Let It All In is stylishly rendered in simple instrumental colours, but it's not the cheeriest of experiences.

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 Dream sees the band moving briskly through sensations, their heads stuck out the window of a speeding car, tongues wagging, sticking to whatever comes their way.

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.

Traveling Alone sounds like her best album yet.

All told, probably The Monkees’ best album, after their hits compilation.

Crash is a terrifically structured album, designed to get you up and shimmying off the lockdown pounds as tracks slot sleekly together. ... Crash is a top-down, foot-down trip.

There's a simplicity about these previously unreleased demos that's utterly beguiling, the spare settings allowing the sweeter side of George Harrison's character to shine unencumbered by studio blandishments.

Okay, but not much more.

The older he gets, the better the conversational-confessional flow of his rapping, which allows him to stroll through a 10-minute bragathon like “Mel Made Me Do It” without breaking a sweat or losing the listener’s attention. He raps about trips to Dubai and giving up weed like he’s sitting beside you at a London bus stop.

If Bite Me isn’t the consistently massive deal Mean Girls fans might have hoped for, it’s still pretty fetch.

Fame may be fickle, but Vollebekk’s dedication to improving his craft is anything but.

Clearly, these New York math-rockers have yet to learn the values of de- cluttering, with most of these dozen pieces involving furious industry to no great advantage.

Gone is much of the external noise – typewriter clatters, vinyl crackles and the whir of bicycle spokes – replaced by ambitiously ornate compositions. As on Dark Days, I Grow Tired feels spookily prescient.

Commontime is full of engaging ideas and genial character, by some distance the most assured and complete of Field Music’s releases.

It's the communal sentiment underlying such ostensibly personal heartache that gives Williams's songs much of their power, that draws the listener in as an emotional fellow-traveller.

An engagingly outre delight.

This is such an improvement on 2010's enervated One Life Stand that one can only conclude their various sabbatical projects have rejuvenated their creative juices.

On “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To”, backed by beautifully textured Americana instrumentation, she wonders why we keep trying: “We did our best, but what does that really mean?” This album is Barnett navigating her way out of her own head, reminding herself – and her listeners – that it’s good to care about things.

It’s a stark but stunning collection, with Rawlings’ exquisite acoustic lead lines dancing around the melodies, and the duo’s harmonies imbuing their songs with poignant shades of emotion.

There is a brilliant album among the 18 songs, if only it had been pruned it a little.

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

It's confessional solipsism, lacking the musical compulsion to make one care.

The result is a quintessentially London record, as dark and moody as it is brash and innovative.

The problem with albums about depression is that they are the most literal exposition of the principle that an artist has suffered for their work, and now it’s our turn--and doubly so when it’s a 90-minute punk-opera wrenched screaming from their very soul, as here.

Electric finds Richard Thompson at his most stripped-down and potent.

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

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.