Despite the shadow of tragedy hanging over the project, there’s an irrepressible euphoria to the music throughout.

Midway through Steam Days, Harnser does dark pizzicato things befitting a 90s warehouse rave, while elsewhere, the analogue-melting-into-digital influence of Four Tet is palpable.

The Norwegian duo’s once naive sound has evolved to a smarter, more lyrically resonant electronica, and if it weren’t for a couple of whimsical ballads, this would be a powerful, cohesive goodbye.

While Ti Amo is slow to reveal its charms, there are moments when the cheesy concept--a romanticised version of Italy--is made to seem like a brilliant idea.

Ultimately, you conclude, Jones's golden voice was built for hooting, hollering and hubba-hubba-ing at the ladies, not mulling things over.

A decent debut, then, but with Mai’s rich voice you can’t help feeling that it could have been stratospheric. Instead, it fails to innovate, and all feels a little beige.

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.

It's distressing, elementary and samey yet utterly unignorable.

Stage Whisper is more of a stop-gap than a fourth album proper... But there are gems among the eight unreleased songs.

It’s a perfectly serviceable album, as one might expect, given the pedigree of those involved. But it’s hard to imagine it being met with anything but bemusement at the Grand Ole Opry.

You would fully expect to find strings and piano on an Elbow track, but these can be any scoundrel's knee-jerk shortcut to gravitas. Much better are Guy Garvey's sloshed 40-nothing aperçus, playing off beautifully against a slinky organ melody.

As befits its messy gestation, it’s a patchy affair.

Ultimately, the harder, almost techno-inclined instrumental tracks, such as Little Red Hen or Death in the Gulf Stream, are infinitely better than those burdened with vocals, some lairy and crass, some merely unengaging.

If the sense of overfamiliarity is a bit disappointing for a band once lauded as experimentalists, producer Ethan Kath has also retained his knack for writing terrific hooks and warped melodies. Ornament and Kept are nuggets of brilliantly disjointed electropop.

While this album’s rotating mic-spot keeps things moving like a playlist, the memorability of these tracks bobs up and down like the waves off the coast of Free Nationals’ native California.

Even Elton-sceptics can take solace in how producer T-Bone Burnett continues to improve the veteran piano man by filling the interstices of his work with detail, rendering songs such as the rather good Claw Hammer at least 43% more nuanced.

Curiously, it gets better as it goes on.

Wilder Mind will only make Mumford & Sons more enormous. Mercifully, it has also significantly improved them as a band.

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.

A fine outing that's less "preservation" than extension.

The Way Is Read gets better the further in you get, the thrilling closing title track highlighting the talents of both parties.

Mustafa’s delivery hits a bruised place somewhere between 21st-century folk and bereft R&B.

Assembled from rehearsals rather than the actual concert, it’s something of a field recording but one with arresting power. A noble oddity.

With the exception of Krishna Punk and Devils, the album lacks drive, and at 19 tracks it’s easy to lose focus while listening.

No question his lyrics are smart but they can sound studied, valuing intricacy over flow.

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.

They should step outside of their comfort zone more often.

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

Freak-folk currents still run through tracks such as Fireplace, but Grapefruit is more wilful and abrasive than his last effort, 2013’s Bowler Hat Soup.

The bulk of Love Letters, though, backs off from the glittering mainstream superhighway on to a road less travelled.

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.

The lead-up to Purpose produced three unexpectedly great beats, for Where Are Ü Now, Sorry and What Do You Mean? respectively. Just as unexpectedly, there are even more where these came from.

To impugn such a fundamentally glazed record for losing focus as it nears the out-groove is a little like berating a shark for being snaggle-toothed. But as II unfurls, there are longueurs where Nielson can get a little vague and inward-directed.

Holy Fvck has its flaws – Lovato’s powerful voice is unnecessarily finessed and Auto-Tuned, and 16 tracks is too long. But its gutsy ambition is a thing of substance in and of itself.

