Fuelled by a black humour that’s almost become her trademark, there’s heartbreak and ecstasy, desire, fear, uncertainty, acting on impulse, making mistakes and (maybe) learning from them. And those are tunes we can definitely dance to.

They’re still sculpted from the same small portfolio of sounds--basically, buzzing distorted guitar riffs and harmony chants borne along on pummelling drum barrages--which tends to impose too narrow an emotional range on the album. It’s like being hectored loudly by a bore.

Perhaps reflecting the three years spent touring after their marvellous Music In Exile album, the excellent Resistance finds Malian desert-rockers Songhoy Blues forging firmer bonds between their native modes and Western styles.

Beth Ditto’s debut album is a bit of a mixed bag.

There’s nothing particularly Nashville about Jason Isbell’s new album--no cowboy hats or keening steel guitars--but it does possess, in spades, the kind of blue-collar concerns that have traditionally furnished country music’s backbone.

Throughout this intensely poetic, introspective album, currents of guilt, regret and resolution battle in quiet turbulence, the group’s trademark harmonies and acoustic folk settings augmented with additional sonic strata.

It’s pleasant enough, though listeners may experience a twinge or two of deja vu.

They’re best when they work together, with the charming simplicity of the island-flavoured “Feel About You” and beach-strolling “Red Sun” contrasting nicely with the tart, twitchy urgency of “Too Far Gone”.

There are glosses on former glories--“Jamaica Moon” is a patois adaptation of “Havana Moon”, while “Lady B. Goode” involves gender-realignment of Chuck’s signature song--but they’re vastly outweighed by tranches of sloppy filler.

Muhly’s sweeping orchestral vista mid-section dominates “Pluto”; and Stevens’ furtive, autotuned description of “Saturn” as a “melancholy creature, paranoid secret” is rudely interrupted halfway through by a brash, bustling beat barging its way in like Donald Trump at a photoshoot. The “oracle ghost” “Venus”, meanwhile, is treated in more recognisably Sufjan style, in its exhumation of a youthful indiscretion at a summer camp, characteristically stirred into a wider lyrical compass.

Her dance-pop here is identical to everyone else’s, which leaves Perry clutching at the single-entendre raciness of “Bon Appetit” (“Got me spread like a buffet / Bon appetit, boy”) and curdled imagery like “my love’s the bullet with your name on it” to secure a soupcon of bogus outrage.

The title track draws on gospel traditions to confront police killings--“Not everybody that’s brown can get the fuck on the ground”--while in “Overtime” and “Believe”, Booker expresses the desire for faith and direction in a rootless world.

It’s indicative of the taste for extemporisation--elsewhere reflected in the funeral lamentation “Bullets In The Street And Blood”, which yokes an explicit message to a desultory instrumental drift--which renders this album less compelling than 2012’s Landing On A Hundred.

On her best album in years, Thea Gilmore darts back and forth between sharp, intelligent pieces on dark themes--depression, loneliness, murder--and more positive songs about love and hope.

Relaxer is effectively Alt-J’s folk album: still studious and tending towards complexity, but here tempered by a rootedness that snags emotions more directly.

He just sounds like a grumpy geriatric for whom age has brought little of the reflective wisdom of Leonard Cohen.

“Shine On Me” sounds like a George Harrison out-take, while the kitschy-corny “Livin’ In Sin” (“Your touch is electrical/I’m so susceptible”) recalls The Beach Boys circa 15 Big Ones. But there are threads of sly invention woven throughout, most notably the unusual alliance of dobro slide and Bacharach horns that lifts “Wildest Dreams”.

Overall, the album offers a surprisingly successful transformation that somehow enables one to hear this most familiar of material as if through new ears, a remarkable achievement in itself.

Ingenious arrangements illuminate the songs, notably the blissful synth solo reaffirming life and love in “All Of Me Wants All Of You”, and the 12 minutes of keening sounds, like the moaning of whales, appended to “Blue Bucket Of Gold”.

