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.

It treads a fine line between swashbuckling versatility and a lack of cohesion. Versatility largely wins out.

Equal parts funky electro throwback and prog chanson monster, St Vincent's fourth album feels like the culmination of a trajectory from the margins to centre stage with a minimum of intellectual loss.

The only downside is that Kiwanuka could have been even braver.

Even though these arrangements are not gratuitous, and All Mirrors is beautifully wrought, it never quite devastates. More weirdness would have helped, and less default goth-pop. Strangely, Olsen’s voice gets a bit lost in the mix, a little too ill-defined, atmospheric and understated to stand up to the operatics surrounding her.

Crutchfield rides a middle road here. Same producer yet different band; same sprightly Americana vibe yet more emotionally placid than its predecessor, which recounted a troubled reckoning with her newfound sobriety.

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.

Bright Green Field has a hurtling energy, each song shifting restlessly, repeatedly in style and pace. It’s a shame, then, that the vocals of drummer and lyricist Ollie Judge so often pull it back to earth.

These 16 tracks (17 on the deluxe version) play out quite pleasurably in their entirety, the joins between Swift, Dessner and Antonoff ultimately only of niche interest. But Swift’s powerful songs reach their climaxes with bittersweet orchestrations, rather than blows to the solar plexus or a ringing in the ears. Everything hovers; little truly lands.

While her pure, clear voice is as expressive and engaging as ever, Valentine is more accessible and less interesting.

There’s a sharpness in these songs that still unsettles. It’s there in Crutchfield’s vocals, louder and fiercer than before, and on songs such as Fire, which is also difficult to love. Her lyrics, tackling subjects including addiction and self-hatred, often feel too verbose, but they become surprising and refreshing on closer listen.

Prince’s tightly controlled production style, down to his proteges’ smallest inflections – the Time’s Gigolos Get Lonely Too is a spot-the-difference exercise – also means there’s little that differs substantially from its more polished released version, delicious as it is to hear him sing Martika’s blissful Love… Thy Will Be Done.

On this sequel, Gibbs mostly sounds bored, aggressively bored or boringly aggressive. The ever creative Madlib chucks in everything he can find to dazzle the listener. When this coheres--in the vicious swamp-beat of Massage Seats, for example--it’s sensational. Often his work sounds too dense to compete with mass-market trap, and struggles to support Gibbs’s gruff rhymes.

Packed as it is with all this goodness, Art Angels fails to comprehensively blow your mind. Ultimately, Grimes has not reinvented the pop wheel, she’s just driven it off road a little.

Separate Ways and Try are wounded but tender breakup songs, Kansas a gentle reflection on a one-night stand. An unremarkable band blues and an unlistenable finger-on-wineglass affair contribute little to an album that’s well-found but, like much of Young’s recent output, for the committed.

Some moments fall flat – Lonely is cloying, paint-by-numbers EDM-pop that doesn’t fully land. Still, Indigo is a polished collection that spans both pop and rap with confidence.

Words make Arca’s tense, sad hyper-modernity a little more accessible, if no less strange.

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.

A handful more tracks and now, the full monty, reveals that there seem to be two Wet Legs high-kicking for supremacy: the knockabout, sly, absurdist outfit and a band that turn out to be quite like a lot of other bands.

McMahon follows up Love with Freedom, tackling troubled masculinity through a series of character studies and a mesmerising, still psych-indebted sound that has fleshed out even further.

Oblique lyrics provide few hand-holds; while his distress is palpable, it remains frustratingly nondescript.

Sophie’s defining hyper-minimalism has given way to a new lushness. While enduringly “other”, tracks like Infatuation and Pretending lack focus, and this wafty iteration isn’t as original as Sophie’s other modes.

[7 Rings] is a hit, but isn’t actually all that great, using Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favourite Things as its sing-song musical base. The rest of the album remains of interest for its evolutions in sound, delivery and attitude.

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

Those happy to go with Van Etten will be rewarded by swooping pop noir, groaning organs and a sax solo, plus considerable hard-won wisdom.

A squally electric guitar solo lets you know Love & Hate isn’t just another slice of vintage soul, but something a little more intriguing than that.

The unremarkably housey SW9 9SL tries to up the stakes, but dreamy as the somnolent groove and sitar twinkle of Two Thousand and Seventeen and the nervily upbeat steel pan sounds of Lush are, there’s nothing with the jolting surprise of Kool FM from 2013’s jungle-flavoured Beautiful Rewind, and the album title feels, ultimately, misleading.

Where his debut was part Marvin Gaye, part Prince, blackSummers’ Night is light on funk, making its creator, in the era of Frank Ocean, look like the yesterday’s man of R&B.