One can’t help thinking the ghosts and echoes of previous scandalous indulgences are rather betrayed by the project’s neat, sentimental manner.

As usual, guests crowd the album... less welcome, though, is the way that vast tranches of the album serve as a showcase for Willie's son, Lukas.

Common’s lyrical imagery is as evocative as ever on both. ... This is Common’s most hopeful album in years.

It all fits seamlessly together, a rich tapestry of weed-toked slow jams, woozy psychedelic infusions and pimped-out west coast joyrides. ... This record never takes a wrong turn.

The deep, surging bass pulse that opens “Summer” suggests a more focused approach, but before long Jim Kerr’s descending again into his dreams, anticipating “all those energies” amidst yet another miasmic, swirling sea of sound, and the song just evaporates into a mist of queasy bombast.

Switching smoothly between contemporary classical orchestrations, big-band jazz and operatic chorale, the results are frequently breathtaking in their audacity.

He fills the Gary Moore-shaped hole in the world admirably.

Only occasionally does the survey of this interpersonal battlefield afford an optimistic light.

Here, his pool of talent is confirmed in the spare xylophone beat to “Youth” and the ingenious, slinky grooves to “Lightwork” and “They Don’t Know”, a frisky pass-the-mic showcase between Tinie, Kid Ink, Stefflon Don and AoD. But given the sharp drop-off in notable guest talent this time round, compared with Demonstration, he certainly needs to make changes.

The homogeneity of the album's arrangements effectively denudes the individual songs of their emotional power.

Too many of these tracks are slight ideas and punning phrasework over-egged into grotesque wedding-cakes by Dudley’s billowing strings, leaving Fry stranded in the position summarised in “Brighter Than The Sun”: “I’m a man out of time/Looking for a mountain to climb”.

It’s hard to think of many other contemporary albums that are quite so beautifully arranged as this. ... This is a very special album indeed.

It’s a typical contacts-book R&B exercise, with an impressive cast of guests (including Frank, Pharrell, Snoop, Nicki, Katy, Ariana and others) on a fairly underwhelming series of grooves.

Although both the solid, retro stylings of The Love Invention and the more delicately dreamy Flux contain some lovely melodies and beautifully detailed production, the woman herself seems less edgily present than she while haunting 2000’s “Lovely Head” or on 2003’s “Strict Machine”.

Bennett and Gaga dance through [Cole Porter's] witty wordplay and bring nuanced humanity to the deft melodies he dashed off in his suite at the Waldorf.

The album has an unpolished feel – a diamond in the rough – with its analogue sounds and snatches of conversation from the recording studio.

It’s a far cry from the usual meat’n’spuds rock that has characterised most Morrissey albums; and a welcome change, suggesting perhaps that this most British of pop bards is renegotiating his own boundaries.

The loss of its uplifting chorus harmonies deprives "Map Ref" of its sunny appeal, but "Two People In a Room" bowls along briskly with dissonant monochord tension.

In the Blue Light is not the sound of a man reinventing himself, nor is it a final meditation on decades gone. But in shining a light on a handful of overlooked gems, Simon has succeeded brilliantly.

It's Wretch's determination to find success by finding his own voice that's most impressive here.

Due to the choice of material, the arrangements lean heavily towards the dramatic and angst-ridden--well, it is Peter Gabriel--with the sole recourse to mellow calm reserved for the undulating strings of "The Nest That Sailed the Sky".

It's Bruni's intimacy that's the album's most alluring aspect.

The first 12 songs glow with standard praise for a natural, respectful love (rumoured to be about his on/off model girlfriend Gigi Hadid) but things take a darker turn after Malik’s mythical musings (over muted pings of electric guitar) on “Icarus Interlude”, which concludes with him singing that he “lied to the liars”. Both sonically and lyrically, things get more interesting from this point.

Bruno Mars is a talented chap, he's forced to demean his abilities by echoing other artists' former glories on Unorthodox Jukebox, whose title all but gives the game away.

Jeff Lynne's musical memoir of youthful influences, old songs are recast in new lights.

The Cautionary Tales... is wracked with recrimination, remorse and self-doubt. It can be bleak--the electric piano of “Lockdown Hurricane” seems a sound soaked in self-pity--but the intimate beauty of the strings and woodwinds sweetens the pill.

It remains to be seen whether the band can transcend their influences and develop a sound that’s solely theirs.

It’s a return to form, but reveals an expected sense of maturity. Pryor and sometimes guitarist Jim Suptic split vocal duties on the EP.