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

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

By now, most listeners will know where they stand on Vedder’s distinctive holler and the band’s beefiness; little on Dark Matter is likely to enchant gen Z away from their own heroes. But the faithful will rejoice.

Again, there are no beats, just washes of guitar noise; the difference this time is that Gordon’s vocals are now buried so deep within the mix that they are largely unintelligible, and strangely unobtrusive.

Somewhere between the cuteness of Shamir and the scariness of Mykki Blanco you will find New York’s Le1f, a ballet dancer-turned-producer-turned rapper. Although his out-ness is a big part of the appeal of this warped and edgy party album, the nod to riot grrrl in its title hints at far wider-ranging agendas within.

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.

This album is, without a doubt, a big, glitchy, swooning, hyper-modern declaration of love.

It can feel a little lacking in direction – honed down from more than 900 home experiments, it’s eclectic almost to a fault, though there’s enough to treasure among its dreamy meanderings.

It’s a lovely sound, but the songwriting veers more towards the serviceable than the inspired.

It doesn’t quite match the standard of late-career high point The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009), but the album is not without its moments.

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

So you might come to Teatime Dub Encounters--a most English half-smile of titles, one that echoes the rueful cosiness of another Underworld opus, Second Toughest in the Infants--for the antic misdemeanours, or for the latterday Dylanish radio drawl, but you will stay for the way Iggy confesses that he has always struggled to make friends and keep the ones he’s got--the gist of I’ll See Big.

Equals tilts heavily into contentment and maturity, including an obligatory lullaby – Sandman – for his little one. Nice Ed gains the upper hand, with a commensurate loss in musical interest.

Smith is an easy fit for disco pop. ... But then Ed Sheeran crops up on Who We Love, bearing the unnecessary gift of a midtempo wet blanket.

This is, ultimately, an album that has a spectacularly strong sense of place – London, NW1 and NW3 – and some very definitive British musical reference points, which nonetheless wonders, eloquently, where home is.

The reinventions just aren’t brave enough.

Bodega Bait or ATM don’t bring anything to the kids v commerce discourse that you couldn’t get from a jpeg of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Much better is GND Deity, a punchy metallic funk side-eye at the “girl next door” online sex industry, electrifying despite dated references to the long-gone web pages.

For every hit... there are a couple of misses.

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.

It’s an impressive display of ambition and reinvention, all the more dramatic because singer-songwriters in Lala Lala’s previous, Liz Phair-ish incarnation are 10-a-penny.

The results are undeniably classy.

Devotees will no doubt swoon (and sceptics scoff) at its florid excesses, but Amos's voice possesses enough conviction and personality to breathe life into what could have been an orchestral folly.

No track here breaks the five-minute mark; only Something Human lets the side down with an acoustic guitar.

I Long To See You finds him still busting genres.

While not quite a return to form, the album’s sleek yet plaintive production is a welcome reminder of what Blake does best.

It’s a buoyant sound--Brahim’s voice is too airy for drones and chants--led by rolling pieces such as Calles de Dajla and followed by slow, contemplative blues.

There's plenty of widescreen, orchestral-surge production to match the look-how-far-we've-come sentiment, but Devlin remains most compelling in scowling underdog mod

Sometimes the angst seems to overpower the song structure, as on The Apartment, where Plunkett describes the newly acquired habit of smoking as “performing my need”. ... Best of all is Swimmer, reminiscent of Glasser or Austra with its chilly, rippling arpeggios and pulsing, depth-charge beats.

Originality is not his strongest suit, but songs like Hearts, Repeating and deeper album cuts such as All In the Night are so bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and well-crafted it’s not an issue.

Lemon Glow is particularly engrossing, a curdled night sky of a tune whose constituent parts weave in and out of focus. Black Car provides even more enthralling unease, where the various elements become unexpectedly off-kilter and 3D. ... Elsewhere, though, it’s business as usual.

Sometimes it's hair-raisingly great... Elsewhere, this incandescent music can stray into baroque perversity.

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.

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

Thompson narrates this break-up in a voice tinged as much with near-eastern devotional music as it is traditional song.

Combining the sounds and textures of jazz quartet and string quartet is a tricky business, and there are moments here when the two seem about to come unstuck.

