City Planning certainly conjures the feeling of a commute into a sprawling metropolis, while Die Cuts is a supple collage of contrasting voices. But, sadly, neither will have you wishing you could listen to everything again.

Hardwired is two CDs, 12 tracks and 80 minutes of in-your-face, punch-to-the-guts, dense, harsh, shouty rage with absolutely no let-up. Frankly, if it was half as long it would be twice as effective.

Athough the two old giants of country music can't hit all the notes of youth their phrasing is neat and nuanced on their fourth album together.

This, for better or worse, is clearly the music Rihanna likes: leftfield, stoned and strange. It is Rihanna without hits. This strange album, released without warning over the internet for free, may well be a reflection of the fact that not even her own backers really expects this to be a commercial blockbuster. It is more an exercise in rebranding, transforming the hit girl into a serious artist.

It could have been mawkish but it's a simple, affecting and lovely tribute.

Parping away beneath her synthesised fantasies and hypnotic dance floor dramas, you can also hear the unlikely stirrings of an Eighties sax-solo revival.

It remains a fairly relentless listen and at least a couple of tracks too long. Yet the album’s tale of survival against the odds has powerful personal relevance beyond its often clumsy social commentary.

The songs are slickly constructed but you can't help feeling it is familiar territory and not a patch on past triumphs.

WE is their sixth album, and every bit as good as their best. ... With a work as ambitious and boldly realised as WE, Arcade Fire know they have nothing to fear by inviting comparison to rock’s all-time greats.

It is a witty, catchy delight that demonstrates Skinner still has his ear to The Streets sound.

Uptown Special veers wildly from high to low brow, stupid to sophisticated. Occasionally the mix jars but mostly it’s a compelling collision, falling somewhere between a chin-stroking jazz poetry recital and a riotous teenage disco.

The Now Now ultimately sounds exactly what it is: music made on the road as an escape from homesickness.

Lipa’s cooly commanding voice holds the attention on expansive melodies that make the most of her range, flowing between rich low tones, a husky middle and sweet highs. It is precise, luxurious, energetic without ever really breaking a sweat.

Everything is quite extraordinary; an orchestral poem of spiritual surrender that offers up a gorgeously bleak depiction of “the whole magnificent emptiness”.

The album is the second in the four-volume Nomad series and the Cowboy Junkies said they felt they owed Chesnutt something. They have paid their debt in handsome fashion.

Arrangements are marked by clarity, one thing easing into another in a beautifully measured fashion.

There are interesting multi-part song structures and deft modern production quirks, with touches of autotune and sampling that don’t overwhelm the more classic guitar and keyboard arrangements. Melodies are big and bright and everything is encased in walls of harmonies.

You don’t have to be greater than the sum of your parts when the parts are already as great as this.

With Ross’s voice shifting from deadpan sweetness to striking shout over bare-essentials grooves adorned with just a twist of something startling on each track, I Am Moron is much cleverer than it would have you believe.

Producers Dave Kaplan and Dave Darling have sanded the new arrangements of smooth oldies such as Gentle on My Mind down to the rough grain. The result is a deeply moving record--a warm, valedictory squeeze of the listener’s hand from the cowboy hunk.

For an album drawing on despair and recovery, Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over is a life-affirming pleasure from top to bottom.

Anyone expecting a stroboscopic hoedown may be disappointed, but if it’s great performances of great songs you’re after, then fill your boots.

It is, as ever, heart-on-sleeve stuff, with all of Coldplay’s musical diversions bound together by Martin’s golden gift for melody, almost simplistically direct lyrics and emotive crooning. But, oh my goodness, you’d have to be made of sterner stuff than I to resist.

Even at its most ambitious, everything is swept up in a blizzard of overcharged guitars and stylised snarling that would have sounded old-fashioned in 1981, let alone 2024.

It's more Glee Club than cutting edge pop queen, and, as is so often the case with big pop albums, too many production teams spoil the froth.

Everlasting is an eclectic mix.

With Williams it's classy and classic country. This is a very good album.

A string section and gospel choir barely add nuance to straight-ahead karaoke versions of Oasis classics and a few of Liam’s solo songs.

At its best, Born in the Echoes is gloriously disorienting, restoring a woozy mania to a genre in danger of self-combusting in search of ever more euphoric pop highs. The kids will probably look on aghast. But old ravers will find themselves transported back to a time when electronica really did sound like the future.

It’s easy to make fun of, but the melodies are uniformly gorgeous, the layered synth and string arrangements are bright and exciting, Smith’s singing is filled with pliant emotion, and it all adds up to a pop album so addictive that it feels as though it had been intravenously injected into my system.

