It’s just a shame that not enough of the flair she finds for juxtaposition reappears on this fourth album as memorable music.

ally fun. For a new band, this would be a perfectly serviceable debut, but with Ex Hex having flown so high previously, It’s Real is a disappointment.

The results are undeniably classy.

Perhaps rabble-rousing reels, big, dumb, bruising guitars and flag-waving, roared choruses of bromidic triumphalism just make more sense after several pints of Guinness.

Party music looms large, thanks to tunes like Out of Luck, Ghost! and What Ya Know; range and depth comes in the form of Wasp’s husky R&B. But the feelgood moments, though nagging, can’t help but feel slightly anodyne compared with Maidza’s more lethal modes.

Having lost the shock of the new, this more tuneful follow-up privileges Krauss's pop instincts over Miller's mayhem.

This is another fine entry into their parallel universe. It's not the break-out record that they might have gone for, though.

Though tracks such as Flip and Pools are undeniably cool, you can sense the quartet straining to tick the right boxes rather than pursuing a sound that's theirs alone.

You would not start here if you were new to this ear-boggling band, but Longstreth remains a singular talent.

The standout is Suicide's Dream Baby Dream, which, much like Cherry's version of the Stooges' Dirt, is turned into a masterclass in controlled chaos.

Even with the paradigm shift, Shabazz Palaces remain magnificently eccentric, enlisting Thundercat on Since CAYA, quoting Kraftwerk at length on the nagging Moon Whip Quäz. Tracks such as Dèesse Du Sang, meanwhile, provide a haunted analogue magic that is hard to shake off.

Over 15 tracks, however, progress stalls. For all Gaika’s articulacy--he also writes for Dazed & Confused--the downbeat haze in which he operates privileges numbness over passion and ire, qualities his arresting music merely hints at, rather than weaponises.

Ear-catching cameos from Snoop, Ariel Pink and Ohio Player Walter “Junie” Morrison can’t allay concerns that Riddick lacks the star quality that separates the game changer from the journeyman.

Sonik Kicks barrels along hectically, throwing out ideas like a particularly exuberant catherine wheel, though nothing ever quite matches the exquisite shock of that dub bliss-out [on "Study in Blue"].

The best tracks can often be those that seem most unlikely, where pairings take flight and logic takes a breather.

Field Music remain more impressive than lovable.

Running to 58 minutes, there are inevitable longueurs, too, where the five-piece nod rather than soar. Still, their full immersion convinces.

Shingai Shoniwa's vocals supply enough personality to elevate them above standard winebar fare.

The musician is famously exacting when it comes to sound and, predictably, the album is impeccably produced. What's shocking, though, is that at moments it sounds--whisper it--delicate.

Sometimes ornery, sometimes tender, this is how honky-tonk heroes grow old.

Grip is OK, but it should make more sense on stage.

Hagerty’s guitar playing remains as unkempt as ever, but, touchingly, the duo’s vocals play tag throughout, augmenting one another’s frazzled joint vision as though no time had passed.

Two Saviors has a wonderfully loose feel. Meek’s gently enunciated vocals, delivered with all the urgency of Kurt Vile awaking from a nap, are backed by a band that knows how to keep it simple, Mat Davidson’s pedal steel and organ from Meek’s brother Dylan giving proceedings a timeless country feel. This lack of immediacy is a double-edged sword, however: too often the songs are so laid-back that they slide out of focus.

HBHBHB finds her circling the drain of an imploded relationship, this time with novel directness.

Like that of some of his illustrious contemporaries from the 1960s, Paul McCartney's new music needs to perform a move of such complexity that it would be more at home in yoga: looking forward, while looking back, while remaining relevant. It's decidedly difficult to pull off, this move, and New, McCartney's 16th studio album, almost does it.

The totalitarian self-regard of these bombastic modular synth symphonies owes more to Queen’s One Vision than it does to Kraftwerk’s Man Machine.

Every Valley doesn’t add much that is new. Still, the album’s standout, the rousing title track, employs Richard Burton’s voice to fine effect.

Songs like Pitted, meanwhile--which finds sweet-voiced singer Haley Shea giving props to Beyoncé, “doing [her] Hotline Bling thing” and wigging out to Bohemian Rhapsody--prove Sløtface are up for a party as well as polemic.

It all blends into a sonically rich album, perfect for gazing dreamily out of windows at passing landscapes, even if it doesn’t reach any new destinations.

s self-titled 2009 debut introduced the band's hazy, Byrds-derived jangle; this second effort reimagines the bucolic pastorales of the 80s indie movement, given a Fleet Foxes skill set.

Hawley's grasp of psychedelia is probably closer to the (latterday) Verve's than it is to, say, Animal Collective's.

