It’s mildly funny and philosophically intriguing. Little else is in this team-up of exhausted pop forces.

Tackling topics like technology addiction (“Disillusioned”) and the deaths of celebrities (“So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish”), the band forges a sobering look at the world with the maturity that comes from being on a long break. Despite the changes Eat The Elephant is a solid return for the supergroup.

Say Sue Me’s charming third outing shows the quartet exploring a broad range of sounds, but it most significantly ensures they’re not a band to sleep on.

There’s much to be said for music as a private, sublime refuge, but Holy Wave rarely hit those heights. They evoke only the mild, gauzy dislocation of dawdling in the midday sun.

While Joyride has its shining points and attempts to remain true to a cohesive, moodier (albeit more mature) tone, it’s missing the strong, catchier elements that helped Tinashe rise in the first place. But there’s no reason to count her out just yet.

This music’s unhinged, pinballing molecules have a wild energy, here and there.

The Lookout not only shows Veirs prevailing as a prolific songwriter, but also proving she has a welcomed perspective to emotional turmoil.

Prine’s stance has stayed askew. Yet these songs are solid like good chairs you can settle into for a while.

Nothing about Invasion of Privacy is formulaic.

Though the Nashville experiment is finally too half-hearted for the desired transformation, “Shelby ’68” mines Melbourne memories for a more personalised rural makeover.

Isolation represents the different facets of Uchis: the survivor, romantic and the rebel. But she still manages to keep herself a mystery through moody metaphors and Uchis--who grew up in between Colombia and Virginia--has been largely underrated the past few years, but Isolation might just finally give her the attention she deserves.

Guilt, sickness, depression and death have their haunting power acknowledged. The optimism of a songwriter who sees the world’s love and beauty through his own sometimes deep pain rarely falters.

If you’re looking for smooth guitar riffs and auto-tuned vocals, you won’t find it on I Don’t Run: Hinds thrives on their imperfections and that’s the point.

No song sounds over-rehearsed, and plenty sound like they were laid down on the first take.

Her winning formula back in 2010 was blunt honesty delivered in the form of spoken-word style poetry. Back then, she doled out witty, tongue-in-cheek observations and wry take-downs with ease. Attempts to recapture this style are marred by lazy rhymes and a delivery that’s often more just her speaking over the track.

Musgraves has always been a brilliant songwriter but she’s never sounded as confident as this; it’s as though a wall has been knocked down and a little of that bolshy attitude has been paired back to make for some of her most personal lyrics.

Elverum’s voice’s masculinity-defying diffidence couldn’t be more indie, but his words now add all the weight he needs.

This album’s intricate, pressurised urgency keeps Sons of Kemet at that movement’s head.

Vessel is a return to form for Kline: bringing the sincerity that was threaded throughout her Bandcamp releases to the forefront once again.

Combat Sports is a great return for The Vaccines, and an album that will soar at their live shows.

Though hobbled by the occasional cliche, it’s an album with its heart in the right place.

Overall, it’s an entertaining, multifaceted set, albeit weakened by a tendency to pursue slim ideas and dead-end notions.

Things pick up in the latter stages, starting with the ebullient “Laughing Gas”, which wouldn’t be out of place on any Tom Petty album. As they proceed, the band’s stays seem to loosen up, and they explore different avenues with commendable spirit.

The results are frequently transformative, and always enjoyable.

It’s all a bit stiff: the methodical chording of “All This Way” lacks swing or swagger, as if too tightly corsetted, and “Take Care” displays similar restrictions applied to their keyboard-led material: the plonking piano and falsetto refrain suggest someone’s trying for Brian Wilson magic, but falling well short.

The occasional cut slices through the general blandness--the lilting “Shades Of Blue” is a winsome folk-pop lollop, and the Neu! motorik groove gives “For You Too” a rare drive--but overall this seems more escapist than reactive, not much help at all.

It makes for some intriguing collisions of ancient and modern.

The album asserts the great variety and malleability of electronic music, from the electro breakbeat of “Lime Ricky” and the languid offbeat groove of “Pink Squirrel” to the synthesised collage of “K Mart Johnny”.

The palette is tender, and the changes subtle: it’s like climbing a mountain, the same view altering by slight increments over the course of the ascent.

Dramatic rock-style flourishes punctuate the rolling shuffle “Alwa”, and there are echoes of country picking in the brisk, stinging guitar fills of “Ehad Wa Dagh”. Most potently, there’s a Santana-esque flavour to the Afro-Latin funk of “Tamudre” and “Tumast”, the latter’s fiery, skirling guitar runs accelerating to a dervish frenzy.

