A few of the melodies fail to stick. ... But when Hynde reels out the rockabilly to target more deadbeats on “Junkie Walk” and “Didn’t Want to Be This Lonely” in the closing stretch, everything clicks.

The music is fine, if aimless.

Wake Up! may tackle weighty themes of capitalism and power struggles in relationships, but the woozy ambience of its shoegaze and Sixties-inspired pop is not exactly going to propel you into an invigorating new way of life.

There are moments when it all starts to feel a little bit too doom-laden. But Williams saves not only the best, but the most hopeful, until last. ... An impressive but relentless album.

As a soundtrack album to meditate to, Aporia is pleasant, but there’s no denying that the absence of Stevens’s typically ornate songcraft is keenly felt.

I Am Not a Dog has its moments, but they are brief and virtually lost amid the more experimental forays.

Horan is impossible to dislike, forever existing on the right side of cheesy, but the result is a record almost entirely stuck on safe mode. You can only hope its stronger moments hint at better things to come.

His latest LP largely lacks killer tunes.

This isn’t so much an album that would rile you to the point of turning it off. Rather, it washes over you, with its mostly average beats (“Forever” is a rare exception) and seemingly random cluster of guest features.

Supervision is certainly not a bad album, but it’s a far cry from the bristling pop genius of Jackson’s best work.

Glam, anthemic and messy Father of All… may be, but “inspired” and “baddest” it is not.

The problem is, the album – so full of drawling balladry and anodyne lyrics – is deeply unremarkable. Listening to it is like wading through a quagmire of banality.

Eminem belittles the trauma of a then 26-year-old Ariana Grande for kicks on “Unaccommodating” by comparing himself to the Manchester Arena bomber. The sour taste of this track lingers well beyond the album’s centrepiece, “Darkness”, which is intended as a searing critique of America’s toxic gun culture. Instead, his use of gunfire and explosion samples feels grossly exploitative.

There is a lot to like about Rare. But it never quite gets out from beneath the shadow of half a decade of behemothic bangers.

It’s all fine: shiny and efficient pop, smelling of body oil and new car upholstery. But Payne treats each track like a rental car. He gives each song a spin and hands the keys back like a good lad without leaving a trace.

On the surface, Who sounds like a classic Who album. ... There are moments when Townshend stops questioning his own relevancy, but to dubious effect: “Beads on a String” is a limp metaphor for human connection, while “Hero Ground Zero” is just as clumsy.

Williams veers all too often from the kind of whimsy and cheese that’s acceptable at Christmastime, to a level of saccharine that actually makes your teeth hurt.

There may be none of the heart-tugging vibe of octave-spanning “Without You”, or the abundant melody of “Everybody’s Talkin’”, but Losst and Founnd resurrects a treasured voice in songs full of vim.

Everyday Life is a fascinating, occasionally brilliant curio, reflective of a band still very much figuring out how to respond to a world that has become meaner, dirtier and crueller since they were singing about clocks and colours. They’re not quite there, but you can admire the effort all the same.

While these are enjoyable enough tracks to soundtrack your day, there’s little of the lasting emotion or progression for which we know Beck.

Courage is a force to be reckoned with. It seems unlikely that more than a few of its tracks will jostle their way onto Dion’s setlist, given the decades of power ballads they have to compete with. But those that do will make their mark.

2042 may be the work of an accomplished songwriter, tackling pressing issues, but it’s also a hodgepodge – the result of an artist struggling to find his musical voice.

It’s no surprise, but still no less disappointing, that with all of West’s last-minute meddling of the album’s mixes the record lacks cohesion. Jesus is King feels more like a collection of well-produced skits than a full studio album, and fans will no doubt be wondering whether all the hype and stress that preceded its unveiling was worth it.

FIBS highlights Meredith as a much-needed creative force. Her shape-shifting genre-defiance constantly surprises and intrigues, but it’s good to get back down to Earth afterwards.

The songs are just a little perfunctory. Like a popcorn disaster movie, the album is full of adrenaline, and yet doesn’t stick in the mind long after you’ve finished with it.

Cause and Effect isn’t Keane breaking any new ground, but in the quieter moments it’s surprisingly good.

