She lacks rhythmic ingenuity: most tracks just stump along in unaccented 4/4, the spiky riffs cycling dully over and over.

From start to finish, Plastic Hearts dresses catchy, Eighties-indebted pop melodies in rock’s studded leather, lets them spin a few wheelies and max out the speedo. It’s basically a truckload of fun with added blood and guts, driven by Cyrus’s reckless, open-throated, soul-bearing charisma.

Art In The Age Of Automation finds the group expanding their sound to accommodate strings and horns alongside their core armoury of drums, bass, keys, sax and hang, the latter’s steel-pan timbres pleasingly sprinkled over the slow drift of “Objects To Place In A Tomb” and prominently featured in “Beyond Dialogue”, two of the better tracks.

First Rose of Spring is the work of an artist who will never grow old.

Arbouretum deal in an odd blend of folk and heavy rock, these seven tracks trudging along like a deep-sea diver traversing the sea bed in ten-league boots.

Norwegian singer Ane Brun's quietly involving music occupies a spectral space in which her delicate, tremulous voice reveals shared intimacies with a rare poise.

As you’d expect from Elbow’s frontman, the songs on this debut solo album rarely stray too far from the sleeve on which Guy Garvey wears his heart.

[It] features sleek R&B versions of mostly traditional gospel and blues numbers, some bookended with fragments of the originals, alongside interesting covers of things like Dylan's "Shot of Love".

It's a virtually faultless set, with plenty of neat touches personalising familiar material.

A typically diverse collection.

Jack White’s new solo album Fear of the Dawn is basically one long jam session. Which is fine, if that’s what makes him happy. For the rest of us, it’s a bit of a slog.

It’s a genial set.

It's easily the best work Diddy's been involved with in his entire career.

The album plays to her strengths, as befits a woman who has sustained a career as producer of, among others, Joss Stone's breakthrough sessions.

Recorded in one take, with drums, bass, guitar and backing vocalists huddled around two microphones, the results have a rustic charm akin to a more grizzled Leon Redbone, with rolling rumba-rock and reggae grooves.

Moby returns to form, honing in on the sounds that helped him rise through the ranks of the New York City club scene. Weaved in between the 12 tracks is a pastiche of trip hop, soul, electronics and gospel.

Cypress Hill are the hippies of the hip hop world, making music surrounded by a green-tinged haze that takes more cues from classic Sixties and Seventies rock than anywhere else. Elephants on Acid is one hell of a trip.

This is an album that shows a band who’ve grown stronger and unafraid to flex their muscle.

Musically, it’s lovely – loose, swirling California rock and country, led by gaze-out-the-train-window melodies. ... This album will leave a mark – one that is Moore’s and Moore’s alone.

This isn’t so much a barnstormer of an album as a reassuringly earthy rock-out among the hay bales.

She sings like she’s falling apart, but the quality of the album suggests she’s got it together.

Beyond these introductory tracks and a couple of others (“Give It Up for Love” struts to a Nile Rogers beat), the album chugs along at a pleasant mid-tempo pace.

“Here We Are” and “Back When We Were Beautiful” treat ageing with wistful nobility, Harris's voice cracking poignantly on the latter, while Crowell delivers a trenchant version of Kris Kristofferson's self-lacerating drug song “Chase the Feeling.”

The care and attention pays dividends on If You Wait.

A slow-burning triumph.

My Soft Machine is a punchier, poppier outing for Parks but the record shares a lot in common with its predecessor. .... It’s when Park veers off her own path that things get interesting. “Devotion” is a risk that pays off.

When they get their teeth into a groove, Goat’s alloying of krautrock and Afrobeat, desert blues and psychedelia proves irresistible.

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.