Odell has shown his promise but he has yet to prove his range.

A little string-plucking, some groaning cello and the odd beat adorn Obel's tightly focused set of songs, which approximate the sound of snow falling on a disused chapel while a solitary candle burns inside.

It’s a compilation that doesn’t merely compile; these tunes were laid down specifically for the project, taking cues from US trap sounds as well as London’s Caribbean forms.

Here are 12 songs about emotional hurt and partial recovery; some cliche-ridden (yes, one song here is really called Love Is Blind), others classy and nagging.

Sometimes this feels a bit like being lectured in a pub car park on a Friday night.

The contrast between the rough and Ne-Yo’s ultra-smoothness only adds to his appeal.

Ample evidence of why Mercer's songs are so widely cherished. But there remains something a little clinical about the efficiency with which he dispatches these studies in perky wistfulness.

The 90s electronic titans use vintage analogue synths, subtly retro-fitting their sound in a way that, ironically, brings it bang up to date.

If Wanderer promised more bold artistic statements, Covers pivots on sorely needed understanding. That feeling is relayed in turn to the listener: hugs galore.

Whether you meet All Or Nothing with the same energy depends on your hunger for more of a style already so thoroughly revived; for an album whose songs champion agency and resistance, its sounds are somewhat off-the-shelf.

Harris's production has become increasingly homogenised and, despite the array of vocalists, everything here risks sounding the same.

Much of it is pretty dispensable, with new songs Smiley and Acid Horse generic and lacklustre, offering little of the gift for transcendent melody twined around tough beats that made Orbital so iconic. Fortunately, the tour-ready updates of Chime, Impact (The Earth Is Burning) and Halcyon + On + On are much more engaging, and a trippy, strung-out Belfast rivals the original for quality.

Ultimately, like a hipper London Grammar, Poliça are too dreamy and refined for their own good.

The title track and single Tantor are decent, and Shakedown a warm beachside strut, with Brown’s lyrical ice shards speared through. Bass Jam is lovely nostalgia, shimmering harmonies surrounding him like ghosts of his former selves. Otherwise, the beats feel slightly tired, casting a pall greater than any of Brown’s recent misfortunes.

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.

Over a brief seven tracks, the 40-year-old superstar confirms his production prowess, veering between sparse, hyper-modern styles and compositions which hark back to the soulful bent of the producer-turned-rapper’s early career; a volatile mix of the sweet and the acrid, the sentimental and the tendentious.

These squelchy tunes pack much summer sunshine, and even kitsch jungle noises on the title track. But the long-range outlook is a little more mixed.

Though Pallett is guilty of trying too hard to impress ("Even as a child you felt the terror of the infinite," begins Song for Five & Six), the Canadian's melodies seldom disappoint.

There are fractured beats, and tendril-like melodies, but here nothing really lands--as either protest or revelation. ... But mid-album, Cherry and Hebden hit a very sweet spot indeed as Natural Skin Deep finally syncs Hebden’s rhythmic dub jazz and Cherry’s pop nous.

Contemporary, ancient, tropical and cosmopolitan: Ibeyi’s debut album pulls off an audacious series of culture clashes.

The Terror is by no means a bad record. It's just the low that comes with the highs.

This album is crammed with tweeting electronics, hydraulic rhythms, sleights of hand and Smith’s own backseat vocals; she hints at non-western forms and systems music, but never so you are not charmed.

Overall, it does the job, but no more than that.

The overall effect is deeply, magnificently peaceful, meditative, even; ambient certainly monopolises certain sections of the thesaurus.

Harlecore is big, dumb escapist fun with – as no one says any more – a massive donk on it.

Covers make up the backbone of this perfectly enjoyable, but tame release.

Roughly half of the album cleaves fabulously to this back-to-basics template, with songs such as What You Really Mean drawing out the doo-wop sadness in Gano’s songcraft. The rest is what you might call “touring” Femmes.

It reins in the genre-hopping. Although some of the magic is lost in the process, it consequently comes across as a more cohesive album, one that’s suffused with warmth and optimism, giving equal weight to rock, soul and jazz.