If the music could hold its own, No Man’s Land might make for a more tolerable listen. But the instrumentation is plodding and occasionally appropriative, while elsewhere there is unfortunate evidence of Turner’s limited vocal range.

Rather than imitating 2011, Inflorescent instead brings to mind the summer of 2013, overwhelmed as it is by a neutered disco-funk sound reminiscent of Daft Punk’s inescapable “Get Lucky”. Only rarely as catchy.

Drake is often best when he’s at his most brooding. ... This isn’t an artistic project as much as it is a business ploy ­– repackaging leftovers apparently without taking the effort to remix or remaster some of them.

You can let i,i overwhelm you or sink into its currents of drift and despondency – either way, it is immersive and rich. Yet it’s hard not to anticipate certain peaks (the unimpeachable climax of “Holyfields,” the joyfully silly “Sh’Diah” chorus) as if waiting for the school bell to ring.

The Big Day is like a lot of weddings: too long and occasionally a little dull – with one or two unforgettable moments.

No one will be celebrating Duck for breaking new ground, but long-term fans won’t much be complaining either.

There is no song on Fever Dream that is likely to eclipse, or even cast a shadow on the success of “Little Talks”, but this is a soothing, affable record nonetheless.

A thrashing, crashing metal record with brief dalliances in solemn balladry (as on the stark, compelling “Never There”) and even Imagine Dragons-style stadium pop (jarring album closer “Catching Fire”), it is a noisier, more impersonal record, and one that aspires to a thematic breakthrough that it never quite reaches.

Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills.

As a listener you want the artist to sound comfortable in their own skin. But by the end of Case Study 01, it’s hard to be convinced that this is really him.

On this album, you find yourself drifting in and out. She tackles trolls, racism, overpopulation and the internet age. You crave solutions as each track closes, or perhaps more of those sublime, witty character studies she offered on Let Them Eat Chaos.

It is an intriguing, often brilliant, though occasionally awful record.

There’s a focus on tribal percussion and a multitude of vocal techniques you don’t expect on a pop album: folky vocables, angular melodies, overdubbing, a male choir. This is more enthralling on some tracks than others.

The arrangements are suitably bombastic: there’s a theremin camping up the pub piano on his cover of Laura Nyro’s ”Wedding Bell Blues”. His version of Bruce Wayne Campbell’s (aka Jobriath) 1973 glam stomp “Morning Starship” really sells the wry/cosmic lyrics about a girl picking a rocket’s lock with her hairpin. ... Morrissey’s take on Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” is leaden jazz karaoke, stripping the original of all its haze and drift. The electro-stomp/harp, fading to reflective piano fade-out of his reworking of Melanie Safka’s ”Some Say I Got Devil”, makes a joke of his lifelong self-pity.

I Am Easy to Find feels like an old friend you’re pleased to keep around--even if, had you been introduced today, you wonder if you’d have been compelled to make the effort.

Always exquisitely unbothered, the indie-rock poster boy now sounds like he can’t be bothered.

We have to wait for the final, title track for the end of suffering. That Carter’s young daughter Mercy is on the recording ramps up the emotion and hopeful vibe of this acoustic ballad. It’s a much-needed resolution to an album of full-throttle catharsis.

Love is a pleasant although occasionally overly earnest capsule collection of pop sounds where Diamantis proves herself to be the master of the “brief pause... and gentle drop” technique. ... Her voice skitters across songs with a frostiness reminiscent of Madonna’s Ray of Light era, and sometimes it feels like a lecture being delivered into the mirror: everyone’s just like you, no one’s happy, enjoy your life.

“Paradise Is Under Your Nose” is the stand-out, a stirring folk lament kept on track thanks to the vocal duet with co-writer Jack Jones of Trampolene doing the heavy melodic lifting and some keening fiddle from Miki Beavis, but there’s only so much the Puta Madres can do. As with most Doherty releases, it’s back-loaded with meandering, semi-bothered filler.

It’s stuffed with generic accounts of relationships, life on the road, times with the band.

They’ve formed their own blueprint in which the messages they purvey and the grandiose shows they stage are our main point of interest, but the music, production-wise, falls a little by the wayside when it comes to breaking new ground.

A very credible record with no real mistakes--but no real personality, either.

