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

As a whole, it's a highly inventive take on the house template, very much in keeping with the rest of the DFA label's output – though a pattern emerges that sees Void's languorous, treated vocals backed, and often dominated, by highly aggressive synth lines.

There are glints of light here and there, and some saving humour in the 26-year-old's lyrics.

If it's a familiar trip, it's also a highly entertaining one--not least Sand Dance's sprightly, shamanic caper.

Happily for purists, Hebden doesn't tamper with the duo's mojo, allowing tracks such as the Kurdish Warni Warni to play themselves out in an organic frenzy.

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.

It all might sound like a terminal case of record-collector rock, but there's a charm and ramshackleness at work here that carry these old ideas with ragged verve.

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.

At 14 songs, however, the album soon starts to sag, with Graham’s approach to emoting – ie sing louder – eventually overwhelming the weaker songs. ... It’s in the smaller moments that Graham seems most comfortable.

Rather than arcane and austere, though, his fifth album is by turns bleakly beautiful and playfully rampant.

While Guesswork starts promisingly, with the honourable exception of the sparkling Moments and Whatnot the second half of this front-loaded album is a little underwhelming, its songs needlessly extended when a more succinct execution might have worked better.

The best bits of The Tarnished Gold hark further back to the Byrds for their sense of breezy acceptance.

The rest of Wysing Forest rewards patient exploration, but nothing else quite matches Amphis for effect.

Swift is a songwriter for the ages, “stronger than a 90s trend”, as she sings on Willow. But she’s still a little muted on Evermore as she was on Folklore by pastel music that smears Vaseline on her otherwise keen lens.

Standout tracks such as Special Girl, with its intricate percussion, offer an insight into the intriguing, playful sonic flavours Clark could be exploring more thoroughly.

The mood is prayerful and contemplative, the music a mix of synth drones, Krishna-style chants and Coltrane’s poised, yearning vocals.

Too much filler towards the end of the album detracts slightly, but this is another solid set.

The first half of their joint endeavour is hugely stoned, with the more strident sounds of the Americans cutting across the chants and rhythms of their hosts. Vocals become more prominent on the second half.

Her third album has plenty of likable qualities: mild lyrical quirkiness (making doe eyes at Banksy), moderate eclecticism (dabbling in 70s MOR and breathy electropop), and an unerring knack for hummable melodies.

The main drawback is that hip producer James Ford isn’t allowed to conjure up as much newfangled ju-ju as Spirit could stand. Songs like So Much Love could come from any era.

Borderline silly at times, it is nonetheless a carefully crafted piece of work with a distinctive sound.

The production aims for James Blake levels of subtlety but frequently falls short (though songs such as Better Man Than He are undeniably catchy). Page’s lyrics, too, could use some refinement.

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’s potent and audacious, if a little too far out.

When that results in music that sounds like music, it's great.

Bailey’s refusal to be pigeonholed artistically is admirable, but frustrating.

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.

True to quixotic form, Free doesn’t build on the success of that record [2016’s Post Pop Depression], Iggy veering off at yet another tangent, courtesy of avant garde guitarist Noveller, aka Sarah Lipstate, and jazz trumpeter Leron Thomas.

Roosevelt’s is an airbrushed, off-kilter kind of pop, and while he still isn’t pushing the envelope, Young Romance is a pleasant enough listen.

Although Merrie Land has its flaws, this son of Colchester is usually right about the important stuff.

Davis completists will grab this, but others may find there’s just not enough meat in the sandwich.

Although they sound the part, on the basis of this breakneck 27-minute debut, the actual songwriting seems too much like an afterthought. Only the Sonic Youth-indebted White Noise and the more considered closer Talk Show have the hooks to lodge more than fleetingly in the mind.

Variety isn’t always matched by Moore’s melancholic vocal, however, which eventually starts to feel a little too mannered, leaving you longing for some fire with the fragility.

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

The [resulting album] is an engaging collision of styles.

Songs such as Jade Green are so focused on the minutiae of her life as to feel tedious. She finds a delicate balance between the two, though, on Anime Eyes, a dizzying, almost comically lovestruck track that finds Musgraves eschewing the tasteful zen of the rest of the album in favour of all-out lyrical maximalism. It’s a flavour Deeper Well could have used more of.

Blue Banisters could do with a sharper focus – some of these 15 songs are outtakes dating back years – and a hip-hopped-Morricone instrumental interlude feels like an incongruous eruption from her “gangster Nancy Sinatra” era. But it offers glimpses of vistas to be explored beyond Lana’s customary LA backdrops and a legacy already secure.

The anti-gun Run Through the Jungle gets a shimmering treatment from Spain’s Bunbury, Texas’s Los Lonely Boys raise dust on Born on the Bayou, and Oakland’s Bang Data give the anti-war Fortunate Son a bilingual hip-hop makeover.

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

Patchy but playful in places, Trustfall is reliably Pink.

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.

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.

Pink has melody to burn, but the unevenness of Pom Pom is a stumbling block, even allowing leeway for lysergic non-linearity.

After three tracks of fast-paced garage rock, Band Breaker wrongfoots us with a lolling dub rhythm.

While Funk Wav Bounces hits all the right notes, Harris strains to maintain the relaxed vibe.

The biggest draw comes in the folk-leaning songs. Beginning with "Apple Carts" and concluding with "The Dancing King" there is an Albarn solo album of sorts here, hidden among the stern runes.