North feels like early Beck, grungy guitar with an old-school hip-hop bump, while Sofia pairs Strokes guitar with Stereolab-style ironic Eurodisco and Impossible offers intimate confessions over baroque-pop harpsichord and shunting beats.

Okereke’s shaky voice means that Fatherland is far slighter than it might have been. Only Versions of Us truly resonates, and that’s thanks in no small part to Corinne Bailey Rae, whose interplay with Okereke is a joy.

Mixing country sweetness with rock swagger, Lane’s set takes in music biz demographics (700,000 Rednecks) and gambling metaphors (Jackpot), while songs such as Companion and Forever Lasts Forever save a little room for vulnerability.

For the most part it’s the more delicate moments that suit her best, particularly on the pleasingly acerbic Cold and the lovelorn sigh of This Time, but overall the immaculate sheen smothers the emotional honesty.

It’s hard to keep up, then--but worth it.

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

It’s let down by a few too many unremarkable ballads (Fumes, I Would), but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Testament shows this comeback is more than simply an exercise in nostalgia.

At its centre is Lambert's ebullient personality and a classic Texan voice that can deliver ballads or arena rock with equal ease.

Now 64, Ely still sings with agility and swagger, though retrospection and mortality tie together the songs here.

Solid if formulaic, Blue Lips peaks with unfaltering vocals and the kind of humid, polished production that would make Jack Antonoff jealous.

There's an endearing, if slight love song in Me and You but the attempt at social commentary (Messed Up Kids) is a lot less successful.

It's by no means a bad record, although the ballads are best avoided.

On this sprawling, often horizontal record, Lacy’s default setting is a blissful Los Angeles funk that bleeds easily into punchier hip-hop passages. Occasionally, he’ll show off his Prince 2.0 soloing skills on songs like Love 2 Fast.

For all the variety, no single track stands out; Nérija rarely stray from the comfortable territory of mid-tempo, mid-dynamic improvisation.

A surprising trip to an altogether other time and place.

A set of songs that, if not remarkable, are at least an upgrade.

The instrument [carillon] affords Weber a chance to expand his hibernal sound in various interesting ways, but ultimately this feels more like a scholarly exercise than a fully realised album.

The extra girth suits them well, and their old wit and twinkle hasn’t deserted them as the shimmering, harmony-laden pop of Miss Fortune attests.

The music gets better and better, with the out-and-out xx-y Age of Miracles breaking sonically satisfying new ground.

It’s a graphic exemplar of the contemporary Atlanta sound: stark backing, nagging hook and staccato wordplay, as distinct from the lyricism that traditionalists hold dear.

It is a brave experimentation through unexpected sounds, including Depeche Mode-style new wave on Sainted, but Big Joanie are on more stable and satisfying ground when they put the glittering melodies aside.

Wayne’s unheralded 13th studio album proves that the 37-year-old’s flow can still be fearsome, even if his edit function remains iffy.

Her third album stays close to the formula, though with a slightly darker, starker turn.

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.

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

Universal Themes is another chapter in the larger work in which the gruff San Franciscan transplant continues to grouse about hipsters (Cry Me A River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blues), count blessings, and ponders the cruel senselessness of the universe with intermittently startling guitar work.

This 13th album may be too subdued or restrained for some, lacking the combustible power of their live work, but over the years the Charlatans have dug a groove they sound incredibly comfortable inhabiting.

While Borrell 1 has many faults--too many sax solos, insufficient sackcloth and ashes--the jauntiness with which Zazou disport themselves often makes up for it.

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.

While hardly a move into brave new musical pastures, it's not without charm and the use of a female voice puts just enough distance between this and the original.

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

The record is most effective when Lindén sounds more animated, as on I’ll Be the Death of You and the nimble, propulsive, Kraftwerk-influenced Neon Lights. Unfortunately these moments are overshadowed by lengthier excursions that give longueurs a bad name.

For every genre-busting banker such as Human (inventive, effects-laden soul) or Recovery (pugnacious swing-pop), there are so-so tracks that should have been palmed off on to someone else.

Tellingly, there’s a quiet contentment replacing the bleakness that marked 2014/15’s companion Single Mothers/Absent Fathers sets.

Mainly for completists, then, but they'll feel lavishly rewarded.