One step forward, two steps back.

Trainor just isn’t a convincing pop star. While the Britney-lite lead single No has its moments, most of the other songs are identity-free filler.

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

Rich with on-point retro-futurist sounds, such as the gem-like, sultry neo-soul of Green Aphrodisiac. ... But there’s some unwelcome pandering to all markets in ghastly guitar ballad Stop Where You Are, a misstep looking for a Coldplay album, and a couple of tracks where smoothness wins out over personality.

Radiohead have long trafficked in existential dread and political anger, and in a wider sense of twitchy bereftness that bends to fit any number of scenarios – their very own aural shade of Yves Klein blue, maybe, just a little more bruised. This arresting ninth album is bathed in it.

The album pulses with nervy energy. None of the new tracks outshine those we’ve already heard, though Numbers, produced by Pharrell Williams, comes exuberantly close.

They haven’t completely ditched the relentless aggression--much of Paradise races past in an alluring blur of distortion and melody--but this is a welcome broadening of their palette.

There is some respite in the poppy, piano-assisted chorus of New Morning Comes, but no trite redemptive arc: this is a sensitive and subtle response to living with grief.

It’s hard to keep up, then--but worth it.

The subject matter, then, is unrelenting. But Anohni’s impassioned delivery succeeds in making ecstatic music out of it, carried along by propulsive soundbeds; music that is equal to the apocalypse.

Welsh-language band 9Bach’s third album takes simple elements--Lisa Jên’s ethereal vocals, piano, bass and percussion, harp and hammer dulcimer--and weaves complex patterns.

While it’s all elegantly presented, and each song is pleasing enough, nothing ever quite hits the heights Phillips has previously scaled.

At 21 minutes long it could do with a trim, but the closing part, a cover of the Velvet Underground’s I’m Set Free, shows that Eno remains one of the great shape shifters.

Cynics will cry foul, that Beyoncé remains an entitled superstar, raging at a paper tiger. Those cynics will be ignoring one of this year’s finest albums.

Ultimately nothing here really out-pops last year’s dulcet hit, Hotline Bling, included as a bonus track. As ever, though, the detail--both lyrical and producerly--is pin-sharp.

An assured, ear-opening debut.

I Long To See You finds him still busting genres.

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.

If this is really where his heart now lies, it’s hard not to feel a tinge of sadness when you hear his honeyed vocals on A Woman’s Face, a reworking of a track from 2010 that recalls the swooning, symphonic pop of old.

A cast list as long as Honey’s inevitably produces a patchwork. Some tunes are so uneventful you wonder why they bothered.

Ferg’s pungent wordplay powers this splendidly diverse and dynamic second album.

She is no innovator, but her vocals burn, her band is honky-tonk tough, and songs such as Hurtin’ on the Bottle (co-written with Caitlin Rose) tap straight into country tradition. A winner.

The distance between the photograph and the viewer is sometimes too great.

You might feel less tolerant of its jarring arrangements and musical whimsy were it not for the moments of melodic sweetness that surface, as on the wistful Love Is Not Love. But this is still a wonderfully disordered junkshop of a record and a pleasure to explore.

Not all of it gels, but as a treatise on male absence, Sturgill’s Guide is heartfelt.

Black Flowers, one of several tracks rooted in nature, typifies his songwriting prowess, its cryptic lyrics twinned with a gorgeous melody that is both pristine and familiar.

While producers including Karriem Riggins and Madlib serve him well here, it’s clear that Dilla expressed himself best through his beats.

Even the weaker moments are elevated by a raw vocal that growls with bubbling emotion. Love’s trials and tribulations never sounded so exquisite.