She's irrepressible and the record sparkles with personality and elan, sealing her as a pop star worthy of the illustrious company she keeps.

There is a depth--a willingness to experiment, a refusal to be pigeonholed--that rewards repeated listens and makes this their most coherent, most satisfying album since their debut. Where they go next is anybody's guess.

It's dumb (how's "I love beer, I love rhymes, I love sex" for nuance?), but it's hard not to love a musician who puts their mum on a track (props Mrs Stephens on Lunatic).

While Later... lacks the intensity of the band's first set, the title track and Choices in particular suggest they shouldn't be dismissed.

If ever the record's appeal wanes due to the generic feel of the backings and melodies, it is given a lift by Legend's fine piano playing or little production tweaks.

The closing Ragtime offers a happy ending of sorts, but this is too honest a record about unhappiness and grief to deliver a neat, redemptive conclusion.

The musician is famously exacting when it comes to sound and, predictably, the album is impeccably produced. What's shocking, though, is that at moments it sounds--whisper it--delicate.

A bright, colour-saturated record indebted to the loopiest excesses of 60s psychedelia – but the chirpiness is wearing thin.

In short, it has the kind of beauty that sees you playing it, and only it, for the next three weeks.

His trademark reticence (both this and 2010's Earl begin with voices needling him to speak) means he gives away too many verses: the best tracks are him and him alone.

It's only later that you realise Franz Ferdinand's fourth isn't just a return to form but a tuneful meditation on death, decay and the void.

The longer you listen, the more these disparate influences and structured elements coalesce into a very cogent record.

A collection of earnest, country-tinged rock, comes loaded with the hallmarks of Lightbody's band--plaintive vocals and choruses that lumber in the direction of anthemic uplift--but scant evidence of the more nuanced talents surrounding him.

Appleby lays it on a bit thick, which is why Faye O'Rourke's powerful, bruised vocals on three songs out of 11 prove a welcome respite.

While there are sublime moment, too often style wins out over substance.

It's no straightforward confessional, but a paradigm shift from squalling electricity to intensity of a different sort.

Neon is a smooth, proficient pop product that steers clear of conflict or strong emotions unless they have to do with matters of the heart.

The standard remains high throughout, from neo-soul man Mayer Hawthorne's strong vocal on the opener and title track to the blues jam with Jones's son, Ted which closes the album.

Here, he remains in fine, yet undeniably altered, voice; the power of his interpretations is undimmed even as intimacy overtakes their former lushness.

For all their melodic nous, though, White Lies often sounded like the barely-not-teenagers they were; fixating on the downside, inflating everything out of all proportion.

"Chillwave", the genre with which Washed Out, or Ernest Greene, is synonymous, was always a tongue-in-cheek name but this remains non-ironic music about nothing more interesting than vague good vibes.

Such drama [as on Full Circle or Unofferable], though, is absent from Dark Eyes' second half, most of which could have been crafted in the 90s and, for all Portielje's efforts, is too sterile to excite.

Bar a few tracks on their debut album--most notably Rootless and the glorious We Come Running, which makes fine use of a children's choir--they are neither as outre as the Polyphonic Spree nor as imaginative as the Flaming Lips.

Ragtime and country, jazz and swing; all swirl together on this collection of expertly formed roots nuggets.

Too much of the rest of their material sounds like utterly unremarkable filler,

The mordant songwriting redeems The Civil Wars.

Their hometown makes itself known--lots of songs are accented with steel guitar--but the instrumentation stays delicate throughout.

Their soundtrack for supernatural French drama The Returned is just as good [Mogwai's music for the extraordinary football movie Zidane]; no less absorbing whether you encounter it through headphones or on TV.