Since much of it has been released in EP form before, you can't help but fear Dahlström and her foil Gustaf Karlöf might have peaked before they have really begun.

Once you’ve laboured through the fug of distortion on Boys in Heat, there’s nothing much contained within. But there are terrific moments elsewhere.

Sometimes it feels more like an oral history project, with first-hand spoken-word accounts by Liam Bailey (the title track), or Brown’s appreciation of her family on Just Be. Mostly, though, she succeeds in channelling her anger, sadness and defiance, all the while conveying gratitude for the richness of her Caribbean roots.

Weaker moments such as early single Fluffy or drummer Joel Amey’s drippy vocal on Swallowtail can’t mar a debut giddy with vim and future potential.

Souther sings in a mid-70s croon, tuneful but grain-free and, for a man inspired by Roy Orbison, oddly unemotional.

Mahal is ultimately too uneven to be an album to particularly cherish.

While Loving in Stereo palpably lacks Sault’s moral fire, their soundscapes do align very pleasurably indeed.

If this is her last album (as she has intimated), a true original bows out on a more equable note.

Fortunately, there is nothing noticeably sub-par about the tunes – or Johnson’s voice or Young’s brio on the guitar.

Imaginative adaptations of archival material play off against theoretical pieces to give this intellectually rigorous, uneven, moving record depth and breadth.

Not a great deal seems to be happening--then you are suddenly brought up short by the guitar that sings out on Back to You or the polyphony of Leaving Song.

Her voice remains the main attraction on this second album but its prettiness often sounds thin against the sort of arrangements that invite the description "plinky-plonky".

There's nothing here to match the wildly brilliant ambition of their late-80s/early-90s peak, but "Underground" packs a hefty punch, while frenetic closer "Words Right Out of My Mouth" sounds like an ornithophobic Stooges.

His first solo album is a decent riposte: full of urgent, abrasive songs on which Goodwin sounds both creatively invigorated and thoroughly pissed off.

Mumford & Sons-style tunes are still part of the package, but Man on Wire possesses a depth absent from their old songs, while the highlight, Between the Saltmarsh and the Sea, is a sumptuous fusion of folk and electronica.

It’s immersive, but bar a couple of songs and features (Southern rap don Project Pat and enigmatic MC BennY RevivaL are both standouts) it lacks the urgency or vitality of its two predecessors. Instead, this is a lounge-y mixtape that drifts comfortably within Hynes’s beautiful sonic realm.

Rainbow is both stranger and more normal than you expect; uneven--does Kesha really rhyme “highway” with “Hyundai”?--but likable.

Although nothing is exactly under-produced, the governing principle remains loose. White is so sweet-sounding, you might blink and miss the commentary of songs such as Crashing Your Party (“gimme that bow, gimme that stone, gimme that rake, I’m gonna take my place”) or Gold Fire, the most fully realised piece of music here.

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.

There are welcome changes of pace – the rib-rattling Forever featuring Post Malone a highlight – but the tempo drops again for a suite of acoustic sketches that touch on God (the title track), patience (Confirmation) and, on ETA, the joys of online surveillance (“Drop me a pin so I can know your location”). It’s a subdued end to an album that feels like a purely selfish endeavour on Bieber’s part.

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.

There’s no sloganeering as memorable as Fight the Power here, although there is a song with a metaphor about building tables (Violent Complicity). Still, there’s a compelling quality to Victoria Ruiz’s vocals, and the welcome brass embellishments recall X-Ray Spex’s Lora Logic.

On the self-produced Revelation Road she's gone minimalist and acoustic, most of its songs documenting the pain of lost love, veering between southern soul ("Even Angels") and MOR country ("The Thief").

If there is a fault, it's that too little lodges in the memory, Spilling Lines and opener Chain My Name aside. Still, this is another assured and immersive album.

Though Damogen Furies is certainly not for the faint-hearted--the distorted electronic stabs and divebombing beats of Baltang Ort may well be the lift muzak for a descent into hell--nor is it quite the Pandora’s box you might expect.

Molly Rankin’s pipes are pure 60s pop on Not My Baby, and her songwriting wit sparkles throughout this nuanced break-up album.

Too often equating emotion with shouting (see the final third of Father), Confident doesn’t quite elevate Lovato to where she needs to be.

The album works because the two men, both fortysomething and either born Scottish (Middleton) or Glasgow School of Art-educated (Shrigley), share a puerile, misanthropic simpatico and a rinky-dink, borderline outsider approach to their art, in which social niceties are frequently torched.