“Wanderlust” establishes the overall thematic impulse to live culturally beyond one’s means, but in practice this can lead to the preference for smarts over suitability that spoils a track like “A Dog’s Life”. But there are moments of greatness here and there.

With Urban Turbanm, Tjinder Singh reinforces his position as one of the UK's more engaging musical minds.

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.

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".

It’s a record of heartbreak cauterised by hope, so alongside the routine tears and recrimination is a recurrent element of recovery and optimism that sets it apart from most other soul-diva offerings.

Two Vines glows with a relaxed, beachside warmth that brings to mind “Standing On The Shore” from their debut.

It’s not a bad album, but you still get the feeling that, as Ryder notes elsewhere, “someone who looks like me is living in my skin”.

There’s prodigious ambition here, and moments of great pleasure.

This debut album is awash in buzzsaw guitar riffs and splashy cymbals, while the wild-child vocals of Arrow De Wilde channel the jaded disdain of Courtney Love (minus the rage), occasionally peaking in a Lene Lovish-like squawk. It’s a formula which works best on “Love’s Gone Again”, which has something of the elemental primitivism of Pink Flag-era Wire as it treats perverse carnal urges to a dose of distortion.

Head Carrier is an altogether more convincing affair than 2014’s comeback album Indie Cindy, the intervening months of roadwork having helped relocate the band’s classic mode.

Ultimately, despite a few high points, LM5 is so scattershot, both thematically and musically, that it’s hard to find much to grab onto.

It’s a delight, full of rich textures and subtle touches, from the harpsichord, hi-hats and horns of “Apollo’s Mood” to the sumptuous opener “Sirens Of Jupiter.”

It gets a bit noodly-doodly at times, but with some stand-out moments, notably the lovely, meditative grace of the bass and guitar alliance in "XII."

There are a few too many tracks on which the hook outclasses the actual rap.

Off the Record contains few surprises, with several tracks pleasantly echoing his time as co-composer of some of the group's most glorious pieces.

If I’m honest, it’s as hard to tell this Future Islands album from the last one as it is to tell one seagull from another. But that’s not to say they don’t all soar and swoop in a way that’s guaranteed to lift the heart.

On Remember Us To Life, Regina Spektor exhibits stronger affinities with Randy Newman, thanks to a turn of phrase often leaning towards the ironic, and a deceptive worldview which, like the sardonic string arrangements and ominous piano settings, gives most of these songs a slightly sour sting in the tail.

At times, Vega’s use of clunky rhymes undoes the elegance of her more literary lines. ... It’s still lovely to have Vega back in action. Her level-head, outward-facing ideas and collected tone really steady the heart and offer the mind safe opportunities to wander.

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

With the slight caveat that Laurie's vocals never quite cast off their Englishness (and why should they?), this is a commendable effort which at its best furnishes considerable enjoyment.

At their most normal, “In Love” resembles Prince at his oddest; while the most likeable of a range of silly lyrics offers the promise, “I like to watch you run, but I’ll never touch your bum”.

Listening to Piss in the Wind can be a pretty gloomy experience, as it piles futility on futility. Ideas and tunes go unfinished. Yet its graceful, open ended melodies and raw emotions also tune into a very human ghost in the machine.

His songs may reference antiquities like Ernest Hemingway, but the drum programmes, autotuned vocals and synth sequences are more modern than the usual country-rock favoured by septuagenarian troubadours.

Love at the Bottom of the Sea marks a return to The Magnetic Fields' abrasive electropop, which isn't always to the songs' advantage.

The best tracks are the more thoughtful reflections on youthful memories, such as "Illusion" and "Snap"; the worst is the turgid pomp-rock-rap crossover "Written in the Stars", ominously scheduled as his next single.

Although it marks no significant shift in style--she’s still mining the same pop-R&B seam--it’s undoubtedly a better effort than its predecessor.

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.

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

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

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

As usual, guests crowd the album... less welcome, though, is the way that vast tranches of the album serve as a showcase for Willie's son, Lukas.

It makes for some intriguing collisions of ancient and modern.

There’s something of the warmth and fulfilment of Tupelo Honey about the album generally.

Lavigne might not have found a musical identity that truly becomes her, but Head Above Water is an effective, and occasionally affecting, album.

Listen, Whitey! seethes with righteous anger and revolutionary determination.

MØ crafts consistently cool grooves but nothing that makes her stand out from the crowd.

