These are some of the most engaging songs he's written, with beguiling melodies wrapped around typically gnomic lyrics, and little undue instrumental indulgence.

Where his recent albums have leant more towards long-form improvisation, 50 focuses on songs, with the warm drizzle of Chapman’s gnarled Yorkshire burr lending a bluff, worldly-wise character to American tableaux.

The folksy settings are tinted with brooding strings and tearful pedal steel, adding colour to well-turned lines.

Macero’s edits on the original double-album collaged four nights’ shows into a single, 20-minute track apiece; but this 4CD set presents each night’s ebullient flow in full.

A viscerally entertaining album that never lingers for more than four minutes per song. Rock’n’roll isn’t dead: it’s just been sleeping.

I suspect both the artist and her critics push too hard for her to find one true self. Whereas this record sees her rattling between a range of identities, it’s still a lovely bunch of Keys.

CSS's La Liberacion offers a much more serviceable blend of their original X-Ray Spex-style doughty amateurism with their slicker, sleeker electropop self.

It's on "Early Roman Kings" that the various strains come together most effectively, with Hidalgo's organ added to another Muddy Waters blues-stomp groove, and Dylan blurring history again in his depiction of the titular Romans "in their sharkskin suits, bowties and buttons, with their high-top shoes" – neatly underlining the gangsterism of imperial invaders of all eras.

Fans of Led Zep III should take a thoughtful interest.

Despite their diversity, a mood is sustained through Midlake’s arrangements, which draw on fond ‘70s influences, from the glam-rock boogie of “Restart” to the sweeping yacht-rock sheen of “Unlikely Force”. In most cases, the songs locate almost perfect surroundings.

He drifts like a spectre through a labyrinth, exploring his favourite themes of sleep, reality and the subconscious. The tones here are stark and bleak, compared to the claustrophobia of 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. ... By the end of ANIMA, you’re left wondering about those dreams that are just out of reach, but also what we risk losing when we look back.

The only mis-step on the album is "Boeing 737", a pounding, splashy stomp whose brash incoherence perhaps disguises a commentary on the twin towers attacks. It seems brutish and crude set alongside the rest of the album, which otherwise has the kind of stylistic and atmospheric unity that reminds one of what albums can offer that no other format can match.

In just eight songs, BTS have accomplished the same genre-bending they usually do in double that runtime. And for the most part, the album avoids the pitfall of sounding like a checklist. With BE, BTS keep their foot on the pedal.

It’s not so much that she’s changed direction completely, as that she’s drained her art of the obfuscating sonic blabber to leave her pop aesthetic.

There’s so much sheer, on-one attitude in Gallagher’s parka pastichery that’s hard to resist. His band are on fire with it. Riffs skirling from the guitars. Drums constantly a-quiver. Even tossed-off tracks like “World in Need” (“send godspeed”) catch flame with harmonica hooks and shaken maracas.

Merging deft production with stark, diary-entry songwriting on opener 'Too Much Love' (for dancing in low light with strangers) the south London electronic trio find a balance between melancholic subtext and the thrill of a beat you can sway to.

On the excellent Wheelhouse, Brad Paisley tiptoes a fine line between satisfying his core country audience and encouraging them to more adventurous attitudes.

Lurking behind the cosmicity, there’s usually a solid pop hook.

Where previous albums had been bland landfill electro-pop rendered even more indistinguishable through her heavily autotuned vocals, Rainbow offers a range of approaches, from pop and R&B to country and funk, applied to material that brings greater depth to her characteristic sassy attitude.

There's a danger of art-rock overload in this alliance of two cerebral music talents, but Love This Giant succeeds remarkably well.

The first 12 songs glow with standard praise for a natural, respectful love (rumoured to be about his on/off model girlfriend Gigi Hadid) but things take a darker turn after Malik’s mythical musings (over muted pings of electric guitar) on “Icarus Interlude”, which concludes with him singing that he “lied to the liars”. Both sonically and lyrically, things get more interesting from this point.

Phantom Limb have refined their sound further to more clearly occupy the kind of country-soul territory once inhabited by the likes of Dobie Gray and The Staple Singers.

Jupiter’s songs remain daringly iconoclastic, from the anti-monarchist critique of “Benanga” to the anti-materialist slant of “Pondjo Pondjo”; but there’s still plenty of room for pure pleasure, as per the dashing, ebullient celebration of dancing, “Ekombe”.

Hammill continues to explore the hubris of human existence. He’s often best, though, when he ventures off-track into more warmly specific tales.

Despite the record’s immersive qualities, the overwhelming effect is as satisfying as a plaster being ripped right off.

What impresses most about Blue & Lonesome is Mick Jagger, who really animates these songs.

His barnacled baritone steers a steady course through Moog-soaked covers of favourite songs, with sombre lines about dark oceans, soulless days, and skirting a skeleton coast.

It’s a masterful set, stuffed with brooding, industrial-synth beats.