Even by Wilco’s adventurous standards, Star Wars is possibly the most unusual, exploratory work of the band’s existence.

Too many of these grooves are efficient but forgettable, and her vocal contributions likewise somewhat generic.

Blood is front-loaded: I can’t think of another album that follows such a relentlessly downward course, all but giving up the ghost completely on the insipid closer “Good Goodbye”. But the opening three songs are aces.

While copious application of phasing offers a link to Tame Impala’s psychedelic roots, the absence of guitar wig-outs may disappoint some fans.

Too often their light touch turns lightweight, even wan.

A resounding, bitter corrective to the pleasureland fantasies of modern R&B pop and the empty braggadocio of hip-hop clichés, Key Markets may be one of the year’s emblematic albums.

A brilliant, nigh-on faultless work from an acknowledged master.

Although their go-for-broke approach furnishes ideas to spare, the unwitting effect is a set of lurches from impressive to hopelessly ill-integrated, often over the course of a single song.

Listening to Oberst’s righteous rage, his tone a world away from his tender confessionals, one has to credit his dedication, 14 years on, to making them heard.

As with Young’s electric-car album Fork In The Road, his single-issue tendencies can grow wearisome after a few songs.

A fond indulgence, perhaps, but there’s nothing on Déjà Vu that will take your breath away like “I Feel Love.”

Muse’s seventh album is--happily--anything but diminished.

Musically, it’s an almost seamless blend of the two groups’ styles, variations on a sort of operatic indie-electropop, which recalls variously Freedom of Choice-era Devo, chattering Kraftwerk techno and, in the more melancholy environs inhabited by “Little Guy from the Suburbs”, a whiff of Leonard Cohen.

The emotional turmoil is better served by the more introspective balladry of “Various Storms and Saints” and “Long and Lost.”

Whenever thoughts here turn to love, the results are not pretty.... But when antipathy rules, things go with a fizzy enthusiasm that’s quite infectious.

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

Weller’s magpie tendencies pay dividends.

Always prey to their psychedelic tendencies, here MMJ swallow the full tab and dive headfirst into a whirlpool of supposition, analogy and swirling guitars.

The new instrumentation affords a more nuanced approach, from the thrumming bass, piano, tom-toms and subtly tingling guitar evoking the resolute support of “Broad-Shouldered Beasts”, and the keening, spacious synth textures of “Tompkins Square Park”, to the unison guitar thrash that opens “The Wolf.”

Sound & Color brims with the confident ambition of a band discovering and exploring exactly what they’re capable of.

For the most part, this is an album that restores faith in the sheer joy of music.

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

On the gorgeous Jardine/Wilson weeper “Tell Me Why”, the doleful nostalgia is surprisingly clear-eyed.... Sadly, “that thing” goes missing on Kacey Musgraves’ kite-weight offering and electro throwaway “Runaway Dancer”, fronted by Capital Cities’ Sebu Simonian, with synths via McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”.

Heart, ultimately, is the key to a project which links personal, small-scale disturbances of loneliness and homesickness with broader concerns of population density and ecological sustainability.

Rarely have his revelations been as direct, or as personal, as on Carrie & Lowell, a cathartic exercise exploring the effect of his estranged mother Carrie’s death on him two years ago.

It belongs in that hour when the sunlight dims, everyone leaves the park, the disposable barbecues are smoking abortively, the makeshift Lilt bottle bong's started to taste like shit and you don't know whether to go back to bed or fritter away your last tenner in town.

This conflicting need for independence within affection, thrown into stark relief during her self-imposed exile, is one thematic mainspring driving this Short Movie.

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

The inventive Diplo is a frequent collaborator, with support from Avicii, Michael Diamond and Kanye, but what’s most impressive is Madonna’s singing.

Save for the big live band arrangement of Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” that closes the album, it’s a thoughtful, intimate set.

Much else here settles into comfort-zone turf.

Wu-Tang's most reliable rhymer here hooks up with Toronto hip-hop jazz trio Badbadnotgood, whose vibes, piano and grooves, augmented occasionally with strings, drape a 1970s symphonic-soul sound around his street missives. [21 Feb 2015, p.18]

Race is richly entertaining, immersive and evocative, orchestrated with fastidious care and feeling.

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.

Musically, the lay-off, and the acquisition of new bass and keyboard players, has worked wonders for Idlewild’s sonic palette.

As before, echoes of classic Primal Scream/Stone Roses psych-rock underpin the grooves, which lope and stride infectiously.

The results have a lingering, languid charm, which does, as he suggests, help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms.

Prass confirms her unique, tremulous contralto mining depths of despairing devotion on songs clearly triggered by romantic crisis.

Bjork’s Vulnicura represents a return of sorts to standard song form after the experimental Biophilia, its nine long tracks evoking the emotional confusion following a break-up.... But throughout, Bjork’s own vocals are the stumbling-block.

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.

An album of fresh pleasures is the pay-off, but don’t come looking to it for substance.

Notwithstanding the occasional foray into jazz and blues, Black Messiah is much the same blend of miasmic boudoir soul, bare-bones funk and liberation songs that characterised his 2000 milestone, Voodoo.

This is music of stellar quality, from the smirking masturbation anthem “Low Yo Yo Stuff” to the berserk wizardry of “Big Eyed Beans from Venus.”

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

Most songs here sound like capitulations to overworked clichés.

Through it all, Middleton somehow locates the appropriate settings for Shrigley’s perverse poems (or is it the other way round?) with charging techno pulses animating the hysterical protests of a teenager appalled at the vandal antics of a “Houseguest”, and chuntering stomp-beats illustrating the grotesque primitivism of a homicidal “Caveman.”

