Carter Girl reaffirms Carlene Carter’s role as scion of country music’s leading family through a mixture of Carter Family classics and original material, plus shaky duets with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.

Large parts of it still rely too heavily on a dour combination of industry and portent.

Though obviously sincere and heartfelt, Gregory Porter’s tribute to his greatest influence falls a touch short in some cases. His voice, while smooth and warm, lacks the silky, creamy timbre of Cole’s on “Mona Lisa”, and on some songs he sounds more like Kurt Elling or Sammy Davis Jr.

Whatever his anxieties, it’s never less than gently engaging.

While it's pleasantly effected for the most part, it's hard to get involved in someone else's nostalgia.

The brittle garage-punk of this debut positively seethes with trebly guitars, reedy organs, waspish fuzzboxes and urgent drums, with singer Mike Brandon exploring the ramifications of titles like “What Happens When You Turn The Devil Down” and “Flowers In My Hair, Demons In My Head” in tortuous, passionate manner.

His is the sort of personable charm that even the slickest PR machine can’t drum up. It is also, unfortunately, something that’s too often missing from this album. That and variety.

Their minimalist aesthetic can sometimes work against them, as on the spartan, diffident “The Pop Life”, but it’s tempered by a winning romanticism on “Butterflies”, where the fluttering keyboards evoke a fantasy of a dead soul becoming a butterfly, one of “a thousand souls swarming”.

Along with the anger and regret comes the usual hip-hop baggage of aggrandisement, recrimination and old-school reminiscence.

[A] more thoughtful, diverse creations in which floating organ and mellotron lend a wavering melancholy to songs like “Maybe We’ll Drown” and “Lemon Memory”, pierced by contrasting guitar rages of keening angularity.

It's not all suddenly-grown-up rock music, of course, with tracks like “No Control” and “Fool's Gold” retaining the boys' perky teen-pop charm; and whatever style is adopted, the choruses are all reassuringly collective singalongs.

It may be a slightly face-flattening wind tunnel of love The Killers offer. But they still have the gale force sincerity required to blow your socks off.

On [Cat Power] Marshall has changed direction yet again, abandoning her soul charm for something much less appealing.... But her natural grace shines through on "3, 6, 9"... and "Ruin."

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

His guests include Lana Del Rey, whose affectless manner makes her a perfect match for him; though the best grooves here come courtesy of Daft Punk, bookending the album with the scudding title-track and Michael Jackson homage “I Feel It Coming”.

Actor Maxine Peake delivers the combination of historical narrative and polemic in her blackest-pudding accent, over a gamelan tinkle of synth tones and string synths that evoke the blend of grit and gentrification now surrounding these events.

His vulnerability is admirable – if only his songs were half as daring.

Ironically, though, it’s the more old-school tracks that furnish the highlights.

Though marginally better than its predecessor, BE can in no sense be considered a progression.

This fourth album is produced by south London’s Paul White, and a shared taste for Talking Heads and especially Joy Division (the LP is named after their song, more than JG Ballard’s novel) takes it way off the mainstream hip-hop map.

Spare Ribs certainly reflects the personal and political overload of 2021, but half an hour in you’d be forgiven for scanning the horizon for your stop.

Due to the choice of material, the arrangements lean heavily towards the dramatic and angst-ridden--well, it is Peter Gabriel--with the sole recourse to mellow calm reserved for the undulating strings of "The Nest That Sailed the Sky".

Musically, it’s an odd mix of ambition and disorder, with Doherty’s familiar raggedy-ass rock tempered with poignant moments.

Habibi Funk deals not in the indigenous strains that occupy the main focus of world music reissues, but rather local crossovers that slipped between the cracks, reflecting outside influences from the Caribbean, Cape Verde, and overwhelmingly, Western funk, soul and disco. ... The more recent examples are somewhat diluted by developments in technology.

Some of the better songs lack that adhesive zeitgeist quality that used to be the group's stock-in-trade. But at its best, there's enough variety and invention to recall The Beatles, sometimes directly. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

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.

The arrangements are pleasurable enough, less rootsy than before, with some skilled use of orchestration; but it's a shame to find such a gifted songwriter sounding so gullible.

The deceptive geniality of his delivery, meanwhile, recalls Gilbert O’Sullivan, enabling him to bring darker undertones to apparently pleasant pieces like the lilting waltz “I’m Gonna Haunt This Place.”

The songs on her third album are more concealed in their arrangements than before, despite a sonic palette still based in the slim, austere piano and cello settings for which she’s known.

It's impressive, slick alienation for the Y Generation, but as with Del Rey, it's a one-trick-pony sort of act.