It’s an engrossing set throughout, leading one through the subdued swirls of “Dawn Chorus” to the climax of “The Uncertainty Principle”, another work whose throbbing organ and cavernous twang owe a distinct debt to Can.

Realised here in more expressive interpretations, and interspersed with poems read by her daughter, the actress Gabrielle Drake, these songs are full of acute observations, deft allusions and metaphors, and the subtlest of emotional revelations, wielded with an English restraint redolent with the aromas of freshly-mowed lawns and cucumber sandwiches.

It’s a remarkable departure for Amidon, who also eschews his usual traditional repertoire in favour of original material, albeit haunted by similar hints of fate, animism and violence; though the overriding impression is best summed up in a phrase about “haphazard words found in drifting conversation”.

With Different Days, though, they seem to have settled into a sort of not-quite-mainstream indie-rock tinted with neo-psychedelic touches.

At their best, on the barroom piano rocker “Dirty Water”, there’s a brazen, Stones-y charm to the tart, offbeat guitar twitch and raunchy slide guitar; while societal decline is dealt a simple slap in the punchy rocker “Death & Destruction”.

With Modern Kosmology, long-time Manchester folktronic siren Jane Weaver has made her most completely realised album yet, albeit by dispensing with folk music almost entirely, in favour of more forceful Krautrock and psychedelic influences.

It’s an odd album, split between full-on dancefloor stompers like the euphoric summer romance anthem “Love You To The Sky” and less successful stabs at political commentary such as “Lousy Sum Of Nothing”, an overly simplistic bout of finger-wagging about how “the world has lost its loving” in respect of the refugee crisis.

Styles has opened himself up, as best he can, to his audience, and by gathering a solid team around him to help achieve that he’s created an immersive, well-produced collection of songs that isn’t trying to prove anything in particular to anyone.

Genders’ broad northern tones lend an apt rootedness to ethereal observations like “There’s a truth behind illusion, shining there--it’s only light”; and his subtle, detailed arrangements likewise form the most natural bed for them.

So although Cave’s adept grasp of vocal expression, from aching melancholy to erupting hysteria, guides the narratives of these songs, this is not simply a singer backed by a band, it’s a unit striving for collective expression, by whatever means possible.

The results are looser and less formal than might be expected, more imbued with soulful swing, slipping back and forth between the modes and incorporating ecstatic gospel-style call and response passages against a patinated backdrop of shakers, percussion, swooping synths and droning organ.

The first of two albums planned for 2017, From A Room: Vol. 1 builds on the success of Chris Stapleton’s Grammy-winning debut Traveller, through a similar blend of country songwriting smarts and soulful engagement.

The results are spiritually exhausting.

It’s a mature mix of reflection and assertion--albeit corralled this time into just ten tracks--in which Weller’s musings on life, love and society are channelled through a diverse series of musical modes, most of them constantly seeking to seep into other styles.

After the refreshing change furnished by 2014’s The London Sessions, things are pretty much back to normal for Mary J Blige on Strength Of A Woman, which finds the Queen Of R&B Reproach once again embattled by amorous treachery.

They just sound like desperate grasps for something--anything--before the latter stages of the album slump into terminal dullness.

This is clearly a band determined to take no prisoners, their attention condensed to a tight focus on each song’s momentum.

In Jeff Tweedy, singer-songwriter Joan Shelley has surely met her perfect production partner. This, her fourth album, is simply magical.

Merging deft production with stark, diary-entry songwriting on opener 'Too Much Love' (for dancing in low light with strangers) the south London electronic trio find a balance between melancholic subtext and the thrill of a beat you can sway to.

Working with avant-rock guitarist James Sedwards, My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe and his old Sonic Youth colleague Steve Shelley, Thurston Moore has created one of the cornerstone works of his entire career with Rock N Roll Consciousness.