It’s hard not to become overly aware of how the similarity of both the musical settings--basically, strings allied to rhythm programmes of skittish or explosive beats--and especially Bjork’s delivery tends to leach the individual songs into one another.

Seven of the 15 tracks here have been drowned in producer Pharrell Williams’ bubblemint bounce – at points, it’s in danger of sounding more like his record than Grande’s.

Though sharp and sly, too often here there’s a shortfall of melodic potency, and an over-reliance on structures that are methodical rather than marvellous, torpedoed by their own cleverness.

There are moments when it all starts to feel a little bit too doom-laden. But Williams saves not only the best, but the most hopeful, until last. ... An impressive but relentless album.

The results are looser and less formal than might be expected, more imbued with soulful swing, slipping back and forth between the modes and incorporating ecstatic gospel-style call and response passages against a patinated backdrop of shakers, percussion, swooping synths and droning organ.

As a listener you want the artist to sound comfortable in their own skin. But by the end of Case Study 01, it’s hard to be convinced that this is really him.

The overall impression is of someone trying to disguise their true emotions with comic bluster: in that sense, ironically, it's a more macho album than Humbug, despite its lighter touch.

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

There’s no standout tune on here to match Elgar’s “Nimrod”, of course, but there’s enough soupy seasonal sentimentality to fill the Royal Albert Hall.

Wake Up! may tackle weighty themes of capitalism and power struggles in relationships, but the woozy ambience of its shoegaze and Sixties-inspired pop is not exactly going to propel you into an invigorating new way of life.

Olafur Arnalds' third album, For Now I Am Winter, is an exemplary suite of Icelandic music, blending American minimalist techniques with European sensibilities.

Jeff Lynne's musical memoir of youthful influences, old songs are recast in new lights.

Devonté Hynes’ latest outing as Blood Orange takes the soft-soul stylings of 2013’s Cupid Deluxe and mashes them together with African voices and percussion, saxophones and vox populi samples to create a sonic collage that seeks to marry the vision of Marvin Gaye with the methods of Frank Zappa. That’s a considerable ambition, and unsurprisingly it falls well short much of the time.

It's a pleasant enough ride which reveals some of Panda's tastes.

It’s a weird one, mysterious and mildly menacing, but eerily engaging nonetheless.

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

The record’s problem is that it never settles on one cohesive sound.

It's maritime in mood.

While Graffiti on the Train is a significant improvement, it's still something of a patchwork affair.

The production/remix duo of Richard Norris and Erol Alkan here offer a retro-psychedelic throwback to a more imaginative time, one where the Krautrock grooves of Neu! and Can collide with spacey Ibizan house synth washes and the whimsical acid fairytales of classic ‘60s Brit psychedelia.

Mindset is short by Necks standards--just two tracks of 22 minutes each--but it is typically involving.

With Golding’s expansive, questing lines riding Boyd’s rolling, polyrhythmic funk, the duo set displays a focused musical intimacy, while the band set is immediately more incendiary, thanks to Parker wailing wild over Golding’s more rooted part in “Valley Of The Ultra Blacks”.

An extra eight-track CD of new material, which is our primary concern here. [It does not] adds much to the Minaj experience.

There are a few irritations--I hate the ghastly synthetic-strings sound used on “Da Next Day”, and I hate Adam Levine’s hook on “Mic Jack”, no matter how impressively Patton piles rhyme upon rhyme. The hit cuts, though, are quirky novelties.

Chapel Club are another retro-indie band apparently eager to re-run the 1980s, albeit in slightly more musically adventurous manner than the likes of White Lies and Interpol.

For Together At Last, Jeff Tweedy revisits choice items from his back catalogue in solo unplugged mode. It’s a brave step, given the imaginative depth with which Wilco animates this material, but it does allow the songs’ core characters to come through more strongly.

If you’re looking for connectivity between the tracks, it’s difficult to find it through the array of hyperactive noise. However Reznor and writing partner Atticus Ross managed to create their own version of The Matrix.

On track after track, the falsetto vocals and surging electropop pulses ultimately congeal into too saccharine a sonic experience, an artificially sweetened aural marshmallow.

He fills the Gary Moore-shaped hole in the world admirably.

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

The blend of simplicity and sophistication is fairly well suited to the material, avoiding cloying sentimentality and religiose bluster.

The loss of its uplifting chorus harmonies deprives "Map Ref" of its sunny appeal, but "Two People In a Room" bowls along briskly with dissonant monochord tension.

