There's a disarming openness to the lyrics and a warmth to the arrangements that make this an album that rewards repeated listening.

The 27-year-old Scot had taken five years to unleash this third album, an ambitious stab at morphing into a mature soul man. And it's worked.

From the pristine coffee-table electronica of the album’s opening and closing tracks, through the sub-Underworld clatter of Entirety, to the Muse-meets-Erasure extravagance of Carousel--it’s with the brazen 80s electropop of Beaming White that his heart seems to lie.

It's as an impressionist composer that the latterday Ahmad Jamal really excels. Two of these pieces in particular, "Autumn Rain" and "Morning Mist", are quite exquisite.

Nothing on this third album could be described as flimsy.

Joyous, maudlin or gritty, it’s marriage country-style. Delightful.

At times, the high-definition production sheen feels smothering, but overall this is a multilayered, emotionally engaging pop confection.

For all the just-so production, sirens and guests, the Diazes haven’t entirely sacrificed the Yoruba spirituality and batá drumming that made their debut so distinctive.

Their debut album is a delight, from the uncomplicated bluesy strut of Tickin' Bomb to the brass inflections on the knowingly tongue-in-cheek Hail Hail.

Traoré’s vocals remain smooth, agile and sometimes challenging.

Their fifth album is rich and intoxicating: billows of brass, sinuous guitar hooks and squiggles of hammond organ bubble up pungently from the stew.

There’s precious little to pique the listener’s interest.

His records aren’t hard to love, but this one just throws itself at you. ... Even the bad vibes – lysergic imagery, a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Wages of Sin – can’t harsh the fundamental loveliness of Vile’s offering.

A solid follow-up rather than any sort of great leap forward.

The Haunted Man is an assured and sonically seductive record--if only it didn't echo a little too often the sound of other women's work.

There’s ample disgusted fury here, as tracks like the powerful Rain of Terror attest, but inner strength and enduring creativity are the takeaways from this unexpected record, as well as nods to Prince and Biggie Smalls.

This whirlwind album is full of feeling and fervour, and its liveliness affirms just why she is a singular talent.

Their eighth outing reaffirms their wordless eloquence.

It’s good – but could have been great.

Animals continues seamlessly, using a raft of guest musicians and rappers, its rhythms shuttling between drum kit and electronica.

At times, its tonal shifts cause whiplash, but the real magic appears when Cook manages to coalesce these two sides in the same song.

On first listen, their third album sounds undercooked but dig deep and, gradually, the five-piece are revealed as a tranquil indie-rock outfit whose songs evoke the innocence of your early 20s while shot through with a sadness that imbues them with depth.

This follow-up, an intoxicated, stylistically varied stretch of rigid drum beats, repeated riffs and odes to melancholy, doesn't hide its influences either.

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.

You want this record to sell by the barrowload, but you might not actually want to play it that often.

Deradoorian’s world is as dreamy, hippyish and hipster as her album title suggests and it’s deliciously easy to get lost in it with her.

Seeking Thrills sounds full-fat, not free-from. Awash in euphoria blowbacks and pre-loved synth-pop, this is a record that proves the dynamics of a good time benefit from a clear mind.

Coming Home is, perhaps, a healthy reiteration of the classic sounds of succour in a time of need; a principled and mellifluous nay-saying.

Menace and rapture are beautifully balanced in Cross’s minimalist alt rock.

Across 80 sprawling minutes, Vile does lose his focus occasionally, most notably on the 10-minute title track, which fails to gain much in the way of traction, and the similarly unremarkable Cold Was the Wind. Still, this is an album to savour.

The musical arrangements, laden with pianos, brass, synths and strings in occasionally strained approximation of Arcade Fire, aren't always so nuanced. Still, in its more understated moments, such as slow-burn closer Black Nemo, music and memory chime beautifully.

Aided by woozy, expansive production many of these songs shimmer with warmth and light. There's a brittleness here too though.

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

Most tracks float by in a pleasant if unremarkable funk-lite haze, but there’s an overall sense of Miller being older, wiser and more at peace than before.

Full of defiant brio and what you might charitably call unreconstructed Stonesiness – the Sydney Sweeney-starring video for Angry is a case in point; the LP’s Bill Wyman cameo is another – Hackney Diamonds is packed with convincing echoes of the band in its pomp.

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

To Believe is heartbreakingly brilliant: a collection of exquisitely assembled songs that appear delicate from a distance before revealing a close-quarters core strength. ... A triumph.

In the Silence remains deeply pleasant, if a little polite.

The more it changes with the times the more its essential spirit comes through. And it's guaranteed to cheer you up.

There's a multitracked theatricality to songs such as Gold and Looking Out, which costs him some of the shiver factor of more understated peers, but delivers moments of magnificence too.

There’s so much to take in that it requires many listens before all of Metronomy Forever’s charms reveal themselves, in part because of the palate-cleansing interstitial drones spread across the album. It’s worth the wait.

Every production here feels leaner and more rubbery than the last, courtesy of the tight, two-person DIY production team of Peaches and Vice Cooler. To some ears, this approach might lack variety, but there are multiple ways to dice “barely there.”

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

Screen Memories isn’t particularly political, and all the better for its lack of lyrical ambition.

A hushed, thoughtful collection.

Recalling her early experimental work, while hoovering up dance genres at will, KicK iii is imbued with a joyous sense of freedom.

