Ben Howard’s fourth record sees the artist move beyond his usual methods and proves, if anything, that he has too many good ideas to stay focused. Of all the problems to have, it’s a pretty good one.

E Volo Love may seem oddly relaxed at first, but acclimatising is a breeze.

Finn certainly takes a paddle – if not quite a dive – into fresh sonic waters.

The tender optimism of tracks like "The Morning" and the gorgeous, harpsichord-led symphony "Oh So Lovely" are wonderfully uplifting, but there's still room for some snarky self-deprecation on "Baby Loves Me" too.

It’s a brave record, but also a frustrating one. While you’re persuaded by the clarity of Rostron’s vision, it’s hard not to also suspect a shortage of ideas.

There's occasional crimes of flannel-wet schmaltz but mostly Smart is like an esoteric, London-based Dam-Funk with a fondness for chemically enhanced raving.

What used to feel like surfing amid the cumulonimbus suddenly feels like snorkling in soup.

Price has pulled off a smarter trick: after doing ’80s Britain and ’70s America, The Killers now finally sound like… themselves.

OK, at Disneyland. Yes, on drugs.

A remarkably intelligent and engrossing record for then, now, and the future.

The end result is a record rooted in the bass flicks, shimmering synths and lovelorn lyrics that defined their debut.

Music For Men is a sugar-coated dance record that echoes with universality.

It’s a pairing that, on paper, makes sense, given that Depper’s talents with a synthesiser leave Thank You for Today feeling like a more polished version of 2011’s ‘Codes & Keys’. Yet the wide-eyed freshness of that new songwriting pairing leaves things feeling a little too shiny.

Those heavier cuts are the album’s best--dark, dreamy and abrasive.

Jaded & Faded strikes a fine balance between self-deprecation and the supreme confidence needed to get away with suggesting you've had your chips. But there's no second album syndrome here. It whoops ass.

[It] doesn't really sound like Prince at all. [25 Mar 2006, p.35]

This is not the carefree record Splashh were expected to make, but it is all the better for its dourness.

The album’s slower tempo won’t be for everyone: if you’re all thrills, no substance, then maybe this album is not for you. But you have to respect ScHoolboy Q’s dedication to showing us a different outlook on life, and exploring many emotions. Introspective--yes, but these are songs for the summer.

Still, it remains a challenge to crack their ice-cool exterior, to really feel things as they feel - but does that matter? The Strokes are, and have always been, a band that looks great at arm's length - and consequently, 'First Impressions Of Earth' remains, in the best way, untouchable: the first - indeed, maybe the last - word in New York City cool.

Fans of the Mancunian mood sculptor will see this lavishly packaged collection as the latest step in securing Bazza's reputation as the North West's sardonic answer to Barry White.

A little more emotional chaos, a dash of the dark stuff, might make such avuncular campfire grooves more worthy of our time and money.

A seething, furious album; a declamatory statement against cynicism and passivity and the simple injustices of everyday life.

Gone are the ill-advised brass and bare-faced chart aspirations of 1996's awful 'Wild Mood Swings', as are the flippant pop songs that commercialised The Cure in the mid-1980s. What we are left with is the dark, dense core of Smith's psyche, and a reminder that The Cure are at their fearsome best when creating soundscapes awash with uncertainty and dread.

'Nation' is not bad - it's taut and tense and if you buy it quick you'll get to hear their logic-defying cover of Bauhaus' 'Bela Lugosi's Dead'. But it's hard to reconcile 'Nation''s obsession with the scourge of globalisation with Sepultura's conversion from third world pioneers to just another angry hardcore band.

‘Unnatural’ is full of sexy, snarling swagger and ‘Walls’ zips by on a wave of thundering riffs. Elsewhere there are hints of industrial (‘Money Machine’) and even reggae (‘Slow Down’), all proving that Nick Valensi has plenty of ideas and invention to offer outside of The Strokes.

In general it pays to avoid electronic producers with dreadlocks, but let Sumach 'Gonjasufi' Ecks be your exception.

The LP toes a line between eclecticism and kitchen sink, but the one thing he hasn't chucked in here is a little focus.

They've gone all mature, come to terms with their past and kicked on to the future too.

Migos are firing on all cylinders here, their new record a lush, chaotic patchwork that pops with primary colours. The fab three have done it again.

Ultimately, though, its success still falls on Lightburn's shoulders, a vocalist who's always straddled the line between impassioned and overwrought.

This could have been a vanity effort to prove their worth, but instead they prove that not only does crisis work--so does collaboration.