At times, it feels as though the polite, considered Rodrigo could push ideas, emotions and melodies a little further than she does. ... But this is an incredibly impressive debut from a singer who’s only just learning to stretch her wings.

A few of the melodies fail to stick. ... But when Hynde reels out the rockabilly to target more deadbeats on “Junkie Walk” and “Didn’t Want to Be This Lonely” in the closing stretch, everything clicks.

It's Tunng's most direct effort yet, eschewing the “folktronic” bricolage of albums like Good Arrows; but there's plenty happening beneath the surface.

It’s amusing to hear Method Man claiming “Wu-Tang is for the children, go get your child support on” in “Two Minutes Of Your Time”.... It’s an ironic counterbalance to the sinister lope and slow-rolling menace of the typically inventive drug and gun metaphors of tracks like “50 Shots”, “Bang Zoom” and “The Meth Lab” itself.

Night Network isn’t a bad album, but it's not a particularly memorable one, either.

Despite the propulsive energy sustained throughout, some tracks lack focus.

This is not Young’s best work. It is, however, a record that should raise smiles on the faces of the faithful.

Kodaline offer a musical barometer of bankable current rock trends, but display scant originality on this debut album.

A pleasant-enough handful of easy-going songs, in which the focus on warmth has left them lacking bite... but the warmth of that voice is undeniably beguiling.

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.

All very authentic and in the room.

For this latest incarnation of The Go! Team, bandleader Ian Parton has doubled down on the street-beat cheerleader mash-up mode of earlier albums like Proof Of Youth by searching out an actual youth choir from Detroit to accompany the marching-band-style brass that drives Semicircle. This works brilliantly on “Mayday”, an anthemic lament for love signals ignored, with the ebullient brass and chanted vocals evoking street parades, and “Semicircle Song”, in which the staccato brass lines interlace like a proper New Orleans marching band.

The sound here is occasionally brasher--most notably on the gentle opener “Everyone’s Looking For Home”, suddenly overwhelmed by a startling, brash mariachi climax--but generally sticks fairly close to the Laurel Canyon soundalike stylings of Outlaw’s “SoCal” sound.

At 14 tracks, Remembering Now has a slight paunchiness to it – something that grates particularly during the drearier slow numbers, such as “The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours” and “Memories and Visions”.

It’s an album that sounds very little like their last, and in that sense – despite its myriad reference points – The Ultra Vivid Lament is a Manic Street Preachers record, through and through.

Bloc Party's touchstones remain firmly rooted in their indie upbringing.

For her third album as St. Vincent, Annie Clark has jettisoned the baroque string and woodwind arrangements that marked 2009's Actor, in favour of more direct, guitar-based settings.

Disregard the didacticism, and there’s much to enjoy in tracks like “Til I’m Done”, a pumping disco-funk assertion of independence with abundant orchestral bells and whistles; the louchely loping “Guilty”, with Paloma giving it the full Amy Winehouse; and the pop-soul charmer “Crybaby”, whose kalimba-style keyboard groove recalls Whitney’s “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”. But the bombastic tone overall is exhausting.

The record is divided into two sets. The first half is a jagged-edged electro backed spleen-splurge with all seven tracks titled with the CAPS LOCK ON. The smoother, more soulful second half finds him in more reflective, lower-case mood.

This isn’t a bad collection overall, if less than the expected redesign.

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”.

The second album from Franco-techno duo Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé is decidedly less pop-tabulous than their career highlights to date.

The issues she covers are complex at times--“Called You Queen” recounts a problematic period partnering a gay man, “before your body betrayed you”--but “Blue Diamond Falls” closes the album on a positive note, affirming feminist possibilities that “you can be whatever you like”.

There's a pronounced shortfall of his usual joyous eclecticism here, with many pieces settling for basic repetitive sequences; some sound like little more than extended intros.

Recorded with friends in Conor Oberst’s house, it has a nice, homely ambience which allows the imaginative arrangements to work their understated charm.

Drum machine led “Swan Song” is the album’s most inventive and surprising song, proving that the creator of “Tusk” has still got his knack for innovation and creating a daring pop hook. While the weakest tracks here tend to veer into self-pity.

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.

The chunky robot-rock riff [in the opening track] suggests they’re headed to Queens of the Stone Age territory, a route confirmed by the strutting “Brothers and Sisters”; but each track seems to signal some fresh direction.

For all the broken dreams, what’s impressive about the album is the way that BSS balance tones, textures and themes.

There's plenty to enjoy.