The standard remains high throughout, from neo-soul man Mayer Hawthorne's strong vocal on the opener and title track to the blues jam with Jones's son, Ted which closes the album.

The slightly leaden climax to Rearview aside, there’s barely a second wasted in Honeymoon’s 25-minute running time.

On one level, it’s just like old times, with the Lennon and McCartney of the guitar underground strutting their off-kilter stuff. ... But ironically for an album made in 2020, the record stumbles most when it tries to deal head-on with the times of its making.

What’s lacking is a standout floor-filler. There’s nothing here that comes close to Ooh La La, and some of these slight but elegant songs just fade too far into the background.

Too many songs sound like generic electronic rock. But a masterful mid-album run--the intriguing, three-legged sulk of 2BU into He the Colossus into the pitch-shifted bomp’n’thwack of Ponytail--is as arresting and fresh as they wanted the rest of this album to be.

[An] endearingly careworn debut.

In a world of diminishing returns, not many artists hit their peak 11 (or so) albums into their career. That only makes Jump for Joy even more of a triumph.

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.

No longer just parochial rabble rousers, Idles are moving on up.

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.

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.

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.

Clark’s falsetto, reminiscent of Caribou’s Dan Snaith or executive producer Thom Yorke, is used carefully as a texture that neither distracts nor dominates, counterbalancing the occasionally abrasive electronics.

What the album lacks is that corona of curious magic their hero Neil Young calls “the spook”. Fortunately, it doesn’t feel like it’s far away.

Dodge the mountain range formed by all those raised eyebrows and there are some good songs in here.

This is not a dark record, but one whose interstitial found sounds and international guest list celebrate Crossan’s adopted London.

The band fails to sustain the album's early momentum, but there's still much to enjoy here.

With Lyme disease in abeyance, these 13 new songs fizz and rage with a mixture of girl-group sass (key track: Rather Not) and surf-garage buzz.

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".

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

This latest iteration is above par, as tongue-in-cheek and wise as it is acerbic and frill-free.

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.

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 mood is mostly contemplative, with Khan embellishing songs like the wistful title track with sinuous cello-like parts, while he gets his own devotional outings (Knochentanz, Sufi Song), where Yorkston “just did my best to keep up”.

Trick feels more celebratory than melancholy, mostly because of the bruising passion and commitment Treays loads into every syllable, every bar.

[Thile’s] vocal style may verge on the eccentric, but it’s perfectly in tune, and it soon becomes obvious that he and Mehldau are well matched in their musicality.

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.

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.

Over the course of the album, however, his mannered delivery grates, turning Ken, with two notable exceptions (Tinseltown Swimming in Blood; Saw You at the Hospital), into a twisted strain of cabaret.

Full of morphing grooves and moods of imminent revelation, it’s a quicksilver delight.

It all adds up to a highly pleasing change of direction.

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

Having parked her dystopian allegories, it follows that Monáe now feels a little more like an artist in a crowded partying field. But she has earned this mainstream place. Moreover, she remains distinctive.

At its best--Know Yourself is a standout-- Drake turns grumpiness into an art.

To impugn such a fundamentally glazed record for losing focus as it nears the out-groove is a little like berating a shark for being snaggle-toothed. But as II unfurls, there are longueurs where Nielson can get a little vague and inward-directed.

The quieter songs don’t always burn so brightly. Here, there can be a fine line between balladry and pedestrianism, but the listener is never far away from a killer lyric.

A fascinating album that only slowly gives up its secrets.

It's a classy, dialled-down performance in an American radio studio around the time of this year's Coachella festival.

For all its contradictions and eccentricities, Matangi (the title links MIA with her near-namesake deity, a ghetto-dwelling Hindu goddess of music) feels more fully realised than the previous albums.

Unlike earlier Jam City releases, this one aims to create friction, to disrupt the party, even if it doesn’t force its message down your throat.

Fans of long standing might actually find The Rip Tide a bit too restrained now that Beirut sound more assured and less like a tipsy string quartet stumbling around an accordion factory, egged on by a hopeless romantic in his lowest register.

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

The spacious, wiggly drum’n’bass of You, Love outclasses much of the jungle 2.0 around now, while You Broke My Heart but Imma Fix It is so nimble and textured it’s impossible to pin down. The slight downside: The Rat Road remains dominated by voices that are not Jerome’s, so it’s hard to hear the autobiography. But that’s a small caveat.

B7 isn’t exclusively a trip down memory lane, but it does cruise past a few old haunts. Brandy’s trademark raspy vocals and sublime harmonies on Rather Be and Lucid Dreams are nostalgia-inducing for anyone who grew up listening to her acrobatic riffs and runs.

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

Musically, Special’s a bit of a retread. Lead single About Damn Time, with its Saturday-night, last-song-before-we-leave-the-house vibe, bounces on a similar podium to 2019’s Juice, and the title track boasts imperious orchestration, just as it did on Cuz I Love You. But it works.

There is no right way to grieve, but it feels as though shock and sorrow have only made Sleater-Kinney seize their day and prioritise.

Though hooky and melodic, none of these songs quite has the earworm adhesiveness of the best country pop but Musgraves makes for enjoyable company nonetheless.

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

[The album] is an intriguing work: dark, seductive and as hard to pin down as its creator.

The first half is full of pockets of gently unfurling prettiness, which makes the meandering and repetitive second half all the more disappointing, the nadir being The Loxian Gate’s wordless nonsense. Overall though, this is a surprisingly enjoyable trip to another world.