The album doles out small doses of riot grrrl nostalgia but for the most part, on No Gods No Masters, Garbage stretch beyond the gilded cage of their Nineties icon status to reach for something new – often, but not always, to effective ends.

The eight tracks of Cool It Down (a real mission statement of a title) make for a quasi-gothic synth record that beefs up the Eighties revivalism of the past decade... even as it leaves behind the yelping dynamism of their youth for a more considered and placid middle-age.

Quaintness is what their fans look for; you just sense that there might have been an even more searing political bent lurking beneath on Angry Cyclist that never quite pierced the surface.

It’s a low-key, subtly composed rock record that sets slow-rolling country and anthemic southern rock as its parameters, and never so much as hints that it might break beyond them.

Recorded over six days in Nashville with Dave Stewart, the debut release on Joss Stone's own label is, she claims, the first on which she has exerted total creative freedom.

Paolo Nutini brings the apt timbre and weary dignity to "Hard Times (Come Again No More)", while The Decemberists' Colin Meloy has the sturdy asperity of a righteous ranter on a version of Dylan's "When The Ship Comes In".

The poorest served is hapless Ellie Goulding, struggling against the hurtling momentum of "I Need Your Love"; more successful is Florence Welch on "Sweet Nothing".

Prisoner sticks to the well-trodden highways, whether it’s the echoes of U2 in the grand guitar stabs and earnest vocal tone of opener “Do You Still Love Me”, or the spangly, flanged guitars and relaxed sense of space that lend “Anything I Say To You Now” the laidback stadium sound of The Police.

After a while, the sticky, repetitive swirls work their hypnotic magic: they're like The Bomb Squad mired in depression rather than revolution.

Best of all is "The Day That We Die", Rufus Wainwright oozing mournfully with his dad about the way that familial potholes prove so difficult to repair.

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

It's a feisty, assertive affair, but let down by weak production and a lack of musical focus.

At times this [spent two years sitting with these songs] makes for a more considered output; other songs run the risk of overthinking themselves.

Comeback albums, it seems, are not just for other bands to do.

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.

A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

That could stand as a motto for the album: this is music seeking to let in the light.

In places, Portico Quartet's third album recalls old-school jazz-funk, from the chamber-jazz end of the spectrum rather than the party end.

Under normal circumstances, another solipsistic Eels album celebrating the joy of simple pleasures and allowing for some gruff introspection would grate – and Earth to Dora really isn’t much better than the last six Eels records – but right now it feels pretty much perfect. Have a listen before the moment passes.

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.

There's a familiar elemental tone to the Dirty Three's latest album – except this time the oceanic influence is replaced by snow and sky and rain.

Musically, it's pretty much the standard modern electro fare familiar from dozens of contemporaries, from Kylie to Britney. The dubstep riffs are more tortured in places, but when David Guetta and will.i.am are involved in a track's production--as with the bullishly shallow "Fashion!"--you're not straying from the mainstream.

It’s a solipsistic affair: and while his good intentions to smarten up his drug-sozzled, road-weary life may be commendable, they don’t necessarily make “Quit It” any more agreeable.

It’s a peculiar record and one that involves a push-and-pull between two extremes; on the one hand, the instrumentation is wound tight and built around sharp melodies that, at their best, are difficult to shake off--‘Bellarine’ and ‘Sister’s Jeans’ in particular are real earworms.

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.

With Bon Voyage, it genuinely feels as if Prochet got lost in her sounds and let it lead her. In her own musical liberation, Prochet makes something bizarre and stunning.

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.

He's devised a musical backdrop that subtly evokes the innocence, warmth and zoophiliac empathy of the film's message.

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

The absence of those usual big arena hooks proves critical through the rest of the album, when the songs don’t quite hit home.

They’re best when they work together, with the charming simplicity of the island-flavoured “Feel About You” and beach-strolling “Red Sun” contrasting nicely with the tart, twitchy urgency of “Too Far Gone”.

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

Despite this obvious recommendation, the more radio-friendly follow-up still proves hard to love.

It’s pleasant enough, though listeners may experience a twinge or two of deja vu.

Way To Blue avoids the usual patchwork-quilt pitfalls of style and quality that afflict most tribute albums.

Behind the rococo charm lurks a subtle emotional power.

But it's Alex Glasgow's lament "Close the Coalhouse Door" that packs the most powerful punch, the cyclical piano like a minimalist murmur behind Becky's poignant delivery.

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.

