Collins herself brings a demotic charm to whatever she sings.

This is one of Wainwright’s finest albums.

The album slips into a febrile combination of reminiscences, boasts and complaints that manages to keep an eye firmly on the present whilst gazing fondly back on former tribulations.

There is some sense that Blood Red Shoes are trying too hard to cultivate their own myth, with all these tales of rock and roll hedonism. For the most part, though, the music on Get Tragic is good enough to speak for itself.

By the time you reach the angelic post-rock “Rubicon”, you’ve given up looking for any cohesive thread in Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 and given in to its hazy momentum. Like the post-pandemic age, you never know what’s coming next.

I’m Your Empress Of is a bold statement of her individuality, nodding to her Honduran heritage but also her clear love of electronic music and Chicago house. ... This is an album that bristles with life.

Produced by Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson, the arrangements offer a feisty take on bluegrass mountain music which sets off Childers’ perkily engaging delivery splendidly.

There’s a lot of human heart pumping beneath the bangers here. Be prepared for your mascara/fire-pit kohl to get smudgy. Because It’s Not That Deep actually sounds like the work of a woman who’s done some serious digging in order to party this hard.

Drunk Tank Pink offers a new sense of space, of notes ricocheting off walls. Green and Coyle-Smith clearly enjoyed experimenting with unconventional guitar tunings, playing energised ping pong with the tangy twists of key.

The whole thing is delightfully caffeinated: Short n’ Sweet is full of hiss and steam, grinding gears and deep kicks beneath the shining chrome surfaces.

It's an unashamedly middle-aged affair, from the quietly moving affirmation of devotion in "Two Children" to the comforting reverie of "I Remember You".

Not a party album.

An unfashionable record, then, and that may be its best asset. With such low stakes and barely any emotional intensity, Father of the Bride won’t cement Vampire Weekend’s legacy. But after a highly strung decade on the indie-rock A-list, it gives them room to breathe.

The confessional, autobiographical elements that are its strongest aspect also serve as its Achilles' heel: the whole enterprise depends on how fascinated the listener is with Rowland's psyche.

Its dark, unflinching songs certainly ponder humanity’s less attractive traits, with arrangements to match.

The Future And The Past is a journey of self-discovery brimming with hope and grooves made to help Prass and her listeners find optimism.

[Ventura] streamlines .Paak’s sound, making for a tightly packaged, melodic and danceable album.

At its best, Overgrown proves that James Blake doesn't need to listen to anyone's advice. He's doing fine already.

Virgin doesn’t find Lorde back in her finest, most exhilarating form. But it’s a record that sees her heading in that direction.

The dazzling deftness of his fingering in the Presto and Double Presto sections evokes a kind of giddy delirium and his feathery technique wrests the tenderest of emotions from the second Sonata's Andante.

Into just nine songs, BMTH have distilled a breathtaking demonstration of their ambition, their technical skill, and their awareness of the social climate.

Lyrically, there's a pervasive fascination with California outsider culture that soon palls, though the troubled relationship excavated in "Marked" suggests a deeper vein of inspiration may yet be mined.

It's an enchanting snapshot of British rock'n'roll at its moment of greatest revelation, the point at which the Tin Pan Alley production line of ersatz Elvises was rendered utterly obsolete.

Already Disappeared, which was co-produced with Cate Le Bon in the sprawling desert expanse of Marfa, Texas, is not an easy album. It’s often bleak and experimental: Cox’s vocals burst through like distorted, burbling fragments of static, or appear muffled amid the instrumentation. This is a new side of Deerhunter that gives the listener much to contemplate.

Elsewhere, these grand new performances with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra serve to pinion some songs too fixedly.

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

The unusual alliance of Floridian rapper/singer Eric Biddines with south London groovemaster Paul White brings an engaging, infectious charm to Golden Ticket reminiscent of Outkast and Arrested Development.

There’s a delicacy to his songs, lazily ambling along with just a few key elements allowed to flourish; the gentle, echoey guitar winding through “You’ve Got Your Way Of Leaving”, the fuzzy, Yamaha YC30 riff that “Abandoned Buick” is built on, the melancholic piano that appears on “Wildflower”. All of this gives his soft, lilting voice space to shine, and framed by such elegant, pastoral music, his delivery--and his lyrics--do most of the emotional heavy lifting.