LM5 is the culmination of the band’s growth over the past seven year. Yes it may sometimes musically miss the mark; but with its strong and relevant message it’s something of a milestone for the band.

Blake Mills’ production is exquisite throughout what is Mumford’s most crafted studio recording to date; this album is a career-best for the musician. While it is undoubtedly an emotional and often heart-breaking listen, it’s also a record full of defiance, hope and faith.

Snoop takes a surprising back seat, singing low in the mix and seldom rapping--an odd decision, but it works and when Bush is good, it’s an absolute joy.

It'll never be your favourite album, but you'll wish your adolescence sounded as carefree as this.

Cherry Bomb might be the tightest, leanest Tyler album yet.

It’s not an essential listen but it does exhibit plenty of moody gravitas.

At points it gets too much, but Heavy Trash's steel-toed pillaging of the past still makes them a punk-rock Time Team.

Adding interesting new textures to his playbook, it’s perhaps helpful to think of ‘The Waves Pt.1’ as a soundtrack to something bigger, the wading out to sea before the full immersive plunge. By the time ‘Part 2’ arrives, Kele will likely have found even more ways to expand his horizons.

No great leaps forward from ‘Everything All The Time’ and ‘Cease To Begin’, just lovely, warm-hearted, full-throated harmonies and gentle melancholy.

Too often, however, Flory is prone to overcomplicating matters, and tracks like ‘In Time’ and ‘Get Down’ wind up too governed by the soulless stamp of the laptop.

When she steers away from pastiche and fully delves into cataloguing the mundanity, pomposity and sheer ridiculousness of grotty Little England, she’s at her best as a songwriter.

Views should be a slog. But remarkably, his signature brand of downbeat introspection remains gripping.

Nearly everything Robbie Williams writes is some kind of confessional and here it doesn't quite come off. There just isn't the sufficient depth of him in it to make it work.

Woolhouse mostly lives up to the dark nature of his moniker, but for brief moments he glimpses light at the end of the tunnel.

A collection of tangible emotional snapshots, brief but telling entries in a musical journal.

Gone are the wistfulness and melancholy that permeated her last four albums, yet ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ still sounds curiously muted despite Swift reuniting with pop super-producers Max Martin and Shellback for the first time in eight years.

What diminishes War Room Stories is the songs themselves, which can feel a little ordinary. Rappak’s vocal is a bit sub-Yannis Philippakis, a monotone half-mumble that doesn’t make the most of his intriguing lyrics.

Album two features some catchy and classy electronic dance music.... Unfortunately though, ‘Broken Record’ sounds like a Eurovision-endorsed soundtrack to Cassack dancing and ‘Satellites’ is a limp version of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light.’

Uncomplicated, Spinto Band-ish jangles like 'Second Look', 'Tallboy' and 'Everything I Know' plough casually and happily along without a care in the world, very much like the band themselves.

It’s not original, but you’ll love it for the summer at least.

On their third release Asobi Seksu have toned down the fuzz’n’raunch of old and come over all Cocteau Twins-y and mature--not necessarily a bad thing, just quite a bit less visceral.

Every album is a chapter in Frank’s on-going aural autobiography, and Positive Songs is his Getting Over It dispatch.

Ultimately it feels short on substance, with the sort of atmosphere that can drain through your fingers.

Yes, they write pretty and moving songs, but it’s reasonable to expect more from a band with a history of writing such sophisticated pop.

This album is a huge leap forward for Baoi. The record teams with hope, which couldn’t be more apt for a moment in which a new political era dawns and light, albeit slowly, finds its way through the darkness.

Paying tribute to the music that they love while staking their place in rock’s future. For a young band to think of their career in those terms takes a lot of confidence, but it pays off on this debut. It’s one to last.

Noel's still got it. Only a fool would write him off.

Individually the tracks have a removed piquancy, but an hour's solid exposure leaves you yearning for a crackle, some fuzz, or any human intervention.

Mainly, Halcyon sees Goulding's quirky-as-usual vocals lazily spliced into factory-standard chart dance.

They’re still working out the kinks, though, so a few tracks fail to match their ambition.

Good moments include the drama-packed ‘Just Another Night’ and the fun pop of ‘On A Roll’, but neither resembles the formulaic trash cluttering the rest of the record.

At times it sounds like pastiche but when they're themselves... the 'Couture...' club are amazing. [6 Nov 2004, p.59]

A twinkling set of songs that benefits from Wild Beasts soundman Richard Formby’s gossamer production touch.

$o$ sounds like the most half-baked efforts of Hadouken!, LMFAO and Eugene Hutz.

