The album asserts the great variety and malleability of electronic music, from the electro breakbeat of “Lime Ricky” and the languid offbeat groove of “Pink Squirrel” to the synthesised collage of “K Mart Johnny”.

Living in Extraordinary Times marks a band still working at their full capacity, bringing new ideas and sounds while retaining what inherently makes James James--big choruses, danceable tracks, and timely lyrics.

Too Cold to Hold is also one of this year’s most acute depictions of 21st Century turmoil.

The delicate guitar and piano figures and the sombre languor of strings behind Alison Goldfrapp’s breathy vocals create something akin to a cross between the dreamlike mythopoeism of old folk tales and the lush cinematic arrangements of Michel Legrand.

There are incredible highs here, but too much that feels like a first draft.

Perhaps it’s her wisely chosen collaborators or more life experience, but Kimbra’s exploratory ethos has never been so on point.

An interesting diversion, but not much more.

This is your echt ELO in all its familiar state of sub-Beatlesy woe.... Whether his form of “properly” meets with your approval will, of course, depend on your capacity to perceive virtue in the familiar and the sentimentally melancholic (and in brevity: Alone in the Universe clocks in at roughly 35 minutes’ duration).

The emotional cohesion the record loses in its shifting cast of singers/songwriters/genres it makes up in DJ-savvy textural variety.

“Shine On Me” sounds like a George Harrison out-take, while the kitschy-corny “Livin’ In Sin” (“Your touch is electrical/I’m so susceptible”) recalls The Beach Boys circa 15 Big Ones. But there are threads of sly invention woven throughout, most notably the unusual alliance of dobro slide and Bacharach horns that lifts “Wildest Dreams”.

The New Abnormal – a spookily prophetic title – is stacked with rolling, streetwise grooves, boldly graffitied onto the chipped paintwork of NYC past.

The transitions here are remarkable; skipping a single track feels akin to jumping three chapters in a novel. .... It would be easy to dismiss this album as indulgent – particularly after Tesfaye gave everyone the collective ick in HBO’s ludicrous misfire of a series The Idol – but Hurry Up Tomorrow is impressive for its ambition alone.

Hotspot teeters somewhere between their ballad-heavy album Behaviour (1990) and 1988’s shimmering dance record Introspective. ..You sense this album is intended as an expression of hope for the future, rather than a fond look back.

Stephen McRobbie's wan vocals remain an acquired taste, but the way the music lightly folds in dark and light, innocence and experience, reserve and euphoria, lifts the likes of "Slow Summits" and "Summer Rain".

A thrashing, crashing metal record with brief dalliances in solemn balladry (as on the stark, compelling “Never There”) and even Imagine Dragons-style stadium pop (jarring album closer “Catching Fire”), it is a noisier, more impersonal record, and one that aspires to a thematic breakthrough that it never quite reaches.

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is imbued with the charisma of its creator; it’s a playful and inviting album whose first half zips through the mostly vocal-led numbers with ease and sprightly energy. ... Remarkable singers give rich layers to this accomplished album.

Their rock’n’roll friends, from Beck to Noel Gallagher, are on hand to lend the album a rabble-rousing tone. Ohio Players sounds like a house party where the whiskey is flowing.

The band’s best work to date.

It’s indicative of the taste for extemporisation--elsewhere reflected in the funeral lamentation “Bullets In The Street And Blood”, which yokes an explicit message to a desultory instrumental drift--which renders this album less compelling than 2012’s Landing On A Hundred.

Norah Jones and Jack White sing on three tracks apiece, respectively languid and predatory, the end result being a short but perfectly-formed portal to a different state of musical mind.

Jermaine Cole’s fourth album is highly principled and skilfully wrought, but those aren’t always the most prized or effective elements when it comes to hip-hop.

This second album since returning from an absence caused by lack of interest offers nothing new musically, but Manson at full-strength.

While this follow-up shares some of the annoying mannerisms that curdled one’s enjoyment of The 1975’s 2013 debut, it’s ultimately a much more enjoyable and considered work, one which starts to deliver on the immense hype that accompanied their emergence.

You can really relish these songs as outpourings of vulnerability, confusion and anger. They could be perfect to help lovely folk to dance away the pain of messy breakups. But you don’t have to strain too hard to hear them on the incel’s playlist either. Hickey’s a tricky one.

Gag Order comes loaded with deliciously weird and compellingly urgent hooks.

Her best album in about a decade.

There's nothing too innovative about Timbaland's production, but it's probably as reliable a set of grooves as R&B will spawn this year, custom-tailored to carry the singer's gentle falsetto.

Those looking for a dramatic change from their previous work will be disappointed as there are few surprises to be found. Whilst this can sometimes feel like a missed opportunity, there is still plenty on here to intrigue. This is a brave, immersive and timely record.

A refreshingly non-dogmatic take on retro musical styles.

