The shadow of Seventies Krautrock looms large over Danish psych-rockers Pinkunoizu, judging by The Drop, their splendidly kosmische second album.

Balanced by bitter barbs at modern snivellers and shysters in Time of Dust itself, the result is a compact but concentrated dose of poison.

There’s a calm, reflective quality, allied to an intense involvement, about both players’ solo work, of which My Foolish Heart may be Towner’s best since his sublime 1973 debut Diary.

On False Alarm, though, they offer something that proves they’re still worth paying attention to.

At 14 tracks, the album is one of Fredo’s longest and yet it still manages to feel concise. Independence Day is another push forward for Fredo – a mostly solid follow-up from a rapper continuing to hone his voice.

Some tracks on The Good Witch serve as incantations to manifest a better lover; others spit curses on past ones. All of them, though, convincingly set Peters up as the next musician to confidently march us into another sad girl summer.

Mostly, the album comprises a series of scuttling bleepscapes lent individual character by unorthodox instrumental detail.

Romance remains their core theme, although “Rosebud” strikes out for the harsher terrain of thoughtless cruelty.

Soberish is a record of push and pull, of doubt and regained confidence. ... Phair is the queen of rock reinvention, and as this album proves, she’s got a few lives left.

A record like this should go out with a bang. Instead, it’s a bit of a limp finish to an otherwise fun record from one of our most charismatic pop stars.

Peace or Love, their first album in 12 years, is perfectly pleasant and familiar, the tracks tracing the well-trodden vicissitudes of love in tones so subdued that they’d seem hushed even when played at maximum volume.

Just a series of great, swampy soul grooves, fronted by the most arresting new voice you'll hear this year, and the kind of natural songwriting that seems to contain the entire history of Southern music within its staves.

The EP opens with the lovely “Sweet Dew Lee”, a genial pop strummer in the manner of early Orange Juice, its buoyant melody evoking a hill climb to an urban vista as the protagonist daydreams of a parallel world in which he and his departed lover are still an item.

By reflecting on the personal issues that first inspired him, Murdoch has reminded his band what they’re made of and sparked a loving surprise: their most expansive, exquisite mission statement since 1998.

Behind the rococo charm lurks a subtle emotional power.

Everything is more direct: the vocals are bolder and higher in the mix, the instrumentation sharper, the lyrics more personal.

Part of its success is due to Stevens' uniquely ambivalent position, at once ingenious and ingenuous.

The whole album is a terrific reminder of the intense, personal connection Swift can conjure in song.

It offers an engagement with the notion of music as a lived obsession that far outstrips their mostly meagre intentions.

Freedom Jazz Dance features the entire session reels for tracks from Miles Smiles and Nefertiti, complete with studio dialogue, enabling us to hear Miles discussing and directing the music, ironing out details. ... The point when they all seem to realise, as one, what to do with “Nefertiti” is a moment of pure, transcendent joy.

The album loses some momentum around the more generic “Strangers”. But even with that song, the harmonies are hard to resist. It’s the best pop comeback – and likely one of the best pop albums – of the year.

Alicia Keys’s musicality is far superior [than Solange's]: whether developing swaying gospel fervour on “Pawn It All”, threading balofon through the two-part reflection on African-American queens “She Don’t Really Care/1 Luv”, or riding a perky Latin shuffle for “Girl Can’t Be Herself”, her work is grounded in a melodic appeal that’s almost magnetic.

A playful record that pushes in different directions without straying too far from the Seventies dancefloor brief.

Despite their diversity, a mood is sustained through Midlake’s arrangements, which draw on fond ‘70s influences, from the glam-rock boogie of “Restart” to the sweeping yacht-rock sheen of “Unlikely Force”. In most cases, the songs locate almost perfect surroundings.

The songs are individually worthwhile, but get lost in the aggregate: Guitar rattles through agreeable ditties about life, love, and music at a clip that makes them blur together.

Circuital opens with a gong and orchestral fanfare, appropriately so for what may be My Morning Jacket's best album.

With Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys co-producing, Olive has captured the flavour of 1960s Brit-blues on the cusp of spreading into druggier, more exploratory areas.

It's an absorbing, sometimes harrowing ride.

It's punk-folk pop with its heart on its sleeve and urgency overwhelming reflection, closer to Green Day than, say, Leonard Cohen.

Downhill from Everywhere provides plenty of evidence of that relit spark, delivering the sheer joy of hearing a master songwriter with the wind in his sails.

It’s the gap between his character and the songs’ sentiments that gives this album its curious appeal.

No surprise then that this first solo album following her second wind is full of exquisite craftsmanship.

So long as you're not paying close attention, it's a beguiling enough experience.

A strong thread of anti-corporate, anti-corruption liberation ideology runs through A Long Way To The Beginning.