The drawback of having such a cross-cultural appeal as Shakira is that you’re expected to try and satisfy its every demographic niche, a demand that weakens her first English-language album since 2009’s She Wolf.

It seems like they just ran out of interest, and gave up.

There are some pretty decent tunes on his 14th album, Make-Up is a Lie. .... But instead of falling face-first into music as we once did and enjoying a good old wallow in self-pity, we must now approach it as a minefield.

Some of the guest vocalists are questionable--Shara Worden and Sam Amidon seem detached--but Vernon's delivery of Dylan's “Every Grain of Sand” has charm.

In some cases, that sugary voice which works so well as a pop vehicle lacks the full-bodied character to carry a big ballad.

Jim Moray's filtering of traditional folk music through a mesh of modern sensibilities continues on Skulk.

An album that frets gently and artfully at the wounds of human attraction and rejection.

#willpower is stuffed with sounds that, while in no sense as cutting-edge as he likes to make out, crest the wave of the popular.

What a couple of charmers.

Musically, it's the same kind of electro R&B with which radio is already awash--in large part because it's produced by the same small coterie of hip producers, with Timbaland appearing to take the most prominent role amongst the likes of Detail, Jerome Harmon, Pharrell Williams and Ryan Tedder.

In places, Vanderslice’s more abstruse, jazzier ideas grate with the material--notably the clarinet discords closing the old departing-soldier-boy tale “When The Roses Bloom Again”--but he’s usually on the money with things like the elegiac strings accompanying “Betty’s Eulogy” and the lachrymose pedal steel, vibes and shaker underscoring “Wreck”, a heartfelt plea for a lover who’s “a worker, not a volunteer”.

Though less ambitious than 2009's The Liberty of Norton Folgate, Madness's Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da confirms the benefits of spreading songwriting chores among the entire band.

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.

Oddly appealing overall, when not tending too much toward the twisted.

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.

Not to everyone’s taste, but at its best Gamel fizzes with sonic imagination.

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.

Much else here settles into comfort-zone turf.

Tracks like the reggae-tinged “Right Moves”--which feels like it was supposed to be an ANTI cut--and “Pipe” come off as monotonous. But there is a lot of Aguilera’s sincere authenticity that is weaved throughout Liberation. It may not be a pop record, a hip hop record or a soul record, but it’s certainly an Xtina record.

Garth here sensibly celebrates simple good times in songs like the twangsome “Honky Tonk Somewhere” and its cutting-loose continuation “Weekend”, where copious location namechecks enthuse that “it’s weekend all over the world”. Elsewhere, “Baby, Let’s Lay Down And Dance” tacks its cheeky proposition onto a “Long Train Running” groove, while the chugging boogie of “Pure Adrenaline” suggests how ZZ Top might sound if they were country.

Policy is enjoyable enough, but one hopes that for its follow-up, Butler takes time to find the most accomplished realisations of his material.

Too much of this album purrs by, forgettably and disengaged. Banks really needs to bring herself into focus.

No wheels have been reinvented on Rushmere. But it’s a solidly crafted and comforting addition to the band's earthy, fraternal oeuvre.

The slimmed-down Yuck's sound seems svelte of style, having lost most of its rougher edges and lo-fi feistiness. What's left builds on their Teenage Fanclub-style guitars'n'harmonies approach, but takes it in a less intriguing direction.

It’s a break-up album that’s perhaps a touch too unremittingly bleak for the closing resolution of “Another Train” (“I’m moving on, through the past, through the pain, waiting on another train”) to completely convince.

For the most part, the mood here is pensive, the ballads plentiful and the pace glacial, with little evidence of the wild abandon that the singer supposedly longs for. It’s to Smith’s credit, but also their undoing, that they are just too damned nice.

"Every Song's the Same" offers a charming series of lessons in emotional empathy; while the conceit underlying the piano ballad "Into a Pearl" seems so clear you can't quite believe nobody else thought of it first.

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.

A couple of tracks feature delicate tracery of classical guitar, but the most baffling feature of the album is the inclusion of three old tracks by Can, which possess a lightness, and dynamic character somewhat absent in the rest of the score.

“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”.

Tracks like the delinquent reminiscence "How Life Changed" and the mea culpa duet with Chris Brown, "Get Back Up", teeter queasily on the cusp of boast and apology. But you have to admire the gall of a repeat offender brazen enough to feature a quote from Helen Keller in his lyric booklet.

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

This alliance with The Orb is positive for both parties, Perry providing a tighter rein on their tendency to meander, while they furnish him with a different terrain to his usual dub skanks.

Henry's stubbled delivery pitched somewhere between Randy Newman and Tom Waits as he negotiates the galumphing waltz "Strung" and the ramshackle cakewalk groove "Sticks & Stones", which best exemplifies the album's mythopoeic blues mode.