Delta Kream is a soundtrack for those hot and heady nights of late summer. It’s brilliant.

She lacks rhythmic ingenuity: most tracks just stump along in unaccented 4/4, the spiky riffs cycling dully over and over.

From start to finish, Plastic Hearts dresses catchy, Eighties-indebted pop melodies in rock’s studded leather, lets them spin a few wheelies and max out the speedo. It’s basically a truckload of fun with added blood and guts, driven by Cyrus’s reckless, open-throated, soul-bearing charisma.

Art In The Age Of Automation finds the group expanding their sound to accommodate strings and horns alongside their core armoury of drums, bass, keys, sax and hang, the latter’s steel-pan timbres pleasingly sprinkled over the slow drift of “Objects To Place In A Tomb” and prominently featured in “Beyond Dialogue”, two of the better tracks.

First Rose of Spring is the work of an artist who will never grow old.

Arbouretum deal in an odd blend of folk and heavy rock, these seven tracks trudging along like a deep-sea diver traversing the sea bed in ten-league boots.

Norwegian singer Ane Brun's quietly involving music occupies a spectral space in which her delicate, tremulous voice reveals shared intimacies with a rare poise.

As you’d expect from Elbow’s frontman, the songs on this debut solo album rarely stray too far from the sleeve on which Guy Garvey wears his heart.

[It] features sleek R&B versions of mostly traditional gospel and blues numbers, some bookended with fragments of the originals, alongside interesting covers of things like Dylan's "Shot of Love".

It's a virtually faultless set, with plenty of neat touches personalising familiar material.

A typically diverse collection.

Jack White’s new solo album Fear of the Dawn is basically one long jam session. Which is fine, if that’s what makes him happy. For the rest of us, it’s a bit of a slog.

It’s a genial set.

It's easily the best work Diddy's been involved with in his entire career.

The album plays to her strengths, as befits a woman who has sustained a career as producer of, among others, Joss Stone's breakthrough sessions.

Recorded in one take, with drums, bass, guitar and backing vocalists huddled around two microphones, the results have a rustic charm akin to a more grizzled Leon Redbone, with rolling rumba-rock and reggae grooves.

Moby returns to form, honing in on the sounds that helped him rise through the ranks of the New York City club scene. Weaved in between the 12 tracks is a pastiche of trip hop, soul, electronics and gospel.

Cypress Hill are the hippies of the hip hop world, making music surrounded by a green-tinged haze that takes more cues from classic Sixties and Seventies rock than anywhere else. Elephants on Acid is one hell of a trip.

This is an album that shows a band who’ve grown stronger and unafraid to flex their muscle.

Musically, it’s lovely – loose, swirling California rock and country, led by gaze-out-the-train-window melodies. ... This album will leave a mark – one that is Moore’s and Moore’s alone.

This isn’t so much a barnstormer of an album as a reassuringly earthy rock-out among the hay bales.

She sings like she’s falling apart, but the quality of the album suggests she’s got it together.

Beyond these introductory tracks and a couple of others (“Give It Up for Love” struts to a Nile Rogers beat), the album chugs along at a pleasant mid-tempo pace.

“Here We Are” and “Back When We Were Beautiful” treat ageing with wistful nobility, Harris's voice cracking poignantly on the latter, while Crowell delivers a trenchant version of Kris Kristofferson's self-lacerating drug song “Chase the Feeling.”

The care and attention pays dividends on If You Wait.

A slow-burning triumph.

My Soft Machine is a punchier, poppier outing for Parks but the record shares a lot in common with its predecessor. .... It’s when Park veers off her own path that things get interesting. “Devotion” is a risk that pays off.

When they get their teeth into a groove, Goat’s alloying of krautrock and Afrobeat, desert blues and psychedelia proves irresistible.

There is something admirable about the fact they stay so firmly planted in their lane. Medicine at Midnight is unlikely to win over many new fans, but it will make the existing ones happy.

An engaging blend of slinky Tropicalia, soulful Bacharachia, and enigmatic Euro-thriller themes.

Songwriting points remain shrouded, and voices drowsy, but an understated fearlessness pears through the mist.

This six-track soundtrack EP of songs by Alex Turner finds the Arctic Monkey in appropriately reflective, wistful mood, as befits the hero's fanciful view of himself as a bit of a thinker.

Her second volume of collaborative remixes/re-recordings with diverse guests draws its source material from all stages of Ono’s career, and brings home not just how enduringly courageous she has been, both artistically and socially, but also underlines the vein of fierce feminism running throughout her recording career.

That he manages to express such ethical and religious principles without coming across like a sanctimonious buzz-killer is quite remarkable.

12 meticulously crafted songs. ... Just as the preceding art installation invited viewers to enter its vast head of LED lights and wonder, this album does the same.

