Ultimately some of the material sounds so polished it’s been rendered a little featureless (Little Blue, the title track). A little more grit wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The project's brevity certainly explains the lack of coherence over the 14 tracks, although that's not to say there aren't some thrilling individual moments.

There are tunes aplenty, making this second Protomartyr album a surprisingly pleasurable dose of swaggering anomie.

A largely mediocre first six tracks. Just as the jury threaten to return an “off with his head” verdict on producer Joshua Welton, Prince redeems himself with three absolute belters.

All slow builds and gradual dawnings, this rich follow-up ponders the artistic process with a gentleness that belies great depth.

It’s a bold, fun gamble, and one with ample winnings.

What rescues Oshin from being a set of aqueous dream-pop search engine tags is the band's latent Krautrock bent. Past Lives and Human really could go on for another couple of minutes, such is the lock of their grooves.

Its songs, by southerner Randall Bramlett, don’t have the heft of Dylan or Simone, but prove a good fit for Lavette’s heart-on-sleeve vocals.

In revving so hard, though, the Black Keys have perhaps left behind in the dust the subtleties that made Brothers such an intriguing ride.

Kimbie's levels of invention are such that this album still feels tricksy and cutting-edge.

Pop uber-producer Max Martin is somewhat inevitably on hand to make sure the album gleams even harder than this sharp, lurid foursome do on their own. Unfortunately, Rush! is also a record that dashes about trying to tick all the boxes, with Måneskin’s English-language songs far outnumbering the Italian ones.

Co-writer Björn Yttling brings some extra zip to the mid-tempo power pop, but you're still left wishing for something a little more revealing and bold.

James Holden has never actually sounded like BOC, but this time around he shares their penchant for analogue gear and mantric, pagan repetition.

Their hometown makes itself known--lots of songs are accented with steel guitar--but the instrumentation stays delicate throughout.

A grime mixtape veteran, Jermaine Scott combines plenty of chart-friendly tracks on his mainstream debut ("Traktor" and "Unorthodox" have already been hits) with just enough erudite self-examination ("Forgiveness") to warrant more than a passive listen.

There are some more adventurous diversions, including a guest spot from Kendrick Lamar.

Dalle's first record under her own name recalibrates bravely.

Grohl and co are on point, the tracklist has girth and depth. What Concrete and Gold lacks, perhaps, is actual concrete: fresh, modern, risky architecture, rather than Beatles tributes.

It hasn't the shiver factor of his debut but there's pleasure in such smooth, elegantly crafted songs after his recent strainings.

Her first record in seven years, the discord is a new kind of awkward.

Yorke's second album away from Radiohead is surprisingly accessible for one so extensively jammed then spliced together by machines.

HBHBHB finds her circling the drain of an imploded relationship, this time with novel directness.

Though life has its shadows still (the motorik psych-country epic Round the Horn, the vocoder lament Christmas Down Under), the core of C’est La Vie is radiant happiness, Houck’s familiar sounds buffed to a transcendent shine.

Arabesque is as good as anything they’ve done in the last 10 years, with French lyrics and echoes of the intensity of Primal Scream’s If They Move Kill ’Em refracted through a skronking jazz filter. But they’re rather less engaging when they hit the stadium preset buttons.

Her debut should end on the inventive Shadow Flash rather than the overcooked Mess Around. It could lose a lot of the moody filler clogging up the spaces between the substantial songs.

Átta feels surprisingly unengaging.

What she lacks in originality, she makes up for with warlike ardour.

If his fourth album doesn’t quite live up to that pedigree, its rootsy take on soul--swigging deep from the spirit of Van Morrison and the E Street Band and ending up in a warm O-Dexys-Where-Art-Thou fug--is rambunctiously satisfying.