This, then, is a big, expansive, commercial album, its hair shorn and occasionally gelled into directional styles, but one keen to bare its soul.

Peel’s intentions are sound, the results are very pretty and the live shows will be great, but what ensues is still a modern classical-electronic crossover that relies too much on orthodox musicality to truly do its subjects justice.

Camille remains a restless, inventive voice, as enchanting as she is silly.

The lyrics to the album’s title track might undercut the fantasy of a luxe life, but the music is all opulence. Disco strings scythe; backing vocals dissolve into spatially aware stereo pans. Everything is buttery; only once does Lovett jump the shark, on Opening Night’s space-prog-funk solo.

You can hear confirmation in the musical differences that divide Courting the Squall from one of the more experimental Elbow albums: minor detailing rather than schismatic shifts.

It's a bit uplifting, but ultimately insipid.

Such an efficient compendium of current pop influences is a little underwhelmng; nothing here sets out to redefine the girl group sound.

Far more satisfying are the contemplative songs, in particular These City Streets, wherein the new and old Weller are reconciled.

As ever, though, reckonings go hand in glove with the riffs and hooks, and the death of Mould's father in 2012 looms large here.

The picture here is less of a cad than of a man wrestling with his feelings in an overfamiliar (if wildly successful) sonic bubble. PartyNextDoor is standing out in a crowded market, not so much for his sound, but for his circumstances.

The collision of sludgy guitars, thunderous drums and Billy Corgan's frantic yelp on opener Quasar makes for a bracing reacquaintance with overwrought stadium grunge. But it loses its way when Corgan shows signs of mellowing.

The most striking song (discounting the Personal Jesus reenactment The Calling) draws on Flowers’ own childhood experience: the surging, synth-laced Tyson vs Douglas, inspired by his shock when the champ hit the mat, could touch gloves with the band’s best.

It's Randell's lovely voice, full and rounded but never overused, that gives the album its potency.

Although neophytes might struggle with Holley’s shruggy attitude to tunefulness--his free-ranging sound recalls, at different times, Tom Waits, Gil Scott-Heron or RL Burnside--a coterie of associates help to flesh out Holley’s non-linear storytelling into something more conventionally accomplished.

The album’s frequent sampled and pasted interludes, its wiggy organ and woozy country-soul atmosphere all build up a sense of sepia-tinted playfulness that sidesteps the Black Keys’ usual growl and punch.

While Michael C Hall, Sophia Anne Caruso et al turn in perfectly reasonable renditions of an hour’s worth of material from Bowie’s back catalogue, their takes on Changes, Heroes and Life on Mars? were always going to pale in comparison to the originals.

The delicate songs quickly exposing the thin line between pretty and cloying. However, salvation arrives with the euphoric chorus of Are You Ready?, swiftly followed by Sunflower’s easygoing pop charms.

As middle of the road as this singer undoubtedly seems, there is, however, much to commend her debut album, Not Your Muse – a gutsier, wiser and more elliptical set of songs than may at first appear.

having traded in all their early attitude for non-stop blissed-out jamming, the Horrors' default mode--equable lassitude--is beginning to pall a touch.

It certainly gets close to chaos at times, but these live shows often did. From that point of view at least, it's truly authentic.

Their fourth effort strives to retain the band’s considerable rhythmic nous while further amplifying the bombast. What results is partially successful.

Some of this magnificently sullen band’s edges have been filed down; their strides into left field could have been more decisive.

It is tempered and classic-sounding. But the sounds are as itchy and oppressive as they are tasteful.

Inevitably, some of the studio tracks suffer by comparison; you can imagine Barbarians as an irresistible call to arms in a Brooklyn basement, but it falls a little flat here. But there’s nifty production work elsewhere.

The skies overhead on his debut album are dark and menacing for the most part: this is music to depopulate dancefloors, not fill them.

Its repertoire of tricks--piano and falsetto sob-rock, yodel-along backing vocals, hands-in-the-air breakdowns--is entirely predictable, but generally redeemed by strong, surging melodies.

The London producer with the voice like a bruise remains perennially inconsolable here.

These grooves are floppy-limbed, loosely propelled by basslines that sound like ones Ian Brown left behind under a pub table.