Too many songs meander past the five-minute mark, loitering without intent.

It’s a boldly idiosyncratic collection, and generous in its aims, but it’s also an unsatisfyingly structured racket.

The band's twinkle-toed banjo runs and acoustic duelling fall flat here, hobbled by dreary songwriting.

Next to this shimmering peak ["Clearest Blue"], a few songs pale in comparison.

Sonically, it can blend a little into one, but the closing feature from the late rapper Lexii, a friend and collaborator of Kehlani’s, is a rousing, poignant end to a largely accomplished set.

Although nothing is exactly under-produced, the governing principle remains loose. White is so sweet-sounding, you might blink and miss the commentary of songs such as Crashing Your Party (“gimme that bow, gimme that stone, gimme that rake, I’m gonna take my place”) or Gold Fire, the most fully realised piece of music here.

These tracks are densely self-referential, borrowing lyrics and themes from Costello's past.

They careen through a wide range of moods – coquettish, horny, craving approval, irony – with a zeal you rarely hear in other bands. Occasionally those stories can come across as a little juvenile, but where they lack finesse (and, indeed, it’s great to hear a punk band that still sounds like one, the edges unsmoothed), they make up for in ambition.

Highlights include Mystery Jets’s Blaine Harrison wigging out Sabbath-style on the crunching Iron Age; Euros Childs sounding sweetly spaced-out on the gently circling Door to Tomorrow; and the Magnetic North’s Hannah Peel cooing airily over the Stereolab/Broadcast-style, dark psych-pop of Delicious Light--but the Soft Bounce is a trip best taken as a whole.

The album has a tentative quality which is sometimes beguiling – the gently grooving "Lights Out, Words Gone", effete and insistent all at once, is a delight – but often they sound in need of more conviction.

Now she sounds fully formed, her rich lyrics (“Was my cup so full I thought it was empty?” she riddles, koan-like, on the dreamy shuffle of Mama Proud) and the dark depth of her Chan Marshall-ish voice adding intrigue to these subtly crafted songs.

For anyone not instantly sold on gravel-voiced Americana, it’ll feel like hard work.

There are inevitable longueurs as well, mind: Pure Poor gives dirges a bad name, and closer Hey Lou Reid fancies itself as an epic but instead just feels like an extraordinarily slow six minutes. Still, the fact that Glasgow Eyes is three-quarters of a good record is reason for celebration.

Ultimately, the album is burdened by its own weight, striving to exorcise the group’s creative urges. Perhaps with more time together, Animal Collective could jam into a sense of consistency again.

The new styles don’t all gel.

Dark and absorbing, The Blue Hour is never dull, although in an age of playlist-friendly immediacy it’s hard to imagine its appeal stretching far beyond already committed fans.

You are either in the mood for this depth of wallowing or you are not.

[The Truth About Love] veers between two modes: workmanlike ballads delivered with beyond-workmanlike shading; and chunky guitar pop stuffed with shouty, bad-girl choruses. Unfortunately the second dominates.

Their songs on this, their third record, are more expansive, bolder and stranger than those that have come before.

There are precious few real surprises, then, but that's not a problem.

[I Forget Where We Were] hangs together well, his David Gray/Damien Rice-like vocals resting on a bed of skittering drums, crafty guitar and fedback chords. Individual tracks take their time to get going (only one song here comes in under four minutes) and numbers such as opener Small Things break after two or three minutes to build back up from a pleasant plod to a sustained fug of sound.

Molly Rankin’s pipes are pure 60s pop on Not My Baby, and her songwriting wit sparkles throughout this nuanced break-up album.

Fifteen tracks stretches them too far, though, and on the likes of Fog, their woahs sound tired, and it becomes apparent that these are pretty empty musical calories.

The scrappy underdog bite of, say, their quarter-arsed, one-minute cover of the Bee Gees’ unimprovable Stayin’ Alive is swapped for a swathe of toothless tunes neither cool nor commercial enough to satisfy hardcore fans or find an entirely new audience. The band’s mayfly magic endures, though, particularly on The Way That You Do’s ragged clarity, the hypnotically repetitive Big Bad Want or live favourite Corner Store.

Benjamin has woodwind form. He contributed flute to the soundtrack of Everything Everywhere All at Once and played clarinet on 2018’s epic tribute to his mother, Look Ma No Hands. New Blue Sun is more weirdly charismatic than either of those.

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

As always, the emotions lie in the spaces between the pellucid notes.

Ultimately, though, for all its emotional tug, Last Place is solid rather than spectacular, with nothing quite matching the peaks of their first two albums.

They continue to live and die by the watercolour synth wash. It’s a good job they’re masters of the form – as Broken, this album’s crystalline ballad, proves.

