Periodically brilliant, if scattershot.

Standouts such as Run a Red Light and No One Knows We’re Dancing provide clubland demimonde vignettes, while a number of expansive, impressionistic sound-beds allow for more matter-of-fact lyrics about loss (Lost) and cutting oneself some slack (When You Mess Up). Less memorable are the songs – like Caution to the Wind - where the two coast pellucidly along.

Real Lies are too young to remember the late 80s, but the north London trio’s frisky debut album is steeped in the spirit of the Balearic years when indie kids discovered ecstasy and acid house.

Most of the sounds here are mellifluous, with ample space given to heavenly backing vocalists on the more heartfelt songs, like the standout Hudson Mohawke co-production Free Ride.

Her follow-up seems brasher, more memorable yet less substantial, lacking the eeriness that made her last work so compelling.

Although any art with the word “selfie” in it can feel trite, this moving collaboration really hits its stride on the final track, where White introduces a sense of bass threat, rolling drum patterns and uneasy chimes, and Holley decrees that growth is imperative.

Dulli's throat is not quite what it was when he sang "I'm not the man my actions would suggest" on 1993's Debonair (but the jury is out on whether he's affecting strain or really straining). The outro, These Sticks, is a ballad whose chord progressions and textures wander far too close to Radiohead. Stick around, though, and the Whigs' stately menace wins out over the peculiar parallels.

Treat Crave like an EP, and think of the playful, toxic, masculinity-skewering When Boys Cry as the closing number. That way, the party always ends on a high.

Stony Hill is testament to the timeless consistency of Marley’s work.

It’s nice to hear them taking a few small risks. Next, it’d be great to see Smith get really wild.

Is anything here the equal of Uptown Funk? Not quite, but the opening three songs are excellent party starters. The mid-tempo cuts lack the lustre of the uptempo ones, and the album’s closing ballad--Too Good to Say Goodbye--isn’t as persuasive as When I Was Your Man off Unorthodox Jukebox.

Bellamy’s lyrics can be trite (“Yeah I’m free/From society,” declares The Defector) and the longer the album goes on, the more confusing the plotline becomes.

You have a largely enjoyable set that finds the silken-voiced singer deftly blending genres, both classic and contemporary.

The price to pay for Woman’s increased musicality is, perhaps, a drop in beat punishment. But you can’t begrudge Justice this laudable attempt to one-up Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

Entirely instrumental, all woodwinds and strings, it is a sumptuous, often soothing set but too one-paced to be transportive.

The singer’s debut album proper proves she has the tunes and personality to back up the notoriety.

There are “interludes” and “intermissions” aplenty; the blissed-out Beltway has shades of The Girl from Ipanema in its melody, and Binz is as catchy as a playground clapping game--but both are over before you know it. Exit Scott (referring to another street in Houston) uses a gospel sample that could--and would, in the past--have been stretched out to make a hit single, but here it is, just one minute and one second long.

You want this record to sell by the barrowload, but you might not actually want to play it that often.

Sophisticated it's not but, by and large, it's thrilling, the guitarist's zest for life evident throughout.

Yes, musically, these songs – all co-written with former Morrissey sideman Michael Farrell –are for the most part her stock-in-trade windswept power ballads and unremarkable soft rock. But while there’s nothing as thrillingly angry as You Oughta Know, it’s a far more palatable set than 2012’s insipid Havoc and Bright Lights.

Their debut album, co-written and co-produced with Soulwax, is a treasure chest of funk, French house, sweaty techno and all kinds of dirty electronic weirdness to rival Moloko at their freakiest. But their takes on the fraught subject of wokeness on Esperanto (“Don’t say: I would like a black Americano/ Say: I’ll have an African American, please”), or sexual agency on the Timbaland-flavoured dark R&B of Reappropriate err on the side of basic.

While technically accomplished, Selvutsletter doesn’t do enough with its occasional moments of wonder – the glorious chorus of Hvals that arise during Sea White, for one – to justify its many lengthy, meandering sections.

A workable entente between past and future is struck on Edna. Headie One gets to flex, collaborate and try new things, while Irving Adjei feels safe enough to show vulnerability.

Her Big Grrrl Small World is not yet at the level of Hill’s peerless Miseducation, but there’s a greater musicality afoot this time and a more generous emotional palette; less rage, more nuance.

It's no instant classic, then, but neither is it the calamity that some have foreseen, being a typically mixed Gaga outing with some ludicrous highs, questionable digressions (Jewels 'N' Drugs, in which three rappers add little to the mix; or Donatella, a charmless ode to the equally charmless Versace supremo) and plenty of not-unpleasant filler.

Their ninth throws in an unexpected brass section, some pedal steel guitar and even reggae, while retaining the band’s core mellifluousness. It’s a minor masterstroke, making City Sun Eater… a quirky but eminently listenable record.

No one involved seems to be trying too hard, just basking in the pleasure of classic songs classily performed.

His breathy singing is equal parts Jens Lekman, Saint Etienne and Vic Reeves’s club singer, which undermines the teenage existentialism of On the Main Drag but suits the wide-eyed simplicity of Country Boy. Nevertheless, Krgovich’s meticulous, subtle production is frequently brilliant.