Unfortunately, there’s not much pleasure here for the listener, manoeuvred into the position of reluctant psychoanalyst.

Though by no means as complete and satisfying as Demon Days or Plastic Beach, there are enough intriguing moments to make Humanz a worthy addition to Gorillaz’s cartoon universe.

A wealth of arresting images sprinkled throughout another excellent album.

Despite their diversity, a mood is sustained through Midlake’s arrangements, which draw on fond ‘70s influences, from the glam-rock boogie of “Restart” to the sweeping yacht-rock sheen of “Unlikely Force”. In most cases, the songs locate almost perfect surroundings.

Americana is the kind of concept album that Bernie Taupin might have written for Elton John; but being Ray Davies, it’s not so much comprised of fond, mythopoeic imaginings as the more specific (non-political) relationship that still subsists between Britain and America.

He remains a more psychedelic soul, as witness psych-rockers like “Mad Shelley’s Letterbox” and “Detective Mindhorn”. With a sort of repressed power anchoring its drive.

This album, drawing together their three recent EPs, also displays the diversity of Best’s lyrical interests, ranging from brain chemistry (“Serotonin Rushes”) to psychoanalysis (“Freudian Slips”) and, in “Impossible Objects Of Desire”, the enigmatic allure of records which defined so many lives.

The raging country-punk counterblast “Country” unleashes her disgust at the country establishment’s backward attitude towards women. Elsewhere, her sympathies remain firmly with the downtrodden and desperate, as in her straight-talking depiction of teen pressures faced in “High School”, a bruised parade of class clowns and cheerleaders, pep pills and pregnancy.

This album isn't a 'Holy shit I need to text my friend imploring them to listen immediately' mind blower, but it is a valuable addition to his oeuvre.

Here, his pool of talent is confirmed in the spare xylophone beat to “Youth” and the ingenious, slinky grooves to “Lightwork” and “They Don’t Know”, a frisky pass-the-mic showcase between Tinie, Kid Ink, Stefflon Don and AoD. But given the sharp drop-off in notable guest talent this time round, compared with Demonstration, he certainly needs to make changes.

The sound here is occasionally brasher--most notably on the gentle opener “Everyone’s Looking For Home”, suddenly overwhelmed by a startling, brash mariachi climax--but generally sticks fairly close to the Laurel Canyon soundalike stylings of Outlaw’s “SoCal” sound.

In places, Vanderslice’s more abstruse, jazzier ideas grate with the material--notably the clarinet discords closing the old departing-soldier-boy tale “When The Roses Bloom Again”--but he’s usually on the money with things like the elegiac strings accompanying “Betty’s Eulogy” and the lachrymose pedal steel, vibes and shaker underscoring “Wreck”, a heartfelt plea for a lover who’s “a worker, not a volunteer”.

Their minimalist aesthetic can sometimes work against them, as on the spartan, diffident “The Pop Life”, but it’s tempered by a winning romanticism on “Butterflies”, where the fluttering keyboards evoke a fantasy of a dead soul becoming a butterfly, one of “a thousand souls swarming”.

Whatever the subject, it’s always conveyed with unexpected charm.

For Life Love Flesh Blood, Imelda May has hooked up with T-Bone Burnett and his failsafe session crew of tasteful interpretive talent to effect a shift away from boisterous rockabilly towards more sensual torch songs like “Call Me” and “Black Tears.”

Balancing the political disquiet is a vein of romantic yearning, with Kirk’s plea in “Moment” for “desire deserving of something more” offers a fitting summary of the album as a whole.

There’s a drive and urgency about Whiteout Conditions that whisks one along regardless, their usual indie-pop mode here strengthened by layers of fast, bubbly synths and pulsing Eurocentric beats.

Ironically, though, it’s the more old-school tracks that furnish the highlights.

An absorbing, intermittently amusing album.

