Should, in hindsight, this turn out as a selection of ‘on the road’-composed pieces, which were quickly released to make way for a more daring and bold work, I would not at all be surprised. But until then, this is an album that Swiftologists will hotly debate as to what just happened here.

The consistently solid instrumental writing often is bogged down by the above-mentioned production choices, veering into cheesy territory emblematic of bygone eras of heavy music.

Metalhorse, like a carousel in the conceptual bedraggled funfair, spins itself in circles for its own sake. It’s honest about its origins and inspiration, but hurts itself by not seeing that it’s repeating itself as it goes on.

It’s flashier, louder, a little more daring in places, yet also somehow more hollow and faceless.

On Never Exhale, DITZ sound like they’re running on a treadmill at maximum speed, and in a bid to keep up, stumble into knee-jerk turns to some less-than-exciting tendencies perpetuated from their first release.

At this point, for better or worse, this is what we can expect from the band: shades of what came before, a glint of the glory days, and a workmanlike determination to soldier on. Kapranos admitting he’s got the fear, it seems, doesn’t change too much.

There are, sadly, very few moments on Set the Tone that don’t feel phoned in, awkward, or outright bored. Even the skits feel like a forced attempt to recapture a bit of Ghostface’s zaniness.

She enlists help from guest artists and DJs to encapsulate the past six years – but there’s no innovation or originality.

The Libertines, with their second comeback, have chosen the other, “safe” direction, and sacrificed their integrity for it. Doherty sounds tired, abandoning nostalgia for kitschy gestures. Barât has fun, putting on his old jacket and playing rockstar, but he’s not rethinking his role as musician, or portraying growth as a songwriter.

If Wilson and crew are trying to invoke a riot, then Easy Eighth isn’t the best manifesto – but it does at least fill the time fine enough until they figure out their cause.

Considering this is her first album since 2014, it’s unfortunate that it can feel a little one-note. A Romeo and Juliet-esque yearning wasn’t necessarily expected or desired, and it doesn’t always serve her best across this effort.

To his credit, he once again proves why he’s esteemed at the former via the blunt insights of “TMVTL”, but the “run that verse back” Benny is all but absent on Everybody Can’t Go. Once more, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but he doesn’t seem sure how to replace that energy with conviction. Even The Alchemist gets dragged down by the pursuit of safe material.

Based loosely around a theme of karma and betrayal, it’s possible that the attempt to tie everything together lyrically came at expense elsewhere. The sequencing doesn’t help: following the Lykke Li-ish opener “Love And Other Drugs” and nuclear trap of “WUACV” (which stands for “woke up and chose violence”) comes a Barbie pink, seven-song sampler of other peoples’ sounds. We don’t get to see Maidza again until the three bangers crammed into the back half, which is very late.

It’s a shame nothing about it screams new pop culture staple the way the movie does. There are fine moments, but the highs don’t rise enough to offset the lows.

With Feed The Beast she has neither progressed past that nor become a lost cause.

This collection of radiant jangle pop songs, burdened by nostalgic love and depressive yearning for something real, ultimately loses its luster. Everything else blends into one garbled, hazy murmur that ensues without much variance.

ATUM is the most controversial and strangest of all Smashing Pumpkins albums: a record that defies expectations but often disappoints in how prosaic and calculated it is.

Ákadóttir has made her own museum here, and each of the songs on the album are monochrome statues that we the listener get to walk around and view, but we leave the building indifferent to any real history and experience they represent. It’s like Night at the Museum, but without any of the magic.

Cracker Island’s forgettable, milquetoast assembly line of tracks – though crisply and professionally engineered – proves that having it all shouldn’t always mean using it all.

It would seem then that Let Her Burn is Rebecca Black just flying overhead instead of victoriously soaring above the ashes.

It remains a frustrating record, though, since it does show Tegan and Sara attempting to pull away, ever so slightly, from the sickeningly shiny days of “Closer”, but they get in their own way in their efforts to be edgy or forward-thinking.

Junior Boys’ track record shows that change is good, but here it feels like the tiptoe before a more significant step.

What remains is a record that feels all too groomed, all polished execution and often not well thought out. Music to nod and tap your foot along to, then turn it off and move on.

Detractors have long said that Harris’ music is tailor made for background summer playlists you can ignore – listening to this project, it’s hard to disagree.

At heart, it’s all too modest, too fatigued, too lacking in ambition and attitude.

There’s so much talent and story hidden behind the mask, but this album isn’t Orville Peck at his truest.

It’s far from a miserable affair, it certainly passes the time, it’s just hard to imagine how so much talent in a room didn’t arrive with something that didn’t feel so staid.

The tracks are still unmistakably Sonic Youth, but in a period where each album had a particular feel and tone, these tracks feel too disjointed to sit together too well.