

No one will be celebrating Duck for breaking new ground, but long-term fans won’t much be complaining either.

Too many tracks, however, suffer from a shortfall of melodic potency, and a lack of lateral development, especially in longer pieces such as the 12-minute sci-fi musings of “Black Screen” and the declamatory nine minutes of “How Do You Sleep?”.

Though not quite as potent as Shangri La, but it constitutes a confident negotiation of the “difficult third album” hurdle.

His voice, which should be the focus, sounds muffled by effects. Neville’s fluting, melismatic vocal is much better served on the slow waltz hymnal “Heaven”, a persuasive reflection of his faith.

Despite Andrews’ occasionally overwrought attempts to conjure up a mood of malevolent fate by channelling his inner Nick Cave, it’s an absorbing journey.