“Build Music” is a fast, scuttling riff of loping bass and stabbing organ, its call-and-response lyric celebrating the act of making music; while on “Santa Monica”, an itchy but fluid guitar motif is threaded into the groove, as Nabay protests LAPD harassment--“Investigation, interrogation, yea!”--like Fela Kuti recounting oppression in a less balmy clime. But crucially, the backing vocals still sparkle lightly despite the heavy hand of the law.

A concept album about early American rail disasters, The Ghost Of Hope sounds more naturalistic than many Residents albums, with plenty of chugging engine noises, and strings summoning conventional tragedy, as grisly crashes are recounted in typically sinister Residential tones. But it’s punctuated by startling musical moments.

There’s not quite as intense a contrast between the sweetness of the melodies and the antagonistic howls of guitar feedback on this first album in 18 years, which allows the swaggering pop charm of tracks like “Songs For A Secret” and “All Things Pass” to work their magic in less edgy manner.

Right from the lolloping big-beat Goth motorik of “Vessels”, there’s a confident, low-life muscularity to the album, partly recorded with Sean Lennon at his upstate New York studio.

It’s all a bit depressing, and not helped by the plodding music, which sags back into plonking piano quadruplets and dissatisfying, baggy sax, leavened by the occasional squall of guitar.

On Spirit, Depeche Mode get serious and political, which doesn’t really suit them.

Pleasingly, two of the best [guests] are British, Sampha capping “4422” with an emotive outburst, and Skepta getting an entire “Skepta Interlude” to himself to muse about how he “died and came back as Fela Kuti”. Elsewhere, the likes of Giggs, Young Thug and 2 Chainz add furtive but menacing sketches of thug life to tracks like “No Long Talk” and “Sacrifices”, the latter offering Drake’s most elegant mea culpa for past transgressions.

Nichols’ explanation of its development--starting out in the mould of country legends The Stanley Brothers, but metamorphosing through exposure to Malian desert-blues master Ali Farka Toure--reveals the blend of influences his music subtly weaves together.

One can’t help thinking the ghosts and echoes of previous scandalous indulgences are rather betrayed by the project’s neat, sentimental manner.

The result is probably the best work of the singer’s career, a wide-ranging survey of contemporary shortcomings in which the frequent bursts of offhand spite and bitterness are perfectly balanced by the warmth of the folk-rock arrangements.

Not bad, but not brilliant.

It’s a proud, forceful demonstration of the strength and variety of modern African music, brilliantly combined by producer Liam Farrell into arrangements where funk, afrobeat, desert-blues, dub and congotronics swirl infectiously around the women’s voices.

The found-sounds quickly become irritating--as too, unfortunately, does Wastberg’s wan falsetto, which imposes a mood of victimhood where uplift might be more appropriate. It’s rather sad, because there’s genuine invention in some of his J Dilla-style arrangement assemblages.

Her follow-up to 2013’s sublime Pushin’ Against A Stone finds Valerie June expanding her unique blend of blues, soul and mountain music to create a distinctive hybrid in which past and future coalesce with gentle power.

Though that melancholy seeps deeper into songs like “So Now What” and “The Fear”, it’s never allowed to dominate, with the latter’s rolling drone groove quixotically tempered by the addition of mariachi horns, a typically off-centre touch.

Augmenting her folksy troubadour style with Latin percussion and an acappella group for that streetcorner-symphony flavour, she effectively expands the notion of Americana to accommodate another cultural strain alongside the usual blues and country influences.

Merritt’s refracted reminiscences frequently offer thoughtful and incisive insights into bigger issues, and with deceptive sleight of story.

This is a polished, well-executed effort from one of the hardest-working men in music.

Save for a couple of uptempo trotters like the jaunty kiss-off “It’s Goodbye And So Long To You”, it’s mostly melancholy fare.

