Along with the anger and regret comes the usual hip-hop baggage of aggrandisement, recrimination and old-school reminiscence.

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

Interspersed with vox-pop musings on matters like police shootings, The Last Days Of Oakland is a state-of-the-nation address akin to Sky Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On.

Former Only Ones frontman Peter Perrett sounds as languidly wasted as ever on How The West Was Won, though thankfully it’s the kind of wasted that demands the devotion of his sons, both involved in this solo debut, and sparks insights and locutions that enable him to make sense of his life.

With Build Me Up from Bones, Sarah Jarosz restores an earthy inventiveness to folk music--despite the violin and cello of her touring bandmates Alex Hargreaves and Nathaniel Smith tweaking the bluegrass settings with classical flavours that reflect the singer’s conservatory training

[There are] some decent moments on this debut album.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not a pretty sound, though there are moments of transcendent grace.

While the Bootleg Series cupboard appears as well-stocked as ever, the value of outtakes from a notoriously weak album (Self Portrait) is debatable, though there are gems among the oddments.

That could stand as a motto for the album: this is music seeking to let in the light.

It's tasteful but a touch bloodless.

On Cavalcade, black midi feast on a smorgasbord of influences but the result at times can leave their sound meandering aimlessly.

Carter Girl reaffirms Carlene Carter’s role as scion of country music’s leading family through a mixture of Carter Family classics and original material, plus shaky duets with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.

Henry's stubbled delivery pitched somewhere between Randy Newman and Tom Waits as he negotiates the galumphing waltz "Strung" and the ramshackle cakewalk groove "Sticks & Stones", which best exemplifies the album's mythopoeic blues mode.

It’s all too controlled and unambitious; and just aping Dylan’s wheeze doesn’t make it any more intriguing.

The songwriting is not quite as enigmatic as on that precursor project [case/lang/veirs]. ... The trio’s strengths lie mostly in the natural sweetness of their harmonies, a heartbreaking union of glowing melancholy underscoring the life lessons of songs such as “See You Around” and “Ain’t That Fine.”

I Am Easy to Find feels like an old friend you’re pleased to keep around--even if, had you been introduced today, you wonder if you’d have been compelled to make the effort.

Seven of the 15 tracks here have been drowned in producer Pharrell Williams’ bubblemint bounce – at points, it’s in danger of sounding more like his record than Grande’s.

The album never regains ["Strong's"] scuttling momentum, lapsing into a boudoir-soul bubble-bath that, with too much immersion, leaves one’s interest wrinkling.

On Freedom Highway, Rhiannon Giddens animates black American history--notably, the arduous journey from slavery to civil rights--in songs which pair her strong, sonorous delivery with arrangements echoing pre-blues minstrel music.

Unfortunately, there’s not much pleasure here for the listener, manoeuvred into the position of reluctant psychoanalyst.

Songs finds John Fullbright more concerned with the act of writing than with illuminating a subject.

While this partner set doesn’t have quite the sustained quality of the preceding album released six months ago, it still affirms the value of spiking country music with a strong shot of rhythm & blues.

It’s a break-up album that’s perhaps a touch too unremittingly bleak for the closing resolution of “Another Train” (“I’m moving on, through the past, through the pain, waiting on another train”) to completely convince.

This is by no means an easy record to fathom, but it does show – even after so many years – you’ll never catch Albarn resting on his laurels.

It’s an enjoyable, occasionally virtuosic romp, fronted by Thundercat’s smooth soul harmonies, which lend proceedings the lustrous sheen of Earth, Wind & Fire.

With Golding’s expansive, questing lines riding Boyd’s rolling, polyrhythmic funk, the duo set displays a focused musical intimacy, while the band set is immediately more incendiary, thanks to Parker wailing wild over Golding’s more rooted part in “Valley Of The Ultra Blacks”.

It seems like they just ran out of interest, and gave up.

Although their go-for-broke approach furnishes ideas to spare, the unwitting effect is a set of lurches from impressive to hopelessly ill-integrated, often over the course of a single song.