The title is optimistic: few of these vocalists display obvious potential, and their presence amid Hinton’s finely calibrated beats can be jarring. The clockwork production accentuates their awkwardness.... It helps that Hinton’s regard for these wannabe superstars seems genuine.

The first few tracks, particularly the Prince-like Compound Fracture, are endearingly spacious and snake-hipped, but The Waterfall’s lacklustre second half indicates they’ve lost touch with the band they once were.

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.

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

It’s a shame, then, that the songs accompanying Grohl’s most powerfully affecting set of lyrics so often fail to reach the same standard [as the Foo Fighters’ 1995 debut].

As with his last few records, Young’s horror at the destruction of the environment remains high in the mix, with a grab-bag of other themes (ageing, self-belief, the iniquities of tech) and a silvery hope that “something new is growing”, as he puts it on the freewheeling title track.

It's all stylishly conceived, but--in part because Lindén's deadpan vocals are buried so deep in the mix--too often it fails to engage.

These are easy wins – a sonic sugar rush that crashes once each three-minute track is over. Yet when Armstrong gives us a glimpse of life away from the party-rapping – exploring his anxieties on Belgrave Road and his relationship with his sister on My G – he showcases a newfound vulnerability.

Variety comes in the form of a gently funky soul interlude midway through that highlights the versatility of James Petralli’s voice. But rather than complementing the rest of the album it betrays Stiff’s lack of cohesion.

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.

As the album warms up and moves from the personal to the politicalit grows teeth, building to MC Mystro's rap about the 2011 riots on More Money, More Fire.

An overarching concern on Petals… is how Williams constructs a workable new femininity free from her old tomboy identity in Paramore. The blooming metaphor is, as a result, slightly overplayed throughout. ... Although there are a couple of low-key co-writes, Williams and York remain the organising creatives, and Williams sounds both free and in control.

The more complex likes of Look Over Your Shoulder’s thrillerish build-and-hush tension, My Own’s dark and shifty Timbalandish textures and the moody, dubstep blues ballad of Forgiven, with its sunburst of a chorus, keep this lusciously atmospheric album well on the right side of smooth.

The album’s title speaks of urgency; its nearest song, Don’t Look Now, details the unwanted advances that bedevil a model. But the episode twinkles a little too prettily for the subject matter.

The less good news is that although every pairing has juice in it – the inclusion of a Nicole Scherzinger-paired Hawaiian traditional is a great curveball – many of these songs feel like over-pretty drawing room star turns. Nothing here is slick, exactly, but much tends towards mellifluous pleasantness – even the songs about protest and murder.

The mix of camaraderie and musical expertise (the formidable Punch Brothers are house band) is infectious, the celebration of politically tinged folk more joyous than the Coens’ downbeat tale.

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

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.

It makes for an incoherent, slightly unsatisfactory whole.

They're such pretty songs, sung with sweet simplicity.

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

The just-so production and mastery of the American songbook is pure Rostam, while Leithauser anchors these story-songs with a plethora of vocal moods: gargles, croons and yelling.

These songs about love and existential sorrow feel purposely airy and unanchored – there’s no percussion – mirroring the psychological freefall of recent times. Ironically, though, they firm up the parallels between Lindeman and fellow complex Canadian, Joni Mitchell.

When it’s good, it’s usually something that sounds like the luscious, clinical opener 4ware, or cow-brained stomper Three Pound Chicken Wing. Otherwise there are too many generic pompous 70s-prog synths grafted on to basic beats.

The rousing Isombard is equally good, but the quality control isn’t maintained, his choruses occasionally sounding laboured. Still, there’s promise in abundance here.

The Chris Isaak romance of Dark Horse and the dusty space rock of Black Winds are lush enough, but there’s not enough deviation from shtick, enough convincing deviance in this “ode to the dark heart” of the US.