With the toothless Volcano, they’ve abandoned that path [hinting at deep immersion in psych-rock] in favour of a wheedling, keyboard-heavy electropop sound with much less bite, pock-marked with dubious stylistic potholes.

Nadia Reid’s 2015 debut Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs heralded the arrival of a prodigious talent, the young New Zealand singer-songwriter’s confessional material embodying an emotional intelligence and honesty akin to Laura Marling and Judee Sill, her folk leanings tempered by languid jazz inflections set among a patina of subtle sonic textures. Preservation continues in like manner.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not a pretty sound, though there are moments of transcendent grace.

He wields with sumptuous beauty, from the Floyd-like swathes of mellotron and piano carrying “The Boat Is In The Barn” and the stately “Lost Machine”, to the implacable electropop fizz of “Evermore”.

When pondering gets this skilled, and this fruitful, the dividends far outweigh the misgivings.

It’s an enjoyable, occasionally virtuosic romp, fronted by Thundercat’s smooth soul harmonies, which lend proceedings the lustrous sheen of Earth, Wind & Fire.

The usual bouts of brusque dissing rub shoulders with love songs, fond tributes to his mom, and a fulsome, swaying devotional hymn “Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2”. But it’s the engaging sense of vulnerability and self-deprecation that brings depth and charm to Gang Signs & Prayer.

These dozen visceral tableaux of modern life are shot through with flashes of gallows humour and offhand absurdity that tempers the overall vision of a "newborn hell" peopled by "dumb Brits."

It’s an odd alliance of elements that seem at odds, but work beautifully together.

On Freedom Highway, Rhiannon Giddens animates black American history--notably, the arduous journey from slavery to civil rights--in songs which pair her strong, sonorous delivery with arrangements echoing pre-blues minstrel music.

David Longstreth’s account of his separation from former bandmate Amber Coffman told through a welter of autotuned, over-treated vocals and jumble of clashing sounds that, to be generous, may be intended as an analogue of the ground shifting beneath their disintegrating relationship.

It’s a solipsistic affair: and while his good intentions to smarten up his drug-sozzled, road-weary life may be commendable, they don’t necessarily make “Quit It” any more agreeable.

The calm, methodical “Gravity Wake” blends stately Moondog-like drums with undulating synths and relaxed solo horn lines that inescapably bring to mind Terry Riley. Elsewhere, the use of rhythmic, murmured vocables in “Glossolalia” recalls Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians.

A brave, and welcome, transformation.

Prisoner sticks to the well-trodden highways, whether it’s the echoes of U2 in the grand guitar stabs and earnest vocal tone of opener “Do You Still Love Me”, or the spangly, flanged guitars and relaxed sense of space that lend “Anything I Say To You Now” the laidback stadium sound of The Police.

This recently discovered live recording from 1968 captures [Dennis Coffey] at an earlier stage, just before his reputation soared through contributions to classics like “Cloud 9”, “War” and "Band Of Gold”.

It’s not always pretty--his blast of antipathy “Can’t Stand You” is just relentless disparagement, with none of the subtlety of “Positively 4th Street”; ultimately, it’s small wonder to find him, in “Poor Traits Of The Artist”, caught between loving and hating his need to create.

There’s a calm, reflective quality, allied to an intense involvement, about both players’ solo work, of which My Foolish Heart may be Towner’s best since his sublime 1973 debut Diary.

Compared with his perky previous albums Mars and Mean Love, there’s something underwhelming about this third effort from Ahmad Gallab, aka Sinkane--it feels every bit as pedestrian and dutiful as its title suggests, its slow, methodical grooves pleasantly light but laborious.

Powerful and personal, it’s a persuasive protest tribute straight from the heart.

“Rituals” is Lipstate’s tribute to Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, its arpeggiating guitar lines intertwining hypnotically, while the opening “Deep Shelter” takes a different approach, its lowing drones sliding over each other in Terry Riley-esque manner, seeking rhythmic pulses behind sheets of high, keening tones.