Appleby lays it on a bit thick, which is why Faye O'Rourke's powerful, bruised vocals on three songs out of 11 prove a welcome respite.

Inveterate collaborators Dr John and Kairos 4tet also add variety to a somewhat one-paced set.

There’s little in the way of surprises but this is a solidly enjoyable collection.

If this is really where his heart now lies, it’s hard not to feel a tinge of sadness when you hear his honeyed vocals on A Woman’s Face, a reworking of a track from 2010 that recalls the swooning, symphonic pop of old.

While it’s all elegantly presented, and each song is pleasing enough, nothing ever quite hits the heights Phillips has previously scaled.

The arresting Concrete, meanwhile, finds Odell busting out a slow jam that approaches R&B, the last thing you would expect. Most of the rest of Wrong Crowd backtracks hard, however, to the sort of house-trained, string-laden guff that gets you John Lewis ads.

It’s potent and audacious, if a little too far out.

Stony Hill is testament to the timeless consistency of Marley’s work.

Having mastered the vocals, Rationale still needs to work on consistency in his songwriting.

His breathy singing is equal parts Jens Lekman, Saint Etienne and Vic Reeves’s club singer, which undermines the teenage existentialism of On the Main Drag but suits the wide-eyed simplicity of Country Boy. Nevertheless, Krgovich’s meticulous, subtle production is frequently brilliant.

While there’s no shortage of dazzling playing from a group that have the intuition of a jazz combo, with odd changes of tempo, and a couple of instrumentals to let rip their bluegrass picking. A curious curate’s egg.

The Mayflower’s story is compelling, featuring hardship, hunger and the righteous pilgrims plundering grain from the Wampanoags, and is helped along by artful narratives spoken by the actor Paul McGann.

Del Rey’s poetry collection is punctuated by skilfully rendered moments such as these, pregnant freeze-frames in language that justify the singer calling herself a poet. But just as often, Del Rey can lapse into verbose descriptiveness, her wordplay flowery or overcooked.

The best tracks were released last year: Ready for the High is a deliciously weird cut-and-shut, and Method to the Madness has a lovely collapsed feeling. Mostly the album settles for sprightly mediocrity, and is often quite pleasurable, if you define pleasure as the absence of pain.

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.

Mostly, this post-genre approach works. But pure electronics are her strongest suit; you want to cheer when the housey oscillations of Sky River arrive after too much derivative wafting.

At its best this is earthy, experimental pop, but the unusual sounds that pique the interest come too inconsistently.

Turn Blue is less immediate than its predecessor, more sprawling and--according to the band--designed to be savoured in headphones.

The heights reached by the band members' day jobs are never scaled.

They're such pretty songs, sung with sweet simplicity.

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.

If the songwriting isn’t always the match of the sheen, the best moments here--Panarchy, What You See, Autodrama--are dangerously seductive.

Its follow-up is equally intriguing (influences include Ennio Morricone film scores and psychedelic folk), but also feels heavy-going in places.

A record that settles into a nicely crafted, twinkly retro rut without really grabbing you by anything more vital than your lapels; tweedy, bespoke, second-hand.

The songs on Fwends swing between rejoicing and dread, sometimes within the same piece of music. The sky is falling, the Lips want to remind us, and it might not be just an acid flashback.

Overall, an enjoyable, imaginative and at times uncanny assault on the senses.

O’Brien’s music, while often smart and sharply played, is rarely exciting as it skips from dusty funk to spiky electronica, and her poetry isn’t quite limber enough to enliven the bare scaffolding supplied by her band.

It’s when Larsson gets earnest that things start to falter. Nothing cribs too readily from Rihanna’s 2010-era balladry, while Larsson’s full-bodied delivery jars with Soundtrack’s soft strings. She’s better setting those emotions to big floor-fillers, as on End of Time, which peaks as a desperate Larsson belts “until the end of fucking time!” For that sense of pent-up release, Venus works perfectly.