Michigan auteur Hawthorne has synthesised his influences into perfect power pop, with the help of producers including Pharrell Williams.

It’s still the instrumentals, with their bass growls and motorik rhythms, moody ambience, psychedelic wig-outs and violent moodswings, that have the most flavour.

Another sweet viper's bite of post-Freudian dyspepsia from the singersongwriter who loves to mistrust.

They don't significantly compromise the essential charm and glitchy poetry of the songcraft.

Nobody does this kind of thing quite like the Swedes, and NATD are a welcome addition to that nation's synthpop hall of fame.

Finn's second album continues the project he undertook with his first – namely to shake off the shackles of being "Neil Finn's son" by swamping his dreamy, Beatles-esque pop songs with moments of electronic and percussive madness.

Low-slung, dub-ish beats are appealing, though lead some tracks to Snooze Town.

Drawing on anything from Medieval plainsong to free jazz, she creates an extraordinary sensation of light, air, and space.

Baird's own rather fabulous acoustic is garnished with touches of dobro, pedal-steel or electric, over which her wisp of a voice, and words, hang in a vapour.

"I Wanna Talk 2 U", [is] just one highlight of an album which manages to be sonically inventive, dense and complex and melodically accessible.

See You There revisits his classics as well as finding room for one new track and a beauty of an alternate version of "What I Wouldn't Give."

Too safe, too familiar...and was that really a power-ballad key change? Good guitarist when the songs allow it, though.

It does just enough to bring "happy" to you, and you've gotta love the black humour of any band who'd call a song "God Help This Divorce".

A seething, soundtracky, high-gloss, high-energy orchestral Latin "fusion", full of licks and stabs and twiddly bits.

Beyoncé's strident triumphalism is displaced by muted heartbreak and the cookie-cutter R&B of her mega-sellers ditched for a subtle, stripped-down sound that suggests someone's been listening to Janelle Monae.

It's an assured collection of pure pop with an independent sensibility, equal parts Kylie and The XX.

The arrangements for a small rock band are rudimentary, leaving everything to depend on the song and the singer.

As so often before, the duo’s choice of vocal collaborators is timely and transformative, bringing fresh, unexpected angles to their pieces.

It's still a cut above most epic global-influenced rock.

She's on the cover, smirking in front of an old map: a naughty sea god(dess) in a Cruikshank cartoon. Which somehow suits the discursive post-folk rompery of the music: highly arranged, wordy as an Elvis Costello song with larks taking the place of bitterness.

With its flutes, xylophones, mandolins, a truly incongruous mention of Superman III and, not least, Martin's own lilting delivery, it also has a fair quantity of charm.

It's great.

Every once in a while, the results can be more enjoyable than the main event (see Stephen Stills' Manassas). And this may be true of CRB.

For all the virtuosity in his fingers, Jerry is no singer, and this collection of tasteful exhibits needs faces [guest singers]. The faces save the record.

If Mala wasn't conceived as Devendra Banhart's Europhile album, it's doing a damn fine impression of one.

If you replace the techno with ambient tones and piano noodles, he can sound a little reedy and exposed.

Much of the time, it's reheated Madchester. The rest, it's over-literal psychedelia.

It's loud, it's brash, it's real and it's utterly exhausting.