While these are enjoyable enough tracks to soundtrack your day, there’s little of the lasting emotion or progression for which we know Beck.

The songs are just a little perfunctory. Like a popcorn disaster movie, the album is full of adrenaline, and yet doesn’t stick in the mind long after you’ve finished with it.

In typical Gelb manner, it’s wide-ranging in styles and standards: he didn’t get this far by excessive quality control, so some parts have a loose feel, while firmer parameters prevail elsewhere.

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

His voice, which should be the focus, sounds muffled by effects. Neville’s fluting, melismatic vocal is much better served on the slow waltz hymnal “Heaven”, a persuasive reflection of his faith.

A meticulously crafted work that sticks to their winsome, Nineties-influenced slacker-rock while sounding freshly liberated after two years described as “the best and worst” time of their lives.

Large parts of it still rely too heavily on a dour combination of industry and portent.

More Light is Primal Scream's best effort in some time.

Overall Sigrid achieves exactly what she’s set out to do: add some grit to her previously pristine pop.

It's a gentle, woozy mood-scape in which nostalgia for the candyfloss summers of childhood shades imperceptibly into the sweet melancholy of encroaching autumn.

To these ears, album closer “Serpentine Prison” bears an uncanny – if stripped-back – similarity to “Friend of Mine”. But for the most part, this is a Berninger record, and it’s very good.

He wields with sumptuous beauty, from the Floyd-like swathes of mellotron and piano carrying “The Boat Is In The Barn” and the stately “Lost Machine”, to the implacable electropop fizz of “Evermore”.

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.

Best of all, though, is the opener “Heard About You Last Night”. Though typically methodical, it glows with a kind of staid, epiphanic inner-beauty, the most elegant, graceful thing they’ve ever recorded.

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.

There's barely a shred of truly memorable content here.

It’s tough stuff, tempered by the Soderbergs’ instinctive harmonies, which remain as sweet as ever, and the inventive folk-rock arrangements textured with typical empathy by producer Tucker Martine, involving members of R.E.M., Midlake and Wilco.

It's a one-tone listen. But that shout-in-your-face directness is exactly what makes Ultra Mono so powerful. This is rock music that compels you to pay attention.

T-Bone Burnett renders mostly old jazz numbers with a blend of period feel and modern fidelity, so they're "in the tradition" without sounding antique.

While the widescreen production of “The Man Who Built The Moon” strives to deliver the drama promised by “Fort Knox”, it doesn’t quite succeed. But it’s still by far his best post-Oasis work, an album which doesn’t try to challenge that heritage, but strikes out to explore new territory.

Wilderness uses wildlife traits as jumping-off points for enigmatic tales in typical Handsome Family manner.

Heidi Talbot employs an engaging blend of ancient and modern on Angels Without Wings.

This album is unlikely to win him any new fans. But, for the many millions whose lives intersected with the original music, Reprise offers a graceful and nuanced opportunity to take stock.

There’s a new sense of groundedness, as though, faced with certain inevitabilities, they feel more connected than ever to the world around them.

The first Union Station album since 2004 is, as usual, something to treasure.

Her casual observations on club life and love life tumble over each other with a light, mischievous touch that's refreshingly free of grating attitude.

Although Cain is clearly pushing away one type of fan, this album is destined to bind others more closely to her. While I can’t work out when I’d choose to listen to it again, Perverts is distressingly exquisite. Repeated plays guarantee sonic Stockholm syndrome.

Yet as wretched as his characters often are, Cornog always affords them the dignity of their own volition.