We have to wait for the final, title track for the end of suffering. That Carter’s young daughter Mercy is on the recording ramps up the emotion and hopeful vibe of this acoustic ballad. It’s a much-needed resolution to an album of full-throttle catharsis.

How you feel about that will depend on your threshold for Coming Home’s smooth-bossing seduction style. What Usher lacks by way of foreplay (“I wanna be inside ya/ I’ll be coming” is the album’s second line) he compensates for with stamina: smooching his way through 20 tracks of mostly silky-solid grooves. Coming Home is enlivened by a cool cast of collaborators sharing the mic.

The follow-on to their beloved titular 2009 debut finds Duckworth and Lewis exploring further aspects of the beautiful game, from its amateur enjoyability and levelling qualities to the euphonious variety of its argot.

Given the stuttering, protracted process it’s been through to get here, it’s a surprisingly coherent record. ... For the most part, though, Phoenix is worth the wait.

Chisholm lacks both the originality and super-wattage of a solo megastar. But her ability to sing to us with the gutsy warmth of a good mate on a karaoke night continues to make her enjoyable audio company.

The T-Bone Burnett-produced Low Country Blues is Gruntin' Gregg Allman's first album in 14 years, and it's the best work he's done since the Allman Brothers' Seventies heyday.

With Daltrey suffering from a serious illness himself mid-way through this recording (the singer had a meningitis infection), this is an affecting album of reflection, survival and celebration both after this, and his work with Johnson in 2014.

Tracey Thorn takes a wider brief than usual for her Christmas Album Tinsel & Lights, mostly avoiding the routine carols and standards in favour of left-field choices.

Wareham’s languid, imperturbable voice and steady-paced music have a familiarly narcotic effect.

Watch the Throne is more notable for its general lack of impact. Neither as compulsively neurotic as Eminem, as languidly characterful as Snoop Dogg, nor as furiously articulate as Nas, the raps here represent a pretty mediocre, cardboard kind of throne, truth be told.

Produced mostly by Max Martin and Shellback, the settings blend twitchy electro riffs with skeletal, scudding beats and understated guitar parts, with occasional details hinting at 1980s influences.

The Old Magic is stuffed with the kind of retro-styled standards that will doubtless be mined by generations of Nashville crooners to come, performed here in unassuming arrangements that try not to get in the way of the songs.

Adele's engaging ebullience is powerfully persuasive on this DVD/CD package.

It's a one-sided album: following the soulful “Late Night”, things plummet badly in the second half.

The words themselves are glorious, as frequently absurd and brilliantly imaginative as some of the best sci-fi writers--Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick, HG Wells--while the instrumentation recalls their cinematic adaptations, or classic superhero cartoons.

Always an unflinchingly open songwriter, Conor Oberst leaves himself even more exposed on Ruminations, where his songs are accompanied just by his own piano, guitar and harmonica.

The contrasts of the title are evident throughout John Legend’s latest album--in the push and pull between devotion and desire, indulgence and empowerment, and musically in the dialectic between comforting familiarity and exploratory urges.

Familia is but a faint impression of what Cabello is truly capable of.

It may not reach the pinnacle of sex or sadness, but Fine Line is a fine album nonetheless.

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott’s third album as a duo is disappointing, with Heaton’s lack of musical intrigue leaving some of his poorest songs badly exposed.

Eels songwriter Mark "E" Everett has always trod a peculiar, idiosyncratic path that runs parallel to most pop music, but here he collides with it in such a tender, open way that the emotional hit of some songs is quite shocking.

It’s an elegant, thoughtful album, rendered in deft, subtle brushstrokes.

Things begin well enough with the single "Rolling in the Deep", with its thumping piano quadruplets and gospelly backing vocals, and continues reasonably with the galumphing Tom Waits-style arrangement of "Rumour Has It"; until, two-thirds of the way through the song, it grinds to a halt for a slower, torchy middle eight.

This follow-up to the original 2006 Rogue's Gallery sea-shanty compilation is slightly less salty but just as broad-ranging musically.

Cypress Hill demonstrates across the record, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Cheech and Chong of hip-hop are back – and are as clear-headed on hazy-eyed matters as ever.

It's all typically hard work to decipher, both lyrically and musically, but unlike Yorke's earlier endeavours with Radiohead, this time I'm rather less convinced that it's going to be worth the effort. It's certainly less fun.

Thankfully, the further Wilson gets from his heroes, the better he gets.

Sometimes, sheer ambition can render music too top-heavy to succeed. Hang, by Los Angeles duo Foxygen, is a case in point.

On their sixth album, Calexico finally sound more like a band with memorable, individual songs, than a project dedicated to creating audio soundscapes evocative of the American southwest.

["Mr Tembo" is] a rare moment of extrovert cheer on an intimate, introspective album that takes tentative steps to reveal the soul behind the star.

