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.

Overall, it’s an entertaining, multifaceted set, albeit weakened by a tendency to pursue slim ideas and dead-end notions.

Home sounds like an invitation to a decedent, warmly lit house party where there may or may not be a jar of keys in the corner.

On Spirit, Depeche Mode get serious and political, which doesn’t really suit them.

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.

The songs on Me Moan are steeped in sinister intimations of bad desires, wanderlust and dark secrets, essayed with varying degrees of intelligibility over arrangements that mostly eschew the commonplace.

Taken together, the results demonstrate how adeptly Amadou & Mariam straddle both local and global, with a truly "world" music that deserves mainstream chart success rather than niche appreciation.

Musically it’s standard rockin’ country fare, save for the poignant tints of accordion applied to “Homecoming Queen”.

An unmitigated disaster.

While their retreads of "Robot" and "Thursday" come perilously close to "Bohemian Rhapsody", the makeovers of Kelis's "Acapella" and Sparks' "The No. 1 Song in Heaven" are brilliant.

This third album sounds exhausted, worn out rather than careworn.

Beauty Behind the Madness leaves one feeling just as estranged from Abel Tesfaye’s depraved character as previous releases boasting less adhesive tunes.

The melancholy mood pervades throughout, into the itchy, insect flurries of Penderecki's Polymorphia, for 48 strings, and Greenwood's 48 Responses To Polymorphia.

Oddly appealing overall, when not tending too much toward the twisted.

Although some of the songs follow that same pop structure seen on the first half, by contrasting them with more experimental sounds (that are not hoping to top the charts), they have much more impact.

There’s so much sheer, on-one attitude in Gallagher’s parka pastichery that’s hard to resist. His band are on fire with it. Riffs skirling from the guitars. Drums constantly a-quiver. Even tossed-off tracks like “World in Need” (“send godspeed”) catch flame with harmonica hooks and shaken maracas.

Compared with his perky previous albums Mars and Mean Love, there’s something underwhelming about this third effort from Ahmad Gallab, aka Sinkane--it feels every bit as pedestrian and dutiful as its title suggests, its slow, methodical grooves pleasantly light but laborious.

A confident return from an artist now comfortable in who she is.

Despite this obvious recommendation, the more radio-friendly follow-up still proves hard to love.

The big Brill concept doesn't work, Cahn, Cooke and Ellington not being song-factory writers.

The trio's manipulation of euphoric rave dynamics on tracks like “Therapy” brings a fresh approach to a tried-and-tested form.

Nesbitt is back with her second LP, switching to a brand of soul and R&B-fused pop that feels bang on time, and suits her far better. The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change has slick, polished production from Fraser T Smith (Adele), Lostboy (Anne-Marie), Jordan Riley (Zara Larsson), and Nesbitt herself.

Happenings finds the Leicester band on synth-corroding, speaker-rattling form, with Pizzorno banging out big tunes and splashing out big, bell-bottomed chords. .... The slower songs still keep the tunes rolling.

Endless Scroll sets out to shake the listener from their complacency, because in this age there’s just no time for ambivalence. It’s a fantastic debut from one of the most exciting new bands around.

Large parts of Blak and Blu are spent crooning falsetto soul numbers or cranking out chunky rockers in the vein of the Stones and Bob Seger.

The most effective songs here are those which reach out directly to her family.

Inspired by a shared affinity for the Suffolk landscape, these are mostly small, pastoral ambient pieces which drift, as the title suggests, over the shifting coastal flatlan.

Potential affection for this self-titled debut is likely to depend on how one takes this and similarly twee sentiments.