For the most part, When We All Fall Asleep is stiflingly dull and bloated, with subpar production from Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell (known for his time on Glee).

Everything is more direct: the vocals are bolder and higher in the mix, the instrumentation sharper, the lyrics more personal.

Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 18th album might not be breaking any ground, or sitars, but 15 years after Newcombe nearly destroyed himself, it’s good to hear him sound so self-assured.

There is no earworm melody as insistent as “White Flag” here, but melancholic opener “Hurricanes” and single “Give It Up” boast that same persistent emotion. And, of course, there’s that voice: steadfastly pure and mellifluous, just as it sounded 20 years ago.

Andrew Hozier-Byrne’s second album Wasteland, Baby! is still stuck mid-sermon, albeit emaciated from surviving solely on stale communion wafers.

Strange Creatures is certainly packed with musical ideas.

Lavigne might not have found a musical identity that truly becomes her, but Head Above Water is an effective, and occasionally affecting, album.

Mostly this standard boyband fare, reheated, and topped with modern pop sprinkles. It just feels so unnecessary.

There is some sense that Blood Red Shoes are trying too hard to cultivate their own myth, with all these tales of rock and roll hedonism. For the most part, though, the music on Get Tragic is good enough to speak for itself.

Heard It in a Past Life is evidence of Rogers’ ambition and potential, but it is proof, too, that you can’t bottle lightning.

Gunn has created a work of quiet, understated charm. But as far as helping him break out as a distinctive artist, it’s less likely to make its listener sit up and pay attention than lean back and close their eyes.

Essentially, this is yet another album of formulaic EDM pop and Latino R&B dancefloor grinders, more market tester than art.

SKINS is another fiery blast of catharsis, a largely metaphor-free space where depression isn't hinted at poetically but invited to throw down. ... There are no songs as refined or showing such potential as ?'s “infinity (888)” and “Moonlight”, and many of them feel like half ideas.

Oxnard isn’t quite the epic final chapter .Paak clearly craved for his trilogy--it certainly fails to compare to his 2016 breakthrough masterpiece Malibu--but you have to wonder if he really cares that much. On so many of these tracks he sounds restless, like he’s already thinking about moving on to bigger and better things.

Ultimately, despite a few high points, LM5 is so scattershot, both thematically and musically, that it’s hard to find much to grab onto.

Delta is good but not great.

Simulation Theory seems to fall into two territories--songs are either half-hearted nods to the best of their heavier rock-opera back catalogue, or futuristic, electronic pop-heavy tracks that borrow from bands more adept at that particular sound, and the vast majority of which are burdened with Bellamy’s political paranoia. For a new listener, it’s baffling. For a former, diehard fan, it’s disappointing.

Bar an impressive freakout on “I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to Be Free)”, his piano playing rarely warrants centre stage. But his character--a kind of suave jazz-bar lech--is the heart of the show. ... As cash-in celebrity Christmas covers albums go, Goldblum’s has a lot of spark, and even a little soul.

Olympus Sleeping feels dated, and a little forgettable.

Forever Neverland is chock-full of safely idiosyncratic bangers, and never misses a beat. But maybe it could have done with missing a few.

Natural Rebel, sadly, is paint-by-numbers singer-songwriting. For a 10-track album, it feels hideously overindulgent--only two songs fall under the four-minute mark, and those still feel drawn out by plodding, bog-standard riffs.

Ono’s continued Flower Power philosophy--“People of America, when will we see?” goes “Now or Never”--feels simplistic at a time when artists are so used to deconstructing the social and political systems that Ono rails against. And so Warzone falls into a strange dichotomy: as the album closes with a version of “Imagine” that is hymn-like enough to sound like the heralding of a new dawn, the relevance of Ono’s protests feels as if it’s faded.

Rodgers doesn’t allow his pals to freshen the old formula, reducing them to audio clutter.

For the most part, though, Blood Red Roses’ vaguely anthemic ditties are as adrift as his sailor, with nothing much beneath the surface.

It’s fine to be influenced by one particular band, but they need to find their own voice or risk being known as little more than The 1975’s pale imitators.

Despite a four-year wait, the songs on their second album, For Ever, still sound like understudies for Mark Ronson mega-hits.