Grasscut push the electropop envelope in intriguing new directions with Unearth, its songs inspired by alliances of people, poetry and places.

But in cementing one style, some of the possibilities offered by Lungs have been choked off.

It's presented as 39 miniature sonic studies in the vein of European "library music" fragments, interspersed with dialogue clips from the movie and sound effects to evoke the protagonist's deteriorating mindset.

His band certainly nails Jennings’ trenchant country-rock tread on the title-track, a warning of the downside of the outlaw lifestyle for which Earle’s joined by Waylon’s old buddy Willie Nelson.

The songs on Everything is Beautiful, by contrast [to Everything Sucks], are warm and sun-dappled; reminiscent of the uplifting, gospel-influenced hip hop of Chance the Rapper.

Martha Wainwright's latest songs characteristically zigzag about the emotional spectrum.

The resulting extended instrumental palette has brought a new depth to the arrangements but has added little transparency to Yorkston's often bewildering lyrics.

Skin is brilliant across the board.

Food for Worms sees Shame confidently embrace their flaws and resign themselves to the messy, beautiful chaos of their live shows. It’s all captured within this bedhead of a record.

The result is a series of huge-sounding, stadium-ready pop anthems of undeniable charm.

While there's some interesting moments to be found here, for the most part Centipede Hz is a fatiguing experience.

There are isolated moments of musical intrigue scattered here and there through the album.... But as 25 continues, it’s gradually swamped by the kind of dreary piano ballads that are Adele’s fall-back position.

Tales of a Grasswidow is easily CocoRosie's most satisfying, fully realised work so far.

Andre Williams is a renegade R'n B spirit who remains, in his seventies, as scurrilous as ever.

For his part, Daltrey matches Johnson every step of the way, fighting his corner just as fiercely as in his dayjob.

Combat Sports is a great return for The Vaccines, and an album that will soar at their live shows.

Whereas most 75-minute albums of short songs swiftly pall, Lux never bores because it's never making foreground demands on your attention.

The record is more fun than the lyrics suggest. Watt’s production flirts with Muse’s epic grandeur and the anthemic metal of a Red Rocks Oasis. ... But by the time he’s rhyming “asphyxiation, masturbation, degradation” on the Hawkins co-write “Degradation Rules” – the second Iommi appearance – things are getting a little ridiculous, and at over an hour the record drags.

As symbiotic as much of this album is, there are times when the combination of human and machine doesn’t entirely fit.

Despite her amateur standing--she never once supposed these tapes would be made public--there's a keen poetic sensibility at work.

Whatever style he uses on this first solo album in more than two decades, from country-blues to croon, rock’n’roll to reggae, he sustains that character as a unifying thread.

It's a more considered and persuasive analysis than most of his younger, grimier peers can offer.

The process of recovery shifts through numbness, melancholy and tentative hope in an admirably straightforward, touching manner that suggests Cohen’s previous tenure in edgy art-rockers S.C.U.M. was another world entirely.

Sometimes it suffers from Prince-like micromanagement, but when it succeeds, it's blissful.

Taken as a whole, it's a marvellous piece of work, boasting a rare congruence between lyrical themes and musical evocations, and fronted by one of the most broodingly characterful voices in rock music.

Although she’s got the makings of a great songwriter, she needs to push the sounds into sharper corners to give her narratives more distinctive definition. Because this album delivers many shades of grey but never the promised punch of black.

It can, at times, feel like you’re on an interminable carousel circling round and round again, but there are moments of pause. Every time you’re about to fall off the ride, a song will crop up grabbing your attention once more.

Apocalypse is Bill Callahan's best release in some while, sustaining a unity and intimacy of mood throughout.

Bayley’s voice – light, airy, mournful – makes you think of Peter Pan if he were forced to grow up. Thinking of childhood in such analytical detail can throw up wonderful memories, sure, but it can bring out dark things, too – things that tend to hang around in later life. It makes for a complex, thoughtful and moving record.

Only much later, in “There Will Be a Reckoning”, does the familiar Bragg anger kick in significantly.... it's outnumbered here by more sensitive songs about things like relationship difficulties and dying.

Tegan and Sara’s last album, 2016’s Love You To Death, was a bold stadium-pop record; this one is less polished, but just as punchy. ... Most people read their teenage diary and cringe. With Hey I’m Just Like You, Tegan and Sara have painstakingly, tenderly, written theirs out again.

What she's come to realise, finally, on new Florence & The Machine album High As Hope, is that her voice is just as, if not more powerful when she holds back.

It's Rose's harmonies that make the album special: warm and breathy, they seem to sidle gently into position, rather than cut with razor precision.

Scott's overly melodramatic delivery sometimes gets in the way of the words, although his arrangements are for the most part respectful and apt.