From the bouncy 'Same Mistake' (this album's 'Is This Love?'), to the darkly nostalgic ballad to years past, 'Misspent Youth', it's a comeback as irrationally happy-inducing as its title suggests.

They wisely avoid toying with any Darkness-style irony, but the Keys' insistence on authenticity does leave the album a little flat and humourless. [2 Sep 2006, p.21]

Still not Friday night material, then, but a moving display of one man's myriad sorrows nonetheless. Bless.

Mojave 3's Great Leap Forward. [17 Jun 2006, p.39]

Is this the best we can do? Desperate-to-be-authentic, carbohydrate-stodgy white blues, played by an elderly man pretending to be a tramp? Really, you deserve better.

This album is an almighty slog, one where the vibrant new is weighed down with a lot of the same old tricks. For all glimpses of bold musical and lyrical steps forward, they remain largely the same band they’ve always been with ‘Return Of The Dream Canteen’ offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that often feels overwhelming.

At times, a lack of crescendo leaves his songs teetering on the precipice of drama. The money shot, though, comes with the title track--an epic, swirling conclusion to his debut.

Momentary Masters is his most satisfying, cohesive record yet, and, in many ways, his most personal.

Not quite double thumbs aloft then, but way fabber than it has any right to be.

APTBS mask a lack of ideas or something to say by inventing louder volumes than everyone else.

Brilliant band then, not so brilliant boxset.

As a sort of lyrical sermon from the mount with uptempo beats to crush the weak-hearted, 'The Sneak Attack' raises the stakes on the microphone skills front as KRS-One lectures, hectors, drops streetwise politics, and laments the state of the world.

Understated, ramshackle garage-pop treats. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

Shelter From The Ash is a more sedate affair, full of ghostly baroque folk stories that feel disappointingly ethereal.

Dananan’s first album proper suffers from the same problems as Los Campesinos!’ flawed debut; ‘Black Wax’ and ‘Pink Sabbath’ are both thrilling, if wonky, pop songs, but they could be appreciated more fully as singles rather than back to back.

But from supposedly passionate Vonnegut fans we could do without ‘Sons Of Privilege’ and its student union pop at Uncle Sam (chief findings: U.S.A.=B.A.D.), while much of the rest slips into shouty default mode.

It's only rock'n'roll but you'll probably like it.

Just as you're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, you realise that there's another five-track EP by these self-absorbed, boring, aesthetically bankrupt bellends still to go. Double bummer.

It's a timely refresh of rosy-cheeked indie-pop mores.

Sadly, Wave 1 is a more disjointed, disorienting listen.

Exploratory, intense and without a kickflip or kingskin in sight.

Aside from the vocoder-enhanced cosmic disco that features midway, this is an introverted offering--though much too good to fall asleep to.

‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’ is teeming with nervous energy over trying to find balance in a world turned inside out, while flashes of more mature reflections on saints, sinners, kings and dreams are also promising.

He has regularly crept back to the light of the charts and 4:13 Dream is such an occasion. And one which, given the ’80s revival, is timed to perfection.

It remains a 1980s Johnny Cash album and it wasn’t until Rick Rubin got hold of him 10 years later that he came in from the cold.

The main problem with '...Thunder Canyon' though is it's long - 72 minutes long - which suggests when Banhart let his muse fly free, he forgot to keep a check on his ego, too. At its best, this is subtle, touching, beautiful. At its worst, it's meandering and smug. You're entertained, but unsettled.

It's a hit and miss affair.

The moments of imperfection that let the album down come on ‘Two Of Us On The Run’ (as basic as acoustic songwriting gets) and ‘Until We Get There’ (just sounds like a Cults offcut), but there’s promise here.

There’s been a hope that he’d one day return to his dream-pop roots. Stars Are Our Home isn’t that, but there are shades of his past on the twinkling, self-titled opening track and ‘(I Don’t Mean To) Wonder.'

Like Sabbath in a washing machine during a power surge. [16 Jul 2005, p.50]

After singing about so much Americana for the past decade, it seems that he’s now had to cross the Atlantic in search of fresh geography to mine.

'Light' is let down by anaemic sound. [16 Apr 2005, p.51]

The Uglysuit, whose country-prog-post-rock-indie-orchestral ramblings recall, variously, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Shins, Elbow, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket and the soundtrack for every emotionally self-indulgent US drama ever made. Yet, hearing the warm country musings of ‘Chicago’ or the aching two-note piano motif of 'And We Became Sunshine’, it’s hard not to settle into the seduction.