Their 11th album, recorded in Nashville, finds Mike Scott and co evolving once again, adding southern soul to fiery blues with mixed results.

Although Lantern strains more than a few sinews, trying to show everything Mohawke can do (sensitive soul remakes, apocalyptic digitals) there’s room for raw touches such as Lil Djembe, which recall the trap beats that made HudMo’s name.

Know-It-All has sweet spots, but doesn’t match the promise.

With none of the material really cutting through the production wizardry, this is another triumph for texture over songwriting.

If Damage and Joy isn’t quite the echo of their pomp, neither is it a disappointment.

There is some charm in the Brooklyn duo’s method but, after five albums, it’s running thin.

It's likely to appeal more to dedicated Martyn fans than newcomers but a fine tribute nonetheless.

Overall it’s a semi-successful sonic rebirth that, in the shape of On What You’re On, features the best Daft Punk single since One More Time.

Vocalist Tom Higham deploys his requisite falsetto sparingly, but the surfeit of emotion and tranquillity flattens their musical landscape.

It’s not a terrible album – it’s better than many bands that Pixies inspired – but it isn’t terribly good either.

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.

Although Songs feels consistently summery, it lacks coherence: the diverse elements don't completely gel.

It has a youthful glow, but over 13 tracks Anything lacks substance.

The tunes are pugnaciously mass-market, with debts to Kanye West. Throughout, though, tracks such as ITAL (Roses) and Audubon Ballroom come inflected with righteous fury and weary humour.

While the album repays repeated listening, Burgess's vocals throughout conjure an air of wounded melancholy. Perhaps the key to real enjoyment is little and often.

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.

The most exciting thing that can be said for the remaining tracks is that they're less maudlin than last time around.

Stellar side projects often run the risk of sounding smug, but over these 12 varied selections, the Little Willies put the American songbook first.

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

Finn's gift survives even the more uneven experiments.

With song titles such as Beyond Binary Binds, it would sound like a cultural studies dissertation, if it weren't all couched in surprisingly banging tunes such as Public Love.

Death of a Bachelor is hollow and shapeless.

Ultimately, though, it still cleaves too close to the polite piano soul with which Keys has filled 10 years.

There are outbursts of punkish energy and some occasional snappy hooks, but CRX haven’t a great deal to recommend them beyond the reputations of those involved.

Sadly, this album has as many misses as hits.

Culture II was never going to be a modest affair, in which three self-effacing twentysomethings quietly enumerated their blessings. Apart from some anxiety (“Tryna be like the Carters/Gotta be like the Carters” – Too Playa) and exhaustion (Work Hard), Culture II is wall-to-wall diamonds, watches, cars, chains, brands, fashion houses and exotic fauna.

Other times, this debut tends towards the characterless, making all the right sounds (retro vocals, contemporary beats) but more often than not, choosing the path of least grit, least quirk, and least memorability.

Little Mix albums have always struggled to find their own identity, and LM5 still owes too much to Beyoncé’s flirtation with hip-hop and top-40 trend chasing. It’s frustrating.

When Kele does sing, his magnificently anguished yelp is mostly stilled. There is far too much spoken word. This scattershot approach just about worked on his previous album, 2042, but this has neither its visceral immediacy nor the wild, unhinged invention of what he does best.

Other than the perky pabulum of prostitution singalong Lola and a big fat feelgood chorus on Step with Me, the hooks and hits are thin on the ground.

For all these derivations, however, Life After Defo convinces, its downcast, sweet-bleak beauty becoming more individual with every play.

On record that passion turns out to be a double-edged sword: his emotive delivery gives spirit to his quieter material, but when he’s at his most strident, on his more anthemic numbers, it can start to feel as if he’s using his voice to beat the listener into submission, as with Get Better here.

For now, then, Gallagher's High Flying Birds are merely coasting.

The likes of Gold Digger and I Was Raised in Babylon suggesting that, almost half a century into his career, there’s plenty of life in Yusuf yet.

What follows this auspicious beginning is a riveting album about race, class, opportunity, tribalism, love, the pitfalls of fame, comedy and "seriousness"--one that coexists quite happily with a potty-mouthed pop-rap record about sleeping with girls.

