Inveterate collaborators Dr John and Kairos 4tet also add variety to a somewhat one-paced set.

In the Silence remains deeply pleasant, if a little polite.

All too often, the songs are too lightweight to ensnare the listener, their gossamer melodies floating out of the memory almost as quickly as they entered.

Recorded at his son's home studio, David Crosby's first solo studio album in two decades has a pleasingly jazzy feel, the arrangements full of blocky piano chords and big string bass which, with Crosby's much-envied harmonies, create a pleasant fug.

Busier tracks like Birdcage or Gaze--an actual incidence of dance music--confirm how nimble Actress can be when he takes off those lead boots.

Across 32 tracks it tries to capture the experience of an era from all sides.

Producer Ed Harcourt has met her mannered delivery and plummy English vowels with string-soaked arrangements but they're more saccharine than stirring.

There's a very definite sag in the middle of the album--but this is another enjoyable set.

Too much of this music is just hip, well-connected (you can Google their amorous partners, current and former) aural wallpaper, gossamer and murky by turns, undoubtedly very pleasant in an altered state but frustratingly unmemorable.

Their eighth album proper is clearly designed to be played very loud indeed; the tension here comes from the interplay of taut structure and fierce bursts of noise.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues lives up to its title with candour and tunes.

Their debut album muses woozily on sleep, memory and psychoanalysis. For all that, they are no more mind-bending than scores of recent shoegaze revivalists.

It's all stylishly conceived, but--in part because Lindén's deadpan vocals are buried so deep in the mix--too often it fails to engage.

That there's a little too much misery on this third album from the 27-year-old Oklahoman doesn't obscure a promising talent at work.

There's a multitracked theatricality to songs such as Gold and Looking Out, which costs him some of the shiver factor of more understated peers, but delivers moments of magnificence too.

The jumps between genres barely jar once you realise how good Doyle is at all of them.

[The record] takes the idea of a stopgap album full of odds and ends and reimagines it as something much more satisfying.

The 50-something from Brooklyn is her own diva and sounds at once wounded, defiant and exuberant. Producer-bassist Bosco Mann runs a tight band with its own tricks and which purrs along so joyously the influences fade to leave a core of unadulterated soul.

Even if their formula is nothing new, something sleek and sinewed runs through their songs that gives urgency to the unkempt and noisy haze.

Singles are by nature the juiciest bait, but what's cheering is that so many of these tracks match Lariat for sheer breeziness.

French pop in its purest form hasn't really got its groove back since the 60s, but, wisely, it's this very era that this Perpignan duo mine, marrying fuzzed-out psychedelia and agreeably rambling rock with the pop sweetness of that decade's chansons.

There's an innate problem in the way Swings Both Ways swings--like a pendulum, flipping and flopping between 2013 and 1953, a problem that the orchestra can't resolve.

The best surprise of all, in an autumn in which Beyoncé's closest competitors--Gaga, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus--made underperforming bids for the throne, is how thoroughly assured, immersive and substantial this album is.

From the Sea comprises new versions of old songs, most of which sound just as powerful without Woolcock's arresting images.

It's only when hazy melodies begin to pierce the fog that their psychedelic rock strikes the right balance between hooky immediacy and cosmic ambition.

While there is nothing on here as life-altering as GGD's 2011 single MindKilla, tracks such as Overlook remain restless and inventive.

The results are intriguing, occasionally frustrating, rarely boring.

There are beautiful moments.