The duo’s first full-length project stays close to the club, proving Dickson’s canny ear for foot-twitching rhythms accompanied by exuberant Bollywood strings. However, on songs such as Hurricanes the spiky drums and candied orchestration submerge McAlmont, leaving him politely fighting for attention down in the mix. It’s mostly fine – Happy Ending, Otherwise and The Fever are fun – but that succulent voice, lighter than a fly on a feather, needs more space, more time.

It’s comfortably strange territory, and while it might not open any new or mind-melting doors, Thee Oh Sees remain rampantly good fun.

You'd rather hope their systems/world music jams might be more wiggy than they are. Still, this second helping is a match for its predecessor.

Sometimes ornery, sometimes tender, this is how honky-tonk heroes grow old.

Even though some of these songs are less than the sum of their parts, it’s hard not to warm to a collaboration that comes up with a track as funky and modal as Sunday.

In Stonechild, Hoop has streamlined her sound. It’s hard not to feel her sentiments could benefit from some similar pruning.

The questioning Adore is a slow Left Bank skulk, the Savages equivalent to a torch song, but Savages work best at speed.

For all the promise here, the definitive Ladytron album remains the 2011 compilation Best of 00-10.

It's an uneven departure.

Bibb's tone is characteristically dignified.

High As Hope still has the odd damp patch, and does not lack for oxygen: references to skyscrapers, and overproduced backing vocals see to that. There are skies full of song.

There are droney lullabies such as Pine Box here, and lots of lengthy, oscillating guitar freakouts as well as the obligatory Velvet Underground pose.

Colin Elliot, who has worked with Richard Hawley, is a good match for the material, and his production skills make a cohesive whole of the diverse strands.

While there are flashes of brilliance--the pulsating Alessia Cara duet I Can Only; the bolshy strut of Fab-- too many songs feel dated or unable to properly showcase JoJo’s raw vocal (opener Music is trampled under the emotional weight).

Her seventh album in seven years is all filthy lyrics and crashing dubstep drops: R&B-pop turned up to 11.

What they’re trying to say isn’t always clear--are they sixth-form shock merchants or more profound?--but the five-piece most impress at their least confrontational.

There are longueurs--even Shawn Colvin can’t retrieve the Stones’ turgid Wild Horses--but it’s an enjoyable showcase of vocal talent.

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

His follow-up project, All Over the Place, is aptly titled. It fidgets from genre to genre, UK garage to drill, pop to Afro swing, but never quite finds its resting place.

While unlikely, Mvula's fusions aren't aurally threatening: this remains a woman musing on the vicissitudes of love, while heavenly instrumentation shimmers around her.

There's a brisker, more persuasive earworm in Amelita but otherwise little here that really sticks.

It all blends into a sonically rich album, perfect for gazing dreamily out of windows at passing landscapes, even if it doesn’t reach any new destinations.

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

The high quality isn't sustained throughout, but this is another solidly impressive outing.

Many of these more, ahem, contemplative songs may be thin on Perry's former playfulness and long on the stuff of Eckhart Tolle, but a kind of girly simpatico sustains them and transfers easily to the stronger tracks, where Perry's back in the game.

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.

Anachronistic at times, it’s still endearingly schmaltzy, with Kali Uchis’s delicious intonations, smooth rap from Blvck Seeds, and twinkling, Dilla-esque keys on Hi-on-Heels (co-written and produced by Snoop Dogg).

Perhaps the NSFW art and videos for Vanity and En skew the narrative, but Mutant feels even more sexual than its predecessor.