It has its moments--the title track has a certain chutzpah--but a lack of killer hooks means there's precious little to get excited about here.

It’s on less conventional tracks, where his voice gets looped (March) or lost among electronic and orchestral textures (Gabe), that the desolate atmosphere really starts to take hold.

Side Boob and Razor’s Edge don’t even bother with the middle men, heading straight for the infectious propulsion of Is This It. Elsewhere, however, Hammond makes a creditable stab at the sunny nonchalance of Mac DeMarco, while a crunching Arctic Monkeys riff underpins Caught By My Shadow.

Mostly, though, Little Broken Hearts finds an effective way to grab the listener by the lapels: with kid gloves.

It's not dissimilar to Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene stripped of its most memorable passages, and might well do what it suggests on the cover. But those hypnotic washes of sound go beyond their remit and could have us all dozing off.

All most of the candle-held-to-the-sun versions here reveal--from the hushed, sad, fingerpicky take on Blank Space to the hushed, sad, strummy take on Out of the Woods--is a strong urge to listen to Swift herself.

A polished set of original songs that stretch their old-timey, southern identity into new shapes.

A Brief Inquiry is a hard album to top, and Notes is, perhaps, the most disjointed and unclassifiable of the 1975’s works. It serves best, perhaps, as a long and intermittently lovely outro to that defining record.

All too often, the songs are too lightweight to ensnare the listener, their gossamer melodies floating out of the memory almost as quickly as they entered.

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.

Some tracks, though, aren’t actually as immediate as you would want them to be.

It feels like a natural progression from synthpop into more hard-edged material and robust pop sensibilities shine through amid the bleeps and filthy basslines.

While there are a few great moments here (Words I Don't Remember, Pour Cyril), some judicious pruning of the 55-minute running time wouldn't have gone amiss.

Justice are still capable of raw-edged excitement, but on Hyperdrama they find themselves too polished and bright.

Can only be described as… the sound of Coldplay.

After a partly successful reboot with 2016’s Walls, they attempt to build on that for their eighth album by using the same producer, Markus Dravs, but there’s only so much he can do when the raw material he’s working with so often falls short.

It’s beautifully played and engineered, with DeMarco’s nimble vocals softly caressing your speakers from inside, but it cossets where it could challenge.

Overall this record is much like its predecessor, 2011's You & I.

For all its inevitable ubiquity, this downbeat, low-lit album has the bonus of not being in your face at all.

Sure, catchy singles such as No Mediocre (featuring Azalea) and About the Money cleave close to the worship of money and compliant “ho”s rife in hip-hop. But intriguing things are afoot here too.

The vocals are rich and tuneful and the lyrics full of homilies about respecting fellow citizens, the search for love and the timeless truth that "water does not flow uphill".

It’s all pleasant enough, but falls some way short of being compelling.

Too much is forgettable.

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.

Rich in interesting R&B-influenced textures, its songs too often fail to engage, particularly on a ponderous second half.

The [emotional] connection is missing because of The Messenger's overarching weaknesses: the voice and the lyrics.

They avoid compromising the qualities that carried them this far; an appealing wistfulness clings to Steadman's voice, despite the clubby builds and drops.

At its worst, Paradise Again is derivative and dated. Tracks play like pastiches. ... In its livelier moments, the album tries to revive sounds in new contexts. ... Most of the record is palatable but unremarkable – an algorithmic play for radio airtime.

This may be billed as his serious opus, but clearly growing up is boring.

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.

A talented interpreter, Dion comes unstuck when she can’t overcome the source material.

Come-hither pop does not loom large on Harry Styles, the long-longed-for debut solo venture from the 1D heartthrob. Strummed ballads are the order of the day, as is rock, and MOR cuts that sound a tad too Gary Barlow, too soon--prematurely matured, perhaps.

End of World is frustratingly hit and miss – the staccato glam-rock stylings of The Do That are particularly annoying – but then you suspect that the arch contrarian Lydon wouldn’t have it any other way.

Short of a few dubby echoes, reggae is the one genre Etienne Jaumet, “Cosmic” Neman and Dr Schonberg don’t audibly mine here. No track is shorter than six minutes; some jazz sax and handclaps set Looose apart from its surroundings, which are never anything other than engrossing.