A post-digital block party full of computer music whose Latinate rhythms and rolled Rs don't conform to grid or template.

On this persuasive second outing, the endless beach seems a grey and loveless place without the object of La Roux's desire.

It hasn't the shiver factor of his debut but there's pleasure in such smooth, elegantly crafted songs after his recent strainings.

The album’s second half glides hazily by, never actually disappointing, but maintaining a mid-tempo pensiveness that is a little too comforting for comfort.

As the tempo drops, though, so does the quality: It’s a Beautiful World remains lumpenly uninspired, despite producer David Holmes’s best attempts at window dressing, while Be Careful What You Wish For slumps when it tries to slink.

These may not be new songs, but their glazed melancholy does not disappoint.

Her first record in seven years, the discord is a new kind of awkward.

Despite the emotional content here, Mahalia exudes a breezy mellowness, with thoroughly 2019 themes rubbing up against retro stylings.

Every so often, the disparate parts coalesce into something enjoyable: We Go Back and Dragon Slayer both exhibit a lovely playfulness. Stretched over 48 minutes, though, there’s the sense that for all its undoubted cleverness, Time Skiffs is not terribly easy to warm to.

32 Levels begins and ends strongly but sags in the middle like an old sofa.

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

Hug of Thunder is not hugely cogent--but equally benefit from the weight of numbers.

His honeyed voice and ear for a gratifying hook combine with a tricksy musical intelligence so that, although the quality's a bit uneven on his debut, the best bits rouse and wrongfoot you in equal measure.

Things are less compelling when the tempo drops, as on the undistinguished Rear View Mirror, but this is a welcome return nonetheless.

Sundown adds to pop’s current obsession with tropical house, while I Would Like is a good song without a proper chorus. But Larsson imbues each song with enough passion to see it over the line.

English Electric acts as a rejoinder to those who think that synth-pop is best left to the young.

What the Killers have yet to learn from the later Springsteen is subtlety. If bombast is not your thing, this is not your band. Imploding the Mirage says some nuanced things, but very loudly. The best things about Flowers’s writing are twofold: the upfront carpe diem spirit here, best captured in lines such as: “We’re all gonna die!” And then there are the more elegant turns of storytelling.

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

Track after track leans heavily on the relentless four-to-the-floor of trance, with Alice Glass's yelped vocals muffled under a weight of sound that's simultaneously boring and abrasive.

Never shy of delivering an electro cri de coeur where a simple chord progression will do, Anthony "M83" Gonzalez fully indulges his fondness for the grand gesture on his sixth record.

Inspired by a wider 80s film nostalgia, these narrative songs conjure intimate, urgent dialogue and the eruption of the supernatural into the everyday.

Starting with their first single I Watch You, there's enough vim on this debut to excuse a mid-album lull, where their attempts at mantric insistence grow a little leaden.

Most likely, the Minneapolitan knew this work was pleasant but unexceptional. ... This album sounds like it could’ve been made by anyone in the 1980s, back when only Prince made albums that sounded like the 2080s.

Homo Anxietatem is at its best when it throws the genre doors wide.

Dunis's flat tones can let the side down, but otherwise, the swoon is in the details.

Sometimes, he brings to mind Massive Attack, but then quickly the impression dissipates. Loose and cinematic, Sublime combines breakbeats with guitar, piano and strings. Not every element here is as assured.

If you are not in the mood, it can all turn into non-specific pastels. If you’re in need of succour, Beach House do a convincing line in sunshine during rain.

Throughout the suite of nine pieces, inspired by The Odyssey, the spare lyricism of Potter's playing sometimes diverts attention from his sheer technical brilliance and the acuteness of his band is quite remarkable.

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.

Elsewhere the mood is flat and the tunes forgettable, Rumer’s muted voice lacking the mystique of the 70s folk artists she reveres.

Atmospheres, healing and processing society’s messages are the point here, rather than hits. But Wells doesn’t lack for tunes, which ebb in and out.

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.

Musically, this is unforgivably mediocre. A memorable chorus will occasionally appear from nowhere, as on Hey Lou (and Soul Sucker wins points for its unexpected nod to Blue Boy’s Remember Me), but for the most part the coffee-table pop on offer here is remarkable only for being so forgettable.

With just one new song – the title track, a gutsy bawler with Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood – the rest is a spirited if not subversive amble through her back catalogue and some old-time country classics.

Those coming fresh to Parks may find his reedy voice, and his warping of time, requires some adjustment.

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.

That there's a little too much misery on this third album from the 27-year-old Oklahoman doesn't obscure a promising talent at work.

With Prey/IV, Glass seizes control of the sequence, and the narrative, for herself.