Khan is exceptionally good at dream worlds--The Bride chews over her love and its loss in a series of hovering, swelling ballads that somehow do not cloy.

The human guests all serve some purpose. ... But the instrumental tracks that don’t bother with female vocals, or opera, are just better.

There are plenty of big tunes here and no shortage of chest-beating, but too often Brun’s lyrics bring things down with a bump, shooting for emotional sincerity but drifting into tepid platitudes.

A second album that could’ve hit a home run if it hadn’t worked so hard to cover all the bases.

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

This adds welcome colour to the xx cinematic universe, but it’s no blockbuster.

There is little original here. But McCann has his moments.

In among all this pervasive beauty (which tends towards expansive prettiness and resonant succour rather than the sterner, more austere end of the ambience spectrum), it feels like only the eight-minute apex track Deep in the Glowing Heart rearranges the listener’s molecules in a transformational way.

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

Much of this record deals in warm West Coast pop, its hair-rock extensions grafted on to hazy melodies and harmonies

Distinguished guests--UK nearly siren AlunaGeorge, rapper Vince Staples--are ushered respectfully through a series of viable electronic hinterlands, where a couple of them, notably perennial cameo supplier Little Dragon and Wu Tang vet Raekwon, manage to put down roots in actual songs.

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.

The New Abnormal remains a frustrating listen despite its gleam. Faster tempos would have helped.

It would all be so much anodyne chart mulch, but Anne-Marie has something of a plain-speaking everywoman image too. Some tracks here connect a little deeper, offering common-sense snapshots of unglamorous lives.

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.

An intriguing duo on their debut album who expand to a foursome live.

There are more reflective moments, like Time Is Never on Our Side and If I Could See Your Face Again, where fiddler Eleanor Whitmore sings a widow’s part. Numbers such as Black Lung complete the evocation of thankless blue-collar toil, though Earle has done as much before on 1999’s The Mountain, when no one was voting for Trump.

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

Witness’s filler can misfire, such as the forgettable Mike Will Made It-produced Tsunami. “Purposeful pop”, meanwhile, is a hard trick to pull off.

On bravura cuts like EVP or the electronic ballad But You, Hynes has both funk and gossamer production skills, the better to unify this sprawling project. Elsewhere the patchwork of sounds don’t quite gel as heroically as you would have hoped.

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.

Direct and austere, there is little fat here.

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.

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

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.

Appleby lays it on a bit thick, which is why Faye O'Rourke's powerful, bruised vocals on three songs out of 11 prove a welcome respite.

It's a slender, amateur volume but delightful.

For the most part these more outward-looking conceits are housed in familiar musical settings--the Bond theme-lite Guilty feels like a song she’s released five times already--but there’s fun to be had in Til I’m Done’s plastic disco shimmy and the skipping, featherlight pop of Kings and Queens.

It all makes for an absorbing performance and intriguing album.

Untitled is palpably fractious.

Her more experimental material can be heavier going: the sparkling funk of Pump’s first half gives way to an interminable coda that’s far more annoying than clever.

The playing crackles with live-in-studio spontaneity and Hiatt emerges a hard-travellin' hero.

For every 1 Sun--unexpected enviro-pop with a lysergic edge--there are two Miley Tibetan Bowlz, in which Cyrus ululates over the sound of ringing eastern tones.

This album doesn’t feel much like Uchis’s artistic step-up, her Norman Fucking Rockwell or El Mal Querer, but more like a suck-it-and-see step on – a hastily released album that suggests her best is yet to come.

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.

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.

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

Crossan never strays from the formula. Each track is a verse-chorus sugar rush, giving the listener a three-minute hit of predictable entertainment across radio-friendly styles.

A seamless fusion that casts a low-key but binding spell.

What should be dull is transformed into something irresistible, thanks to her simply faultless voice.

It’s a promising debut, marred only by a slight lack of identity.

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.

This record is just shy of being truly groundbreaking. Polachek remains too much of a class act, a little too wedded to conventional beauty on songs like Look At Me Now, to really take her pop to the bleeding edge.

A product of lockdown isolation, it comprises two lengthy soundscapes that blend his trademark layers of coruscating noise with sounds found on his travels over the past decade. Set out of context, these field recordings become for the most part wilfully abstract and very much open to interpretation.

A remarkable band, still wrestling with the most difficult issues, still searching for beauty in the void.

Raskit--his sixth album--is the veteran MC’s back-to-basics response, some of it predictable but much of it riveting.

Not every track is a killer, but most snarl (or sweet-talk) their way into the Pretenders’ lofty canon.

Fine Line is a confident step in Styles’s whimsical musical adventure.

At times, however, they come across as a little too ponderous, the likes of Haunt and stadium-indie plod Echo noteworthy mainly for their complete lack of spark. It makes for an album that, weighing in at an hour long, can feel rather bloated.

Bubblegum Dog is more engaging for its muscular delivery and surreal lyrics, and there’s a sense of space to the soaring Nothing Changes. Ultimately, though, for all its gloss, Loss of Life feels a little disappointing.

There isn't anything as irresistible as "Everybody's Changing" or "Spiralling" this time around, but this is still another smoothly accomplished set.

Though Sivu’s own developments are not drastic, they’re certainly beguiling.