A record with some rich layers and embellishments, but you sense that the excess of outside influence might be making up for something.

In the Blue Light is not the sound of a man reinventing himself, nor is it a final meditation on decades gone. But in shining a light on a handful of overlooked gems, Simon has succeeded brilliantly.

Seven of the 15 tracks here have been drowned in producer Pharrell Williams’ bubblemint bounce – at points, it’s in danger of sounding more like his record than Grande’s.

Tangerine Reef gives a musical voice to these alien coral creatures and their aquatic world. If only it were a more mellifluous voice.

Quaintness is what their fans look for; you just sense that there might have been an even more searing political bent lurking beneath on Angry Cyclist that never quite pierced the surface.

It’s a low-key, subtly composed rock record that sets slow-rolling country and anthemic southern rock as its parameters, and never so much as hints that it might break beyond them.

Ignoring the diabolical “Saviour”, which sounds like a hundred other Nashville-based bands song (featuring the chorus: “Thinking I could save you, I’ll never be your saviour”), the results are much more interesting on the second half.

He quietly champions racial harmony on “Get Along”, and embraces stylistic experimentation on the mandolin-driven “Pirate Song” as well as the reggae-tinged “Love for Love City”, which features steel drums and a guest turn from Ziggy Marley. It won’t be enough to alienate long-standing followers or to attract too many new ones, but Songs for the Saints is nothing if not heartfelt.

Nash is a maestro and, although less experimental than previous efforts, his cosmic almost dreampop Americana featured here provides proof that music comes in many sounds as well as names.

Although some of the songs follow that same pop structure seen on the first half, by contrasting them with more experimental sounds (that are not hoping to top the charts), they have much more impact.

As usual, the factor that will divide black metal fans are the vocals, which remain somewhere between screamed and croaked. Either way, this comeback will restore them to prominence within that community.

Oddly erratic. ... The way he darts between different sounds is exhausting and, ultimately, messy. On certain tracks he raps like he has something to prove, on others it's like he has nothing.

Unfortunately, outside of those songs [Humility, Hollywood, Tranz, Sorcererz, and Lake Zurich] (which would have made for an excellent EP) The Now Now falls short, the grit and grandiosity of other Gorillaz records is absent.

If you’re looking for connectivity between the tracks, it’s difficult to find it through the array of hyperactive noise. However Reznor and writing partner Atticus Ross managed to create their own version of The Matrix.

It’s a return to form, but reveals an expected sense of maturity. Pryor and sometimes guitarist Jim Suptic split vocal duties on the EP.

With Bon Voyage, it genuinely feels as if Prochet got lost in her sounds and let it lead her. In her own musical liberation, Prochet makes something bizarre and stunning.

It’s a peculiar record and one that involves a push-and-pull between two extremes; on the one hand, the instrumentation is wound tight and built around sharp melodies that, at their best, are difficult to shake off--‘Bellarine’ and ‘Sister’s Jeans’ in particular are real earworms.

Tracks like the reggae-tinged “Right Moves”--which feels like it was supposed to be an ANTI cut--and “Pipe” come off as monotonous. But there is a lot of Aguilera’s sincere authenticity that is weaved throughout Liberation. It may not be a pop record, a hip hop record or a soul record, but it’s certainly an Xtina record.

Ten tracks of seemingly upbeat alt-pop, Babelsberg is a record that on the outside appears bright and breezy, bordering almost on the whimsical. Dig deeper however, and it quickly begins to reveal itself as a wryly written document of current social and political climates.

With Daltrey suffering from a serious illness himself mid-way through this recording (the singer had a meningitis infection), this is an affecting album of reflection, survival and celebration both after this, and his work with Johnson in 2014.

Themes of anguish and otherness are littered in Davis’s frequently cliched lyrics, though some listeners will welcome such lyrical clarity.

Wildness is an attempt to return to form, but it’s an unsuccessful one.

For the most part, LaMontagne isn’t reinventing the wheel on his seventh album, but he once again proves his music is as reliably good as ever.

There’s a little of Prince in the sensuousness of certain songs, but Bay doesn’t possess that same crackling sexual energy as the Purple One; he’s more brooding, introspective.