There’s a confidence and flexibility to his disparate themes.

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

It’s a pretty decent album, with their trademark melange of rap stylings at their most spikily effective, each track switching between self-promotion, street-crime narrative, social commentary and cosmological speculation as different members take the mic.

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.

Save for a shaky cover of “Send in the Clowns”, Ferry remains as calm and collected as ever at the eye of these emotional storms.

What's blindingly clear is that, without the sparking creativity of a Syd or Roger, all that's left is ghastly faux-psychedelic dinner-party muzak.

Though spoilt in places by distortion and too-prominent electric piano, the hitherto unheard material is notable for the innovative exploration of yet another roots blend, through the impassioned country-soul of songs such as “That’s the Breaks”. Clearly, in this most congenial of creative cauldrons, virtually anything was possible.

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.

Given how far out Scott Walker had stepped with 2012’s complex and challenging, allusive and abusive Bish Bosch, the five tracks which comprise Soused seem almost mainstream by comparison.

Unlike most gothic pop, Lanegan’s art is not a matter of fashion or mascara: it’s a genuine cri du coeur, as rare and beautiful as anything in music.

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

All told, it’s a magnificent, career-defining set, full of hard-won wisdom, assertive independence--and compassion in abundance.

Overall, it’s a collection primarily concerned with the somatic rather than cerebral sides of Richard James’s music, overdosing somewhat on staccato, bouncing synth twangs and jittery drum’n’bass beats.

Popular Problems--note the drolly contradictory title--finds his agreeable baritone growl applied as usual to romantic disappointment and political venality with vivid, jolting metaphors (“I see the ghost of culture, with numbers on his wrist”) cutting to the quick.

Despite the involvement of producer Danger Mouse, the more experimental leanings of albums like Achtung Baby and Zooropa have been abandoned in favour of the all-too-familiar blend of vaunting, declamatory vocals and juddering guitar riffs; but sadly, that knack for irresistible pop hooks with which Danger Mouse helped hoist The Black Keys to superstar status is almost entirely absent here, restricted to just an occasional keyboard counter-melody like that on "California (There Is No End To Love)".

The band have managed to pull it off again, with an engaging collection that refuses to be hidebound by the strictures of indie-rock.

FKA Twigs emerges the high priestess of R&B's latest corruption, and the world will kneel at the altar.

Her follow-up to the popular Mayhem finds Imelda May still indulging the boisterous rapscallion character suggested by titles like “Wild Woman”, “Hellfire Club” and “Gypsy In Me”.

At only nine tracks long, but with every one of them worthy of single status, it displays, as pop albums go, both rare economy and staggering consistency.

It’s an odd selection, including Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul” as a pallid piano ballad, and Keren Ann’s “Strange Weather” as a desolate but oddly comforting duet with David Byrne.

The determination to include generous dollops of each member’s solo output means that the acoustic set sags badly. But the obscure material is welcome.

Songs finds John Fullbright more concerned with the act of writing than with illuminating a subject.

West London synth duo Jungle claim to “bring the heat” on their debut album, but it’s more the languid haze of a holiday beach than the intensity of a dancefloor.

It’s a far cry from the usual meat’n’spuds rock that has characterised most Morrissey albums; and a welcome change, suggesting perhaps that this most British of pop bards is renegotiating his own boundaries.

[A] strange and compelling work.

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

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

Set to scratchy, fractured beats and sound-montages, it’s a welcome dose of no-age hip-hop in direct line of descent from De La Soul.

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.

The main failing lies in the lack of distinction of the material, and the lack of excitement in its execution: the only time the album teeters on thrilling is when Neil Young’s Les Paul disturbs the peace of “Down the Wrong Way”.

The result is an engaging, youthful and thoughtful folk-rock.

Like its predecessor, Blunderbuss, it’s a mixed bag, roughly split between heavy blues-rock and country, many songs supposedly drawing on teenage writings White unearthed in a drawer.

It’s a pleasant enough effort, but lacks the distinctive touch that might set it apart in a very crowded field.

Rising US indie combo Parquet Courts make giant strides on this third outing, where they locate an effective nexus where grunge meets meets avant-rock in colourful pop livery.

His talent survives in these songs. So does its fatal fracture.

Mostly, though, this is music that keeps its head down. Martin accepts his loss too meekly to approach the anguish of a great break-up album.

Despite the limited instrumental palette, there’s a broad variety of approaches.

Bohemian legend and walking R&B encyclopaedia Chuck Weiss is on great form on this latest album.

Being F&M, they can’t help adding funky, syncopated twitches to break up the four-square march occasionally.

“I Never Learn” is a gorgeous opener, its fulsome strum of acoustic guitars graced by strings and backing-vocal cooings in anthemic manner; but from there it’s emotional pain writ large, with wan piano lines supplanted by grand, melodramatic resolutions.

“The Satellites” opens the album with tart trumpets over staccato guitars, “To Us All” closes it with an oceanic excursion. In between are liquid pools of guitar and chattering keyboards.

It’s not bad, as such, but like Primal Scream it promises more than it delivers.

Lurking behind the cosmicity, there’s usually a solid pop hook.

There’s an ever-expanding diversity of appeal to Turn Blue that should win new fans and please the faithful.

Across two discs there are too many mediocre versions, most revering the polite preciosity of the original Laurel Canyon folk-rock settings.

The most surprising thing about Pixies’ first album in 23 years is that it holds so few surprises.

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

["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.

Macero’s edits on the original double-album collaged four nights’ shows into a single, 20-minute track apiece; but this 4CD set presents each night’s ebullient flow in full.

Produced by her son Cisco Ryder, it’s a family album of elegant songs, well-framed in folk-rock settings.