The melodies aren't as strong as those on Backwoods Barbie but Dolly Parton's wit, sincerity and plucky pragmatism allow her to get away with simplistic advice like: "Lead the good life, just treat this planet right and try to all be friends" and icky lines about painting pretty rainbows in the sky.

For all Byrne’s other endeavours, music is the forum where his quirky, zany, challenging ideas achieve emotionally satisfying expression. American Utopia is another glittering offering from an old master.

Fairport Convention are like the Stanley Matthews of folk music--age does nothing to erode essential quality.

The duo's sinister raps are as shockingly impressive as they are morally disturbing.

A pleasant, enjoyable album from a multi-talented man.

It's a heart-warming who's who.

Their bluesy approach doesn't draw anything truly rich and strange from their vintage Cambodian material.

The familiar is as classy as ever.

The highlight [of Mystic Pinball] is an affecting ballad called No Wicked Grin. It's Hiatt at his tender best.

Elusive and ethereal, it hints at the late night soulscapes of the Blue Nile but remains boldly, if at times frustratingly, out of focus.

The 14 songs ooze energy and style and feature long-term collaborators such as Alan Kelly, Ian Carr, Roy Dodds and John McCusker.

This is a warm, bluesy album of country-fuelled rock ’n’ roll that oozes old-timer class.

Easily the best thing she has done since her album of Muscle Shoals sessions, New Routes, which she made in the early Seventies.

A very fine debut album from Californian singer-songwriter, who has a wonderfully rich and mournful country voice.

Disco offers a set of familiar grooves. ... Her comfort zone is effervescence and escapism, in the pursuit of which Disco stays light on its feet and easy on the ear. We’ve heard it all before, but Kylie has the floor, and, honestly, she sounds like she’s having a (glitter)ball.

This appealing set of 12 short, sweet, heartfelt songs rattles along with gorgeous vocals, silvery guitar lines and perky bass and drum rhythms, stirring a jaunty singalong spirit of friends on a mission. But if the Lathums truly aspire to be the indie voice of a new generation, they are going to have to sharpen their quills or invest in a rhyming dictionary.

The tension and ambiguity implicit in downbeat songs with upbeat choruses lies at the heart of an album that may not easily yield its secrets but will keep you singing as you try to work them out.

At the heart of Ezra’s mainstream pop appeal is a sense of joy that infuses his music with radiant positivity. In such troubled times, Ezra’s escapism is pure gold.

Mabel also retains the tender, thoughtful quality that infused her debut album High Expectations (2019), and this makes for an impressively nuanced flow.

More than half a century later, those youthful ambitions are herein fulfilled, in 10 tracks of maturity and majesty.

The Endless Coloured Ways could have been just another exhibit on the exquisitely curated but ever growing pile of Drake nostalgia. Instead, it’s an essential manual on the art of songwriting.

If you simply want to revel in the elemental pleasures of sleek, clever, catchy songs played with rough vigour by a band who love to rock, then the Vaccines deliver their usual payload. .... They lack the boldness of the bands that most influenced their sound (The Ramones, Jesus and the Mary Chain) or the flair and ambition of others still flying the pop-rock flag (The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines). On this evidence, The Vaccines are approaching their expiry date.

This fourth may not reach those heights [of the first two albums], but it’s a solid effort from a band who, above all else, just sound grateful to have survived.

This may be the most raucously uplifting divorce album ever heard.

Hynes's voice is refined into an emotive croon. Inventive pop from a bright indie talent.

Concrete and Gold is an ambitious and entertaining album. But when it comes to a comparison with Sergeant Pepper, it doesn’t earn its stripes.

It's an introspective work - family breakdowns, fractured romances and his own restless, addictive character pour forth in a variety of low-key yet lush arrangements featuring sombre brass accents.

He's made the kind of record that every kid rummaging through boxes of Seventies vinyl at the car boot sale hopes to find. One that lovingly reassembles a 21st-century impression of that era's warm autumnal hues and tactile textures.

The Other Side of Make Believe scarcely risks driving away disciples. Nor does it cravenly go after fresh converts.

With the right collaborators she can conjure golden moments.

These soft shoe shuffles sway up and down the same few notes, with the affectionate embrace of mother of the groom dances.

Quest for Fire is still visceral EDM designed to get the pulse racing, but the whole thing has been given an ambitious refresh. The second coming of Skrillex starts here.

The album, which was funded by producer Jeffrey Gaskill through Kickstarter, is full of treats; and Johnson deserves 21st-century acknowledgement.

When the harmonies blend and Andersson’s piano rings out, it sounds enough like Abba to have hardcore fans tossing their feather boas in the air. But the dancing queens have lost the spring in their step, and the result is out-of-time rather than timeless.

