The slower songs are this album’s great strengths: the magnificent Czech One, Lonely Blue and Logos all deal rivetingly with relationships (“her solvent’s dissolved”), while more guitar-oriented tunes such as Dum Surfer recall Jamie T.

Ultimately, nothing on This Is My Hand gives you an irregular heartbeat quite like Pressure. But these intense songs, sung with a crystalline elasticity, have located the mojo previously absent from My Brightest Diamond’s art.

The musical arrangements, laden with pianos, brass, synths and strings in occasionally strained approximation of Arcade Fire, aren't always so nuanced. Still, in its more understated moments, such as slow-burn closer Black Nemo, music and memory chime beautifully.

Pharrell Williams and Andre 3000 add support on this hefty but intriguingly experimental 19-track marathon, while Willow Smith adds weirdness to Mescudi’s trademark humming on the dub hip-hop of Rose Golden.

There are moments of transporting brilliance, particularly during Iceberg, Tension and Blue Madonna, but Borns’s best work is surely still to come.

A dense, angry, complex rock album.

Separate Ways and Try are wounded but tender breakup songs, Kansas a gentle reflection on a one-night stand. An unremarkable band blues and an unlistenable finger-on-wineglass affair contribute little to an album that’s well-found but, like much of Young’s recent output, for the committed.

It’s definitely an album served best by headphones and solitude, and one that won’t draw you back as much as it draws you in.

There is a point where the vocals (all four Las sing) stop being retro nasal tributes and start sounding a little thin.

A repetitive wash of acoustic guitars and consoling choirs dull the emotion, and Sandé is too polite to go for the jugular.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues lives up to its title with candour and tunes.

Infrequently there are bursts of brilliance--the Bowie meets Men at Work-style funk of the title track; Wow’s theatrical reimagining of hip-hop--but happiness does not become the impish shape-shifter.

He is no torch singer; most often, Ward recalls John Fahey or Robert Johnson, but the spectral, night-time atmosphere captures the hurt and weariness of Holiday’s delivery.

Monterey has an intimate, forlorn beauty, but too many of its songs slip past in a gentle blur.

At its best, New Eyes is proof that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you're clever about it. Even in its more ordinary moments, it's still a classical gas.

Can’t Wait and Say Thank You are both dazzling, but too many tracks are unworthy of a woman who once appeared to represent R&B’s future.

Strip away the tics and production fidgets and these songs aren’t hugely distinctive--they lack the arresting weirdness of artier peers such as FKA twigs.

There are some sublime moments, but it doesn’t make for a cohesive whole.

Though the songs can feel homogeneous, Milo's maturity should bring her success.

Toddla proves himself better at preposterously high-energy dancehall tracks ("Badman Flu") than forays into early-90s piano-led vocal house ("Take It Back"). Good fun in small measures.

Some of the fresh-faced charm has gone, but he is sounding more like a bona fide star.

The end result is stylish and cogent but, as a consequence, perhaps a teensy bit samey.

What’s lacking is a standout floor-filler. There’s nothing here that comes close to Ooh La La, and some of these slight but elegant songs just fade too far into the background.

anyone fond of latter-day leftfield singer-songwriters such as Sharon Van Etten or Waxahatchee will revel in discovering a more buttoned-up, southern version of their hypnotic relationship exegeses.

You could, just about, call these psalms remixes, in that the thematic stems hold true. But there is respite, too, in the gentler notes and oscillations of Splendour, Glorious Splendour.

Silver Eye sags badly in the middle. Faux Suede Drifter and Zodiac Black , in particular, are all texture and no song, ambient washes of sound topped with uncharacteristically disengaging vocals. It all makes for a slightly underwhelming whole.

Sadly, this album has as many misses as hits.

Aloe Blacc's major-label debut does what it promises: it lifts your spirit.