An innovative homage to tradition.

No longer just parochial rabble rousers, Idles are moving on up.

Grip is OK, but it should make more sense on stage.

There are nice moments of nostalgia: banger Hearts and Flowers references Jenny from the Block, while the excellent Rebound is a throwback R&B jam accentuated by fluttering harp. But songs such as To Be Yours and Not.going.anywhere offer very little outside of simply soundtracking a cosy night in chez Bennifer.

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.

For those expecting Malone’s all-enveloping instrumental embrace, the churchiness of the voices can startle. But the younger artist came to music through choirs, and the sorrowful grace of the words makes plain emotions she previously only implied.

At just 35 minutes, Phasor might not be as all-enveloping as his previous efforts, yet it offers enough scraps of melody and moments of wonder that you won’t feel cheated.

It’s an aural through line as she dazzles us with her range: unexpected dancefloor bangers (Prove It to You), pellucid vintage soul and exultant funk.

As usual, the words he drawls are blankly impenetrable – the gorgeous I Can’t Find You could be about friendships, a relationship or his car keys. Still, this is a wonderfully agreeable album and, if you miss the roar, there should be more Dinosaur Jr in a year or two.

Peacemaker balances its polished Nashville musicianship with uncanny textures, resulting in a record so atmospheric you’d swear you could hear the rustle of her white prairie dress in the breeze.

Here are grownup, weighty ruminations on devotion, sacrifice, separation and Covid, but The Tower and King of Sweden are also perfectly constructed pop.

Thought-provoking words, lush instrumentation – what’s not to like?

Her second album, written in Nashville, continues to make up for lost time, moving on in both craft and playfulness.

If Insano is to be Mescudi’s musical curtain call, it showcases his capacity to attract big names, without delivering on distinctive songs.

Although the likes of the punchy 1981 and the poppier Suzie Chapstick roll back the years, too many of the songs here sound laboured and/or pedestrian, and there’s a real paucity of memorable material.

The subtle, unfurling I Quit, meanwhile, marries guitar, piano and percussion to create an arpeggiating Doppler effect strafed by electronics. “This is my stop, this is the end of the trip,” sings Yorke. In the same breath he’s ruminating on “conscience” and “brotherhood” and “a new path out of the madness, to wherever it goes”. That path may well be shaped like a smile.

There is no right way to grieve, but it feels as though shock and sorrow have only made Sleater-Kinney seize their day and prioritise.

But where its predecessor was louche and hook-driven, this fourth studio album skulks deeper into her psyche, its occasional moments of catharsis upended by sombre piano interludes and bleak lyricism.

Orquídeas’s variegation means it’s not quite the no-skip concept album that was Red Moon. But in a rapidly decompartmentalising pop landscape, where Spanglish is increasingly a lingua franca, Uchis’s flair and depth cuts across whatever notional cultural barriers might remain.

Sometimes it feels more like an oral history project, with first-hand spoken-word accounts by Liam Bailey (the title track), or Brown’s appreciation of her family on Just Be. Mostly, though, she succeeds in channelling her anger, sadness and defiance, all the while conveying gratitude for the richness of her Caribbean roots.

At 14 songs, there are misfires that could have been pruned – Run for the Hills is generic, algorithmic trap-pop – but overall, Think Later feels like McRae’s ticket to the big leagues.

The only slight misstep is Mother Earth, which swaps the original version’s distorted guitar for pump organ – but as it’s Young’s voice that still takes centre stage, that feels more of a cosmetic change than the imaginative reworkings elsewhere.

Over 10 tunes, Regal and Petralli fashion taut, soulful pop nuggets out of jazz fusion licks, a sound not a million miles from Tame Impala meeting Thundercat, but gnarlier and different at every turn.

The magnificently eerie Four Kinds of Horses is the record’s peak, while maternal elegy And Still feels like the most open, vulnerable song he has ever sung.

Benjamin has woodwind form. He contributed flute to the soundtrack of Everything Everywhere All at Once and played clarinet on 2018’s epic tribute to his mother, Look Ma No Hands. New Blue Sun is more weirdly charismatic than either of those.

You don’t have to strain too much, either, to hear a plausible feminist reworking of songs such as (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, when Parton joins larynxes with Pink and Brandi Carlile. But overall, Rockstar is both a savvy commercial package and a fudged artistic opportunity.

The title track and single Tantor are decent, and Shakedown a warm beachside strut, with Brown’s lyrical ice shards speared through. Bass Jam is lovely nostalgia, shimmering harmonies surrounding him like ghosts of his former selves. Otherwise, the beats feel slightly tired, casting a pall greater than any of Brown’s recent misfortunes.

It doesn’t quite match the standard of late-career high point The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009), but the album is not without its moments.