A plethora of found sounds and jazz inflections keep everything compelling. But the hovering, sustained and gliding elements miss the brave sensory overload of Aviary and the pop nous of Wilderness. The best track is the simplest: Meyou, a warped, minimal vocal meditation.

This is a tighter record than the first volume, particularly the come-to-bed cheek of Cabaret, featuring his current chart competitor Drake. Things get slushier towards the end with Only When I Walk Away and Not a Bad Thing.

They stick to straightforward pleasures.

Where TMLT fails, it’s because of Stickles’ long-windedness and the self-obsession at the heart of this work; almost certainly a by-product of his diagnosis. Mostly, though, this lament is no tragedy, but a spirited two-fingers; a celebration of the artistic payload of atypical brain chemistry.

There's enough crunch to their hooky electropop to dispel accusations of unwarranted hype.

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

You feel that Slow Club’s own best version of themselves is yet to come.

The feather-light touch of La Havas’s voice can be deceptive; for all her apparent ease, there are sufficient quirks and depths to her writing, not least the scientific analogies on Wonderful (electricity) and Unstoppable (astrophysics).

Telling of new beginnings and lost love, the breeze in her voice and her easy-going melodies act as a smokescreen: these are often direct takes on pain.

Warpaint’s third album is aptly titled, given the startling outbreak of focus here.

Just another solid Pet Shop Boys album.

This compilation of Juan tour-only EP tracks, plus remixes and so on may be a stop-gap between Juan albums proper, but it doesn't feel like filler.

It's hardly a treasure trove of unreleased material but the tape hiss, traffic noise and acoustic arrangements make it an invitingly slackerish alternative.

As ever, Beth’s theorising is air-tight, but ironically, the album stutters most when it is being most provocative.

The commercial emo that has earned Tennessee's Paramore platinum sales is still present on their fourth album, as are the unremarkable ballads, but there's also a new willingness to try other genres. The results are mixed.

There’s plenty of straight-up R&B--No Sleeep, Dammn Baby and Night find Jam, Lewis and Jackson on nicely updated form--but Lessons Learned, for one, is a country-leaning guitar ballad, one of a large handful of songs about hard-won maturity and making the world a better place that play more to the Oprah demographic.

Too much of the material on their fifth album is content to merely sit in the background, not something from which they usually suffer.

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.

French pop in its purest form hasn't really got its groove back since the 60s, but, wisely, it's this very era that this Perpignan duo mine, marrying fuzzed-out psychedelia and agreeably rambling rock with the pop sweetness of that decade's chansons.

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.

Easier Than Lying is shouty and electronic, while You Asked for This finds Halsey fronting a Smashing Pumpkins pastiche. Amid all the Sturm und Drang and sludgy oompah (The Lighthouse) there is some high-quality writing, chiefly in the pizzicato niggles and Jesus analogies of Bells in Santa Fe (“it’s not a happy ending”) and Whispers.

Garbus's voice is jostled too much amid the hectic production to allow its personality to shine through and, with some notable exceptions (the call and response of Real Thing), hooks are hurried on before properly taking root.

Throughout, a commitment to heartfelt songcraft remains the most “country” thing about Sound & Fury.

Jagwar Ma are still playing catch-up with their compatriots, Tame Impala and the Avalanches.

A set of retro-inspired songs that don’t, frankly, refashion the wheel, but boast a certain tremulous, lived-and-loved appeal.

A collection of earnest, country-tinged rock, comes loaded with the hallmarks of Lightbody's band--plaintive vocals and choruses that lumber in the direction of anthemic uplift--but scant evidence of the more nuanced talents surrounding him.

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.

The appeal of this low-key grower lies in Berninger’s woebegone baritone, rubbing up against non-National music that is neither taxing nor obvious. There are feather-light shuffles here like Sleepin’ Light, or pretty, piano-led outings like No Time to Crank the Sun.

It’s an intensely, intentionally stressful listen, the occasional victory of thumping, clanking grooves over the scraping, grating racket offering an illusion of normality before snatching it away again.

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

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.