Although it is largely the entirely predictable modern dance-pop creation you might expect from production-line hit maestros Max Martin and Dr Luke, Katy Perry deserves some credit for injecting a modicum of originality into Prism.

It's all warmly wrought and pretty, if a trifle insubstantial at times.

Produced in understated manner by Tucker Martine, the songs' clean pop lines are revealed with the minimum of decorative detail.

His own sepia baritone summons some of that warmth on versions of “Solitaire”, “Autumn Leaves” and “You Only Live Twice”.

Bill Callahan's follow-up to 2011's gorgeous Apocalypse finds him in the company of a small, discreet band, whose gentle shuffles are coloured mostly by guitar, fiddle and flute, as his muse flits haphazardly about him. [The Independent scored this a 3/5 in the actual printed edition not 5/5 as seen on its online edition]

Relaxer is effectively Alt-J’s folk album: still studious and tending towards complexity, but here tempered by a rootedness that snags emotions more directly.

The follow-up to Let Them Talk follows a similar format of easy-rolling jazz arrangements and simpatico guest spots supporting Hugh Laurie's blues piano.

Valgeir Sigurosson’s production of 2013’s Tales Of A Grasswidow lent it a cohesion which is sadly absent from Heartache City.

It’s an odd album, split between full-on dancefloor stompers like the euphoric summer romance anthem “Love You To The Sky” and less successful stabs at political commentary such as “Lousy Sum Of Nothing”, an overly simplistic bout of finger-wagging about how “the world has lost its loving” in respect of the refugee crisis.

Valhalla Dancehall found British Sea Power somewhat becalmed, but Machineries Of Joy gets them moving again, albeit in a variety of directions.

Sometimes, the changes simply frustrate, as when Josh Homme rations out the hellhound gallop of "Mickey Bloody Mouse" too sparingly. But the additions can bring extra layers of exhilaration.

This Jack White-produced comeback album suggests there can be few septuagenarians keener on raising hell.

An interesting diversion, but not much more.

Heard It in a Past Life is evidence of Rogers’ ambition and potential, but it is proof, too, that you can’t bottle lightning.

The result is an engaging, softly sensuous air of desolation, emotion recollected in tranquility.

The songs are just a little perfunctory. Like a popcorn disaster movie, the album is full of adrenaline, and yet doesn’t stick in the mind long after you’ve finished with it.

Delta is good but not great.

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

Waterhouse’s own vocals could be stronger, but his throwaway manner has a languid charm.

"Whistle", takes a sidestep with its acoustic guitar and tedious single-entendre hook, but there are plenty more brutal stompers to spare on Wild Ones.

On the surface, Who sounds like a classic Who album. ... There are moments when Townshend stops questioning his own relevancy, but to dubious effect: “Beads on a String” is a limp metaphor for human connection, while “Hero Ground Zero” is just as clumsy.

It's hardly groundbreaking stuff, but McCartney undeniably has an ear for melody.

On Freedom Highway, Rhiannon Giddens animates black American history--notably, the arduous journey from slavery to civil rights--in songs which pair her strong, sonorous delivery with arrangements echoing pre-blues minstrel music.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not a pretty sound, though there are moments of transcendent grace.

The lyrics sound like they’re being negotiated, rather than expressed, while the music, for all its pleasing West Coast and Brit-psych affinities, lacks the risk and edge that made Sixties psychedelia such a thrill-ride.

The title track slips from minimalist cycling harpsichord to portentous organ and guitar arpeggios before fading mid-lyric, while the cod-oriental motif of “Entertainment” offers a fond memory of a time when such things didn't seem quite so patronising.

Though drab and overlong, it has a certain rugged, whiskery charm, which doesn't extend to the concluding "God Save the Queen", a stodge too far.

It’s genuinely enjoyable. Fairly forgettable. A pleasant enough middle-lane trip down what Mayer – with knowing cliché – calls “the highway of dreams”.

Their problem is a lack of originality: they never suggest they'll find a new angle on well-worn roots-rock modes.

Rufus Wainwright believes this to be "the most pop album" he's ever made, and he's probably right, so long as you're thinking 1970s pop.

Although some of the songs follow that same pop structure seen on the first half, by contrasting them with more experimental sounds (that are not hoping to top the charts), they have much more impact.

There may be none of the heart-tugging vibe of octave-spanning “Without You”, or the abundant melody of “Everybody’s Talkin’”, but Losst and Founnd resurrects a treasured voice in songs full of vim.

Burke's presence remains as commanding as ever even when the material sags.

Oddly erratic. ... The way he darts between different sounds is exhausting and, ultimately, messy. On certain tracks he raps like he has something to prove, on others it's like he has nothing.