Her first album of new material in seven years finds Tracey Thorn in feisty form, bashing out “nine feminist bangers” with a relish reflected in the confident, striding electropop settings of tracks like “Queen” and “Air”.

In large part a break-up album, Rare Birds finds Wilson picking through the romantic embers and taking tentative steps forward, over arrangements reflecting both his recent position in Roger Waters’s touring band and his need for healing.

Combined with the faux-naive, fairytale tone of the narratives, it makes for an irritatingly condescending experience. The lofty aimlessness is matched by musical settings.

It all adds up to a fascinating, multifaceted work which strives to find its own unique space in a crowded musical world, forever mindful of its limitations, but soldiering on with good humour.

It’s emo at its finest, and the record ends as emotionally as it begins. By the final track, How to Socialise & Make Friends shows that Camp Cope are driven by the band unapologetically being themselves

Moby returns to form, honing in on the sounds that helped him rise through the ranks of the New York City club scene. Weaved in between the 12 tracks is a pastiche of trip hop, soul, electronics and gospel.

It’s a 10-track album that encapsulates emotions and situations that are as versatile as her sound. Whether you’re reminiscing about late-night make out sessions in high school or surrounded by plenty of “cool” girls in your city, Soccer Mommy’s introspection is something that defies age.

While The Breeders may not be reclaiming their youth on their latest effort, they’re not trying to: they approach All Nerve with the sensibility of a band that embraces how they’ve grown since their early punk days.

There’s a warm indulgence about the arrangements, which augment the folksy guitars and banjos with ruminative horns, misty string drones and electronics, that speaks loudly of hope and possibility.

It’s always been hard to translate the irresistible propulsion of Femi Kuti’s live shows into a comparably effective studio realisation, but with One People One World he makes a decent stab.

An album that frets gently and artfully at the wounds of human attraction and rejection.

Like the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the journey results in a sort of epiphany of infinity which, despite the album’s short running-time, resonates long after it’s finished.

Producer Dave Fridmann has managed to effect the same kind of equilibrial magic he wielded with The Flaming Lips, bringing power and clarity to the Eggs’ churning psych-punk turmoil of guitars and synths, and balancing it with the plaintive anger of Holly Ross’s vocals.

The songwriting is not quite as enigmatic as on that precursor project [case/lang/veirs]. ... The trio’s strengths lie mostly in the natural sweetness of their harmonies, a heartbreaking union of glowing melancholy underscoring the life lessons of songs such as “See You Around” and “Ain’t That Fine.”

Some are perfectly matched: the cycling strings of the poignant “The Electricity Goes Out And We Move To A Hotel” are like waves lapping at a wall, while the darting bricolage of scraping bow and “close-up” violin brings a real sense of desperation to “Dawn Of The World”. Anderson’s characteristic air of matter-of-fact wonder, meanwhile, lends a gentle charm to the epiphanies of “Everything Is Floating” and “Nothing Left But Their Names.”

It’s a burly collection, with the band’s flanged guitars and proggy synths asserting their refusal to follow any set style, and Hayden Thorpe’s bristling vocals similarly stretching indie constraints; but when the only “new” track is jerry-rigged together from two old tracks, it all seems a bit unnecessary.

Though not as powerful as Lamar’s own albums, it’s similarly diverse, with elements of boudoir R&B, sinister street creep and ebullient electro dancehall stippled with a variety of sonic detail, such as whistle and kalimba, reflecting the film’s African setting.

Quite, quite lovely.

The distinctive, sparse trio settings afford a surprising diversity of emotive intimacy.

Equal parts Jean Genet and Hellboy, it’s a magnificent oddity, exultant in its uniqueness, both personally and musically.

Though sharp and sly, too often here there’s a shortfall of melodic potency, and an over-reliance on structures that are methodical rather than marvellous, torpedoed by their own cleverness.

With his fifth studio album, Timberlake isn’t re-inventing the wheel, but he solidly continues to experiment with R&B, funk, pop and soul, with Americana creating an interesting layer.

While Cabello stands out on the more fiery tracks, she also shines in subtlety.

This apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree: like her dad John, Lilly Hiatt has a gift for unpicking knotty lyrical themes in a personalised blend of countrified rock music.

It’s infectious stuff, right from the opening bars of “I Don’t Wanna Be Without You”, a languid shuffle of organ and saxes, with occasional castanet flourishes accenting the rumba groove.

The deep, surging bass pulse that opens “Summer” suggests a more focused approach, but before long Jim Kerr’s descending again into his dreams, anticipating “all those energies” amidst yet another miasmic, swirling sea of sound, and the song just evaporates into a mist of queasy bombast.