Overall, it’s an entertaining, multifaceted set, albeit weakened by a tendency to pursue slim ideas and dead-end notions.

It's tasteful but a touch bloodless.

Things go slightly awry with the stodgy prog-rock textures of “Clockwatching” and “The 6th Wave”, but it's the work of a band obsessed with a multitude of musical directions, which has to be A Good Thing.

Though most effective as a droll raconteur, Snider here relies on covers of songs by the likes of Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams; fortunately, guitar wizard Neal Casal is on top form.

Paranoia, Angels, True Love is too long and rambling to bring Christine and the Queens any new fans, or much action on the singles chart. Its self-indulgence may even tire some existing fans. But if you give it time to grow its wings, it can really lift you up.

The narratives are dependably punchy through this record, and they’re carried by solidly danceable Eighties and Nineties club beats. Not an original sound, then. But one that allows her more challenging or subversive thoughts to slide slyly into a night out on the town.

Ignoring the diabolical “Saviour”, which sounds like a hundred other Nashville-based bands song (featuring the chorus: “Thinking I could save you, I’ll never be your saviour”), the results are much more interesting on the second half.

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

The limp, autotuned love song “Happy” and drearily positivist “Good Morning” are lazy nods to the mainstream, but elsewhere Wretch is better served by the dark sparkle of arrangements featuring grimy sub-bass synths and itchy electro beats tinted with eerie vocal samples, thumb-piano and synthetic pan-pipes.

Cropper's needle-sharp guitar fills best demonstrate the immense debt the MGs man owes to the 5 Royales songwriter and guitarist Lowman Pauling.

Produced by the Coens with T Bone Burnett, the album captures well the sanctimony, bogus bucolicism and beatnik romanticism that characterised the age, along with that tang of “revolution in the air” (to quote its most successful adherent).

With Different Days, though, they seem to have settled into a sort of not-quite-mainstream indie-rock tinted with neo-psychedelic touches.

However bleak, there's no denying the delicate mood created by [Kozelek's] charm.

In truth, the move towards country music made on Younger Now is fraught with potholes that she and producer Oren Yoel rarely manage to avoid. The main problem is the half-heartedness of the move.

Her Scots brogue addresses the issue of “who you’ll be one day” with husky urgency, yoked to jaunty jangle-rock and prancing piano-pop which doesn’t anchor her in too parochial a terrain, giving Peroxide a broad appeal potentially akin to Ellie Goulding.

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.

It’s a remarkable departure for Amidon, who also eschews his usual traditional repertoire in favour of original material, albeit haunted by similar hints of fate, animism and violence; though the overriding impression is best summed up in a phrase about “haphazard words found in drifting conversation”.

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.

It’s a genial set.

The widescreen south-western ambience is stippled with intriguing touches, like the shruti box and bowed guitar droning through “Gallop On The Run”, and the rhythmic rattling chains of the death ballad “Lay My Lily Down”; though the most moving performance is Weir’s plaintive solo piece “Ki-Yi Bossie”, oozing empathy for a reluctant penitent alcoholic.

It’s a pity there are some disappointing songs here because elsewhere on the record there is real brilliance.

These tracks offer a similar union of the imaginative and the inspirational, with Lee Perry and The Orb's Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann making musical magic from the most minimal of resources.

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”.

The format sustains on subsequent tracks; but despite its apparent concreteness, the music is surprisingly warm.

The enjoyable only just outweighs the annoying on the opener "Never Let Me Go", where the auto-tuned vocal is a let-down.

Beth Ditto’s debut album is a bit of a mixed bag.

Van’s fellow Brit-blues icons Georgie Fame, Chris Farlowe and Paul Jones take turns to duet, in a relaxed manner which exemplifies the overall mood: comfortable rather than inspirational.

After a while the regretful, melancholy tone wearies one's sympathies.

It's not a bad album as much, but to anyone familiar with Lynch's other work, it's entirely predictable in sound and style.

They’ve formed their own blueprint in which the messages they purvey and the grandiose shows they stage are our main point of interest, but the music, production-wise, falls a little by the wayside when it comes to breaking new ground.

Hewson’s songwriting is definitely up to snuff, although occasionally lapses into cliches.

This throws most of one's attention on the vocals, always the most engagingly evanescent aspect of their sound.

With their lyrical focus on teen sex, money and the misplaced glamour of crime, at times it's like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, for boys.

Styles has opened himself up, as best he can, to his audience, and by gathering a solid team around him to help achieve that he’s created an immersive, well-produced collection of songs that isn’t trying to prove anything in particular to anyone.