This back-to-basics flipside to 2015’s poppy For All My Sisters has little to offer those not already positively disposed towards the Cribs’ basics--mordant lyrics, tetanus-jab guitars and raucous woah-ohh-ohh choruses--but the likes of Dendrophobia, with its haywire licks and raw scream of “we can’t afford each other”, and In Your Palace have an irresistible energy.

While there is nothing on here as life-altering as GGD's 2011 single MindKilla, tracks such as Overlook remain restless and inventive.

While Bleachers is far from being a bad album, it’s even further from being an exciting one.

Overall, this is a record of familiar virtues and failings: robust, full-throttle pop-rock, rather overstuffed with identikit stadium anthems, but largely redeemed by the force of Dave Grohl’s personality.

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.

It’s a compelling and moving opener to In the Rainbow Rain, but nothing else here scales the same heights.

His debut works far better than it should.

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

It’s wall-to-wall tish, tish, tish, yearn, yearn, yearn. There’s little rhythmic diversity.

Mø’s new-era singles thus far have been earworms – the euphoric Live to Survive, the Ed Sheeran-like Kindness, the more recent electronic ballad Goosebumps. The remainder of Motordrome mostly maintains this hit rate.

The drama of Davies’s gothic Broadway stylings can grow suffocating, but her vengeful vision remains compelling.

Album number two ramps up the risibility factor even further and will make most sense at one of the group's barnstorming live shows.

Across 80 minutes there's the sense they might have spread themselves too thinly.

Audacious, cryptic and meandering, Eucalyptus is both brilliant and infuriating, thanks mainly to the Animal Collective man’s refusal to ditch the half-formed workouts that litter this LP.

A seductive reiteration of the precepts of attitudinal guitar pop. Or you could put it another way – it's derivative, audaciously so, but fun none the less.

There’s always a gooey pleasure to hearing her sing, but you’d hope someone launched through gospel to the American Idol finals and an Oscar win might find better material in an R&B world thundering with great songwriters.

The veteran indie musician cannot ditch his knock-kneed approach, honed over 15 solo albums and four in Hefner. Folk, like rural life, can be red in tooth and claw; Hayman’s pastel jingle-jangles ill serve his rich sources.

It’s a beautifully crafted, upbeat pop album, and MNEK’s voice is compelling and gorgeous; the only small quibble is it’s a tad long.Colour , a triumphal duet with Hailee Steinfeld, feels a little tacked on in an effort to emulate the success of his Zara Larsson collab Never Forget You, and the conversational between-song interludes likewise feel a little extraneous, if all part and parcel of MNEK’s unique, mellifluous Language.

Liquid Cool might lack the muscular tunes needed for a crossover, but period-perfect tracks such as Kiss the Screen or Over the Weekend nag persuasively.

Reaching is commendable, but ultimately this feels like a throat-clearing before better things to come.

The more restrained moments, such as hit single Lean On, nicely accentuate the crazed moombahton intensity of tracks such as Blaze up the Fire.

His first solo album is a decent riposte: full of urgent, abrasive songs on which Goodwin sounds both creatively invigorated and thoroughly pissed off.

Ultimately, this is the work of an artist in transition, catering to old fans and well-trodden styles while attempting to settle on something new.

The unseemly segments, where Madonna baits and gyrates, can be a hoot. When she acts her age, it is lacklustre and over-enunciated; lived-and-loved stuff trotted out in overblown ballads.

This is not so much a dreadful record as a wasted opportunity.

Indulgent perhaps, but Nelson’s worn, almost conversational vocals remain arresting.

Full of clever sounds, with melodies butting up against countermelodies and more laughs than you might think, Comedown Machine is by no means a bad record. It just has the misfortune of being the record that few Strokes fans want from them.

The weightless Light It Up and the Missy/Timbaland throwback Got Those are better, but ultimately length scuppers Coolaid. Its back half loses coherence as Snoop retreats to a default of weed anthems.

There's enough in the circling guitar lines and dazed melodies of their debut album to induce reveries of late-80s British indie, but it's the ways they play against type that draw you in.