“Valid Jagger” and the Genet-referencing “Steed” are suffused with sensuous carnal urgency, while the turmoil of “Talk About It Later” is perfectly captured in the eerie, keening mellotronic strings riding its lumpy bump’n’grind.

At its best, it’s like the oddball offspring of Prince and The Left Banke, its elliptical melodies wreathed in strings and woodwind; but as ever, they sometimes can’t resist adding one more waffer-thin-mint to an already overstuffed musical pudding.

With Rifles & Rosary Beads, she’s created her most impressive and affecting work yet.

It’s wearily repetitive and almost aggressively underwhelming.

The most effective songs here are those which reach out directly to her family.

The result, in tracks like “You Got To Run” and “No No Keshagesh”, is uniquely uplifting, a powerful affirmation of steely spirituality.

This debut album is awash in buzzsaw guitar riffs and splashy cymbals, while the wild-child vocals of Arrow De Wilde channel the jaded disdain of Courtney Love (minus the rage), occasionally peaking in a Lene Lovish-like squawk. It’s a formula which works best on “Love’s Gone Again”, which has something of the elemental primitivism of Pink Flag-era Wire as it treats perverse carnal urges to a dose of distortion.

The intimacy and evocative atmosphere of previous releases has been retained, but there’s a fresh, barnstorming spirit brought by the team surrounding the core duo of Joey Burns and John Convertino: where earlier releases sometimes felt too meticulously crafted, this one has the sound of a proper band, its members constantly egging each other into uncertain territory.

While the one-sided “Heart’s Not In It” is crippled by blame-laying, “One Of Us Will Lose” is an edifice of aching melancholy, with streaks of slide guitar threading currents of loss and despair through its descent into the depths.

Expanded to a duo by bassist Nate Brenner’s promotion to full-time accomplice of Merrill Garbus, Tune-Yards’ characteristically confrontational approach acquires a new brusque confidence on this fourth album.

It’s tough stuff, tempered by the Soderbergs’ instinctive harmonies, which remain as sweet as ever, and the inventive folk-rock arrangements textured with typical empathy by producer Tucker Martine, involving members of R.E.M., Midlake and Wilco.

For this latest incarnation of The Go! Team, bandleader Ian Parton has doubled down on the street-beat cheerleader mash-up mode of earlier albums like Proof Of Youth by searching out an actual youth choir from Detroit to accompany the marching-band-style brass that drives Semicircle. This works brilliantly on “Mayday”, an anthemic lament for love signals ignored, with the ebullient brass and chanted vocals evoking street parades, and “Semicircle Song”, in which the staccato brass lines interlace like a proper New Orleans marching band.

It’s their most accomplished clawing-back so far of the basic dark rock’n’roll street-smarts that were lost as they cast fruitlessly around for new directions with projects like the acoustic album Howl and the awful noise-scape effort The Effects Of 333 (their very own Metal Machine Music).

Despite a few obvious omissions (Sun Ra, Marvin, Curtis and others), it’s an endless source of sonically challenging, mind-freeing ambition.

Produced by Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson, the arrangements offer a feisty take on bluegrass mountain music which sets off Childers’ perkily engaging delivery splendidly.

“Believe”, finds Eminem’s faith in his talent creeping back in. The ticking beat and sinister, John Carpenter-esque piano figure are harbingers of resurgent menace, while the hazy, treated chorus hook sounds like medication flooding his spirit with the confidence that carries the rest of the album. There are plenty of typical Eminem tropes scattered throughout Revival: he picks constantly at the scabs of marital failure. ... But ultimately, it’s all about Eminem himself.

Inspired by a shared affinity for the Suffolk landscape, these are mostly small, pastoral ambient pieces which drift, as the title suggests, over the shifting coastal flatlan.

Unleash The Love is steeped in this kind of smugness, aptly embodied in the rolled-up-jacket-sleeves ersatz ‘80s funk-pop of tracks like “I Don’t Wanna Know”. The “bonus” album of reheated Beach Boys hits, meanwhile, simply stains one’s precious memories.

He celebrates a liberal culture of generosity (“I Made This For You”) and cultural diversity (“Thank You New York”), exemplified by a musical inclusiveness and sophisticated lyricism which, though occasionally a touch too serpentine and verbose, at its best brings to mind Sufjan Stevens.

It’s a wonderful album, and further proof that you’re never too old, if you’re good enough.

Habibi Funk deals not in the indigenous strains that occupy the main focus of world music reissues, but rather local crossovers that slipped between the cracks, reflecting outside influences from the Caribbean, Cape Verde, and overwhelmingly, Western funk, soul and disco. ... The more recent examples are somewhat diluted by developments in technology.

