Beautiful, blissful melodies are buried in there.

All told, probably The Monkees’ best album, after their hits compilation.

There’s a little electronic noodling going on to remind us that, though Mering sounds supremely grounded, a part of her is still in exiled orbit around a damaged world. It’s soulful, and a little spooky.

The Kentucky combo Cage the Elephant manage to find a new wrinkle on the face of US indie-punk, thanks to an enthusiasm for yoking catchy melodies to abrasive guitar riffs that recalls the Pixies.

Their mega beats endure on No Geography, but this is also a stupendously successful splicing of past and present.

72 Seasons may not see Metallica doing anything new – but it does find their old machine firing on all cylinders. Old and new fans alike will be headbanging happily throughout.

For his part, Daltrey matches Johnson every step of the way, fighting his corner just as fiercely as in his dayjob.

The calm, methodical “Gravity Wake” blends stately Moondog-like drums with undulating synths and relaxed solo horn lines that inescapably bring to mind Terry Riley. Elsewhere, the use of rhythmic, murmured vocables in “Glossolalia” recalls Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians.

For Life Love Flesh Blood, Imelda May has hooked up with T-Bone Burnett and his failsafe session crew of tasteful interpretive talent to effect a shift away from boisterous rockabilly towards more sensual torch songs like “Call Me” and “Black Tears.”

They now dart in yet another direction, devising a shuffling indie-dance style that recalls variously the infectious syncopations of Talking Heads, the baggy grooves of Happy Mondays and the campfire psychedelia of Animal Collective, but somehow manages to sound homogenously all of a piece.

For better or worse, Duster sounds as though it was created by humans. Imperfections are packed into structures that are more comprehensible, and far less nebulous. Each crackle, echo and strained vocal makes the limitations of being human seem not only clear, but beautiful in its vulnerability.

The best of confessional pop – think Beyoncé’s Lemonade – finds an original sound for an original experience and demands the listener’s attention.

It's Rose's harmonies that make the album special: warm and breathy, they seem to sidle gently into position, rather than cut with razor precision.

Heart, ultimately, is the key to a project which links personal, small-scale disturbances of loneliness and homesickness with broader concerns of population density and ecological sustainability.

Fender has refined both his songwriting and his sound.

It's quite easy to envisage entire arenas punching the air to songs like these and the pounding “You're Gonna Get It”, one of two tracks featuring Paul Weller.

The result is a record that is by turns lush and ethereal, a sonically cohesive venture into slightly unfamiliar territory.

Coup De Grace is Kane’s best work to date: punchy, cohesive and lots of fun.

Despite the hiatus, this guest-laden double-album finds the group still very much engaged, rattling out tongue-twisting, articulate verbal flows dealing more with social realities than self-aggrandising brags and outlaw fantasies.

By the second listen, it's somehow found its place in one's affections, despite its lack of obvious hooks.

Muhly’s sweeping orchestral vista mid-section dominates “Pluto”; and Stevens’ furtive, autotuned description of “Saturn” as a “melancholy creature, paranoid secret” is rudely interrupted halfway through by a brash, bustling beat barging its way in like Donald Trump at a photoshoot. The “oracle ghost” “Venus”, meanwhile, is treated in more recognisably Sufjan style, in its exhumation of a youthful indiscretion at a summer camp, characteristically stirred into a wider lyrical compass.

A series of lovely, languid soul grooves built around throbbing, cyclical organ drones, subdued guitar and electric piano, downtempo funk beats and subtle streaks of strings.

All in all, it’s a fine addition to the seemingly bottomless corpus of Springsteen’s ever-expanding oeuvre.

Like Starboy, there’s a hefty Eighties influence here, although for the most part, After Hours abandons the danceability of its predecessor in favour of moody introspection. This is the music you listen to when the party’s over.

This is proudly shape-shifting, genre-defying music.

A bitterly beautiful album.

Both musically and lyrically, the project cleaves to that kind of silly-spooky, funfair innocence, in a way that lends the album a freakish, cartoon unity denied to some of Tare’s previous projects.

By and large this is a welcome and judicious follow on from Red Flag; it very much feels like All Saints are back with aplomb.