As might be expected, the favourites chosen by Mark Kozelek for his covers album are predominantly those reflecting cloudy, sometimes ambivalent emotional responses.

Throughout, he's supported by Stooges guitar riffing of brutal directness and simplicity, occasionally fattened by the horns that lend an apt touch of soul sleaze to the latter track.

Oddly, there’s nothing here from Echo & The Bunnymen, despite the inclusion of borderline cases like The Damned, The Mission and Adam And The Ants, and a host of lesser bands creating the musical equivalent of smeared mascara. But there’s a broad range of tangential directions sheltering under the otherwise welcoming umbrella of Silhouettes & Statues.

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

The melancholy mood pervades throughout, into the itchy, insect flurries of Penderecki's Polymorphia, for 48 strings, and Greenwood's 48 Responses To Polymorphia.

Sleep Well Beast, like all The National’s albums, occupies troubled territory. These are songs about the fleeting impermanence of joy, compared to the lingering bruise of despair, and how hard it is to live in this unfairly weighted emotional space. It’s a struggle embodied in Matt Berninger’s enervated, murmurous baritone.

As usual with Sawhney, it's typically eclectic, and surprisingly effective.

Sadly, the decision to tell Feltrinelli's story in the same period technopop music as Stainless Style sabotages its impact.

He's no fool: the result is an even more potent clutch of instrumentals, punctuated with the occasional vocal from Sharon Jones and some surprising male singers, including The National's Matt Berninger and Lou Reed.

Secure behind the protective pop wall erected by producers such as Max Martin and the ubiquitous Greg Kurstin, there’s little room for originality here. Which may be for the best, given the mid-album limpness imposed by the gratingly wistful, cello-draped childhood yearning of “Barbies”, which oozes insincerity. Pink’s on safer ground riding the pumping pop-funk of “Secrets” and the title-track.

The blues and soul power are real, even as racial lines are leered and sneered at, the sort of ballsiness that could make rock breathe freely again.

If the solutions offered are sometimes better than expected, they’re also, frequently, tentative and tired.

In some cases, as in "Cloud on My Tongue", the orchestrations serve as little more than swaddling blankets. But the more thoughtful rearrangements can be transformative.

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.

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

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

There’s still a nagging sense that the band are resting on their laurels. The record is still good – DFA are too talented for it to be otherwise – but it’s a little deflating for a band whose history is built on boundary-pushing.

The Big Day is like a lot of weddings: too long and occasionally a little dull – with one or two unforgettable moments.

FIBS highlights Meredith as a much-needed creative force. Her shape-shifting genre-defiance constantly surprises and intrigues, but it’s good to get back down to Earth afterwards.

I doubt many listeners would be able to identify these as Tomlinson songs. But this is a likable, grounded collection of sunny-side-up pop from a likeable, grounded guy.

The usual bouts of brusque dissing rub shoulders with love songs, fond tributes to his mom, and a fulsome, swaying devotional hymn “Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2”. But it’s the engaging sense of vulnerability and self-deprecation that brings depth and charm to Gang Signs & Prayer.

Connick displays his versatility with the bossa nova sway of “I Love Her”, the New Orleans R&B of “S'pposed To Be” and “You've Got It”, and the sentimental country stylings of “Greatest Love Story”.

In the Blue Light is not the sound of a man reinventing himself, nor is it a final meditation on decades gone. But in shining a light on a handful of overlooked gems, Simon has succeeded brilliantly.

The songs are littered with piquant period references--Eric Bristow, Bruce Lee, Roman Polanski, spaghetti hoops--often in absurd situations, such as the mash-up of teutonic terrorism and mad-scientist sci-fi that is “Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain Is Missing”. But Haines’s genuine affection shines through fond tributes like the chugging glam boogie “Marc Bolan Blues” and acid-folk exploration “The Incredible String Band.”

It’s an enjoyable, occasionally virtuosic romp, fronted by Thundercat’s smooth soul harmonies, which lend proceedings the lustrous sheen of Earth, Wind & Fire.

Love is a pleasant although occasionally overly earnest capsule collection of pop sounds where Diamantis proves herself to be the master of the “brief pause... and gentle drop” technique. ... Her voice skitters across songs with a frostiness reminiscent of Madonna’s Ray of Light era, and sometimes it feels like a lecture being delivered into the mirror: everyone’s just like you, no one’s happy, enjoy your life.