The EP opens with the lovely “Sweet Dew Lee”, a genial pop strummer in the manner of early Orange Juice, its buoyant melody evoking a hill climb to an urban vista as the protagonist daydreams of a parallel world in which he and his departed lover are still an item.

The results are often enjoyable and always interesting, with the 11-minute journey of “A3”, in particular, navigating an angular, monochromatic turmoil akin to an Arctic ice field.

While this partner set doesn’t have quite the sustained quality of the preceding album released six months ago, it still affirms the value of spiking country music with a strong shot of rhythm & blues.

The mood of alienated isolation evoked by songs like this and “Funny How Time Slips Away” is balanced by the genial warmth James brings to songs by crooner Al Bowlly, “Love Is The Sweetest Thing” and “Midnight, The Stars And You”.

Great fun, from first to last.

For the most part, it’s a masterclass in jazz phrasing.

This collection of early 1960s Stones sessions vibrates with youthful revolutionary fervour--though sadly, there’s none of the witty, whimsical mini-interviews with which the Fabs’ performances were punctuated.

As the album proceeds, it frays apart as Neil’s gaze shifts to bombs and babies in the plodding anthem “Children Of Destiny”, and to Mexican fairground fantasy in the ludicrous cod-Santana-style “Carnival”. Despite similarly sluggish, slouchy manner, young backing band Promise Of The Real fall some way short of the full Crazy Horse, trudging rather than imposing a sense of implacable destiny.

Routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.

Karine Polwart’s latest album draws together several narrative and observational threads--avian behaviour, the boggy moorland landscape near her home, problematic procreation, and a tragic early 20th century romance – into a taut allegorical message about community and progress, all set to vividly evocative arrangements by soundscaper Pippa Murphy, employing harp, celesta, balofon and percussion as required.

While the widescreen production of “The Man Who Built The Moon” strives to deliver the drama promised by “Fort Knox”, it doesn’t quite succeed. But it’s still by far his best post-Oasis work, an album which doesn’t try to challenge that heritage, but strikes out to explore new territory.

Achingly dull, and self-regardingly solipsistic.

Disregard the didacticism, and there’s much to enjoy in tracks like “Til I’m Done”, a pumping disco-funk assertion of independence with abundant orchestral bells and whistles; the louchely loping “Guilty”, with Paloma giving it the full Amy Winehouse; and the pop-soul charmer “Crybaby”, whose kalimba-style keyboard groove recalls Whitney’s “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”. But the bombastic tone overall is exhausting.

There are echoes of Pops Staples’s gentle, miasmic guitar in the folksy gospel stylings of “Peaceful Dream” and the cyclical twang carrying the Black Lives Matter anthem “Little Bit”, warning youngsters to be careful around cops; but elsewhere the influence of Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On is paramount.

For while there’s no denying that Low In High School is more musically exploratory than usual, drawing from glam rock, electropop, tango and Tropicalismo, the singer himself has rarely exhibited such a grating combination of spite and self-pity. ... The album’s lengthy centrepiece “I Bury The Living”, an odious slab of trundling guitar bombast, lambasts as “just honour-mad cannon-fodder” the work of soldiers whom he presumes are too stupid to understand the wars they’re involved in.

Throughout, Jones’s characteristic optimism holds true, in songs such as Binky Griptite’s latter-day civil rights anthem “Matter Of Time” (“It’s a matter of time before justice will come”) and especially Crispiano’s “Come And Be A Winner”, whose light country-soul stylings and rhythm guitar seem to channel Curtis Mayfield.

Swift doesn’t need her lover to save her, as she notes on album standout “Call It What You Want”, which is, arguably, the best song Swift has ever made. Its lyrics are more open and willingly vulnerable than anything she’s done before.

[Jupiter Calling] still relies too heavily on routine romantic fluff like “Hit My Ground Running” and the glutinous “Butter Flutter.” T-Bone Burnett has been drafted in as producer, and brings his usual taste and expertise

These 10 songs are like soundings from between the cracks, faint echoes from an inveterate wanderer whose revulsion at our anthropocentric ruination of the world leads him to ever-darker places.

The opening “Rebel” sets the tone with a country-style tale of how a good-hearted man’s attempt to live up to his father’s ideals backfires to leave him a criminal, losing his beloved’s respect and affection in the process. From there, the journey swings between ebullient celebrations of life and sombre tales of misfortune, with the shadow of Springsteen looming large over songwriter Eric Earley’s material.

REM’s brooding masterwork. ... It’s an album of shadows and contrasts: “Drive”, for instance, opens proceedings on the cusp of adulthood, imparting youthful rebel spirit with a warning sense of duty for the future, before “Try Not To Breathe” offers an extraordinary image of an old person eager to leave the world to the young.