Smoking in Heaven is hugely enjoyable.

Every track on Volcano flows beautifully, almost overloaded with hooks and harmonies, and charged with rhythmic intent. But the soundscapes are infinitely brighter and weirder and more thrillingly modern.

This is not jazz for the purist but it is a heartfelt and entertaining tribute to one of the musical greats.

On his fifth album, he seizes the mainstream jugular with a lushly romantic, brightly orchestrated and delightfully optimistic collection of epic love songs.

Tomorrow... deepens on repeated listening, with Yorke locating moments of beauty and calm in the eye of his anxiety.

This highly enjoyable celebration of the Lord is co-produced by country star Jamey Johnson.

Buddy Miller organised a Grade A country guitarist convention, threw in some wonderful guest vocalists and then recorded, as if live, an impressive album.

A sensational debut from the British rapper. Tempah's wit, imagery and rhythmic flow is offset by schoolboy humour and a tendency to build raps from non sequiturs.

This is an album you admire rather than love.

The Thrill of It All is stripped back to bare emotional bones, shot through with vulnerability and sensitivity, not so much wearing its heart on its sleeve as proffering an open vein.

Always Ascending is every bit as smart and dynamic as their acclaimed debut, but familiarity has dampened its dramatic impact.

An assured and imaginative album.

Positions is not as immediate as the work Grande is known for, though it will find many fans. There are no tentpole hits, no obvious hooks and far too many words crammed into 14 relatively short and sometimes samey songs. But it explores new territory for the singer: new relationships, a new sound, a new sense of self.

Unwanted calls to mind a Jacqueline Wilson novel transposed into an LP format, its 12 songs relentlessly circling over ‘difficult emotions’ – awkwardness, rejection, and, yes, it’s okay to express your anger. And these, of course, are well-worn teen-pop topics already.

Long Live the Angels is something special, the sound of a gifted, grown-up singer-songwriter using all the tools at her disposal to put her own heart back together.

Give Or Take presents Giveon as an undeniable talent who isn’t inclined to go deeper than his comfort zone for now; he coasts quite sweetly, between heartache and humblebrag.

Everybody sounds like they’re having fun, and listeners of a certain vintage probably will too. But it adds little of interest to Morrison’s incredible canon, which from Blowin’ Your Mind in 1967 to Irish Heartbeat in 1988 ranks with the greatest popular music ever made.

The best of the album is so fantastic it makes me want more from the rest.... Yet there is something tepid about the overall emotional temperature.

With the hard-hitting yet loose-limbed playing of Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk, there is a real sense of top professionals at work.... Osbourne’s singing, by contrast, is strangely unexpressive, perhaps because there is no real possibility of emotional connection with lyrics that strain for grandiose effect but are flattened by clunking phrases and trite rhyming schemes.

Its dark, off-kilter twists and trapdoors become moreish as liquorice.

Not really a blockbuster, it’s the kind of album that makes most sense in the small hours, after the party is over.

The most compelling tracks take drastic liberties with the original material, deconstructing Kinshasa sound systems into industrial-tropical hoedowns that reflect postmodern London more than Africa's teeming townships.

There’s plenty to applaud on a promising debut, but, as yet, not enough to believe in.

The range of the album is impressive.

Not as cohesive as their very best work, R.E.M.'s 15th album is still as smart, sonically rich and emotionally resonant as a guitar band can ever hope to be.

Every track is polished and purposeful, but the sheer busy quality of her singing and overactive variety of the production ensures that Liberation never settles into a coherent listening experience.

What gives it freshness and conviction is Liam’s performance.

The album has to be judged a late-period triumph, even if I am not entirely convinced The Voice's avuncular judge is quite as deep as the material demands.

The don’t-bore-us, get-to-the-chorus model followed by the top half of Night Call works fine when taken in pieces, or as the beat-driven soundtrack to a gym workout. But it frustrates and alienates in its album sequence. Yet, Night Call delivers in affirming Olly Alexander as an artist capable of connecting with a varied, multi-generational audience.

The songs are anthemic, surprisingly upbeat calls to arms which suggest that Templeman is one to watch.

Muse are a blockbuster band, and this is another box-office-demolishing spectacular – it would feel like self-denial not to surrender. Honestly, the end of the world has rarely sounded like so much fun.

Mascara Streakz may not reinvent the wheel, but it does stand confidently among their greatest hits while making a compelling case for having that fifth shot of tequila.

There are glimmers of his facility for earworm melodies and nimble grooves, but they tend to be overwhelmed by an air of bombastic stridency.

The fortunes of this soundtrack will ultimately rest with the success of the film but its brooding mix of old and new styles certainly wets your appetite to see it.