Reconstituted with a brawny two-guitar attack, The Hold Steady return with another portfolio of dirty-realist tableaux in Teeth Dreams.

It’s relentlessly dull, the sort of feyly English, unfunctional dance music Hot Chip pioneered to declining effect. Okumu’s airy voice barely brushes the listener’s sleeve, never mind mending their soul.

It’s impressively wrought, but save for the more propulsive, swingy shuffle of “Feeling Alright”, there’s a Novocaine numbness about it that makes it hard to love.

As on A&M's albums, he's captured the trio's charm and lightness of spirit within infectious grooves built around Sam's cyclical acoustic guitar riffs, with the individual raps supported by their warm, uplifting harmonies.

Ron Sexsmith writes with a similar emotional honesty to Mark Everett, but in a more classic style, akin to the moving simplicity of Tim Hardin.

For all its apparent homogeneity, there’s considerable diversity in approach, with the resonant, vibes-like tones and cyclical guitar waves of “Strand” a continent apart from the shadowy, almost Krautrock manner of “Fog March”.

Further confirmation of the enduring strength of old-school electronic music.

The results are simply irritating, in so many ways.

It’s a lovely, laidback collection, with percussionist Willie Bobo adding a languid Latin feel, and multi-instrumentalist David Lindley excelling on guitar and violin, while Reid’s sepiatone delivery is expertly framed by master producers Eddy Offord and Tom Dowd.

Six years on from the vivacious Bang Goes The Knighthood, Neil Hannon’s latest Divine Comedy outing seems to lack the bite which gives the best of his work its raffish frisson.

It is further evidence of his mellifluous voice, somehow both relaxed and urgent; of his muscular grasp of his genre; and of his willingness to push its boundaries.

Iit’s sad to lose such a determinedly individual outsider talent, the vulgar bark of whose records, one suspects, was rather worse than his bite.

The Warrington quartet was clearly in the process of defining their own sound.

Bryce Dessner brings his minimalist experience to bear on “Garcia Counterpoint”, a Reichian exercise of layered guitar lines, but only Wilco’s Nels Cline comes close to the spirit of exploratory abandon in Wilco’s live version of “St. Stephen”. And amongst a tranche of dutiful replicas, Anohni’s “Black Peter” stands out for its transformative orchestration and delivery.

On John Paul White’s Beulah, the dark emotions of tracks like “Fight For You” and “Hope I Die” mingle with the bitterness of “The Once And Future Queen” and the low self-esteem of “I’ll Get Even” to create a strangely subdued portrait of emotional turmoil, couched in Southern folk and country modes.

No Shame is a return to form in every sense: a confident, well-produced and deeply personal work.

Bookended by “Frau Tomium”, a bleep-tastic tribute to electronic pioneer Oskar Sala, Toy could have come from any time in Yello’s career, so resilient are their tropes.

Recorded over a week in New York, Everything Sucks is the brash, unapologetic sister to the more sensitive Everything is Beautiful.

There's a profound valedictory tone about it, as songwriters such as Jakob Dylan and Paul Westerberg craft material custom-built for Campbell's situation.

Kardashian West was right: the record is “soooo good.” ... K.T.S.E. (Keep That Same Energy) is a pleasant surprise. Embellished with West’s keen ear for samples, it blends ‘80s nostalgia with fresh rap and R&B.

The 28-year-old musician has amplified his talent on his sophomore record Good Thing.

The Pop Group’s signature mode of deviant funk, with dub effects and tangled guitar distortion wielded with razoring disregard for polite taste, is still disconcerting and the focus of their anger is still sharp, albeit refracted through allegory and apocalyptism.

It’s a tremendous return, and all the more gratifying for its honesty.

It's delivered with Bonnie's trademark kindly swagger, although her best performances here are probably the brace of covers from Dylan's Time out of Mind, "Million Miles" and "Standing in the Doorway", on which Frisell's tiny vibrato glimmer wields a subtle power to match her quiet passion.

Liberally spattered with sonic exclamation marks.

This tribute compilation ranges far and wide accordingly.

It’s not an album that fights for your attention, but one that knows it doesn’t have to try.

What's impressive is the consistency of approach and execution.

A touching, intelligent work.

It's all neatly-dressed, buttoned-down and restrained but sometimes suffocatingly introspective, with lyrics mining a private image bank; even so, some moments cut to the emotional quick.

A stunning return.

Its 13 tracks are a polished mix of flirtatious bops and high-octane tracks that celebrate self-worth, with the moving torch song “Breathe” serving as the album’s closer. Sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking to be found here, but it does prove that Little Mix do just fine when they’re relying on their own instincts.

They’re sounding less thuggish and more nuanced than of old. But they’ve still got that off-kilter alchemy.

Any sense of individuality is concealed behind generalities, platitudes, and an irritably battered cowbell. Likewise, when he sings of romance, he keeps things sweet but vague.