There are lots of glam stompers-by-numbers. He teamed up with country singer Shooter Jennings to make the album, and the organic simplicity of country chord progressions lies beneath much of the industrial post-punk chrome shell.

There's a drive and urgency about Maximo Park's The National Health that perfectly matches frontman Paul Smith's dominant lyrical theme, of taking arms against a sea of troubles in order to forge a better life for yourself.

Bubbling synths and glistening ripples of acoustic guitar adorn these tales of elite bohemians.

Here, they find unsuspected connections between disparate sounds.

The densely-textured arrangements can get a bit stodgy in places, and the last few tracks slip into dreary bubblebath-boudoir mode, but Bootsy's blithe drawl, the vocal equivalent of a bubble, is usually around to lift one's spirits.

It's a dub reimagining that takes the material further out, into a soundscape whose fractured dubstep tones, sped-up samples and drum'n'bass beats only occasionally work in its favour.

Music of The Spheres isn't Coldplay at their Viva la Vida finest, even if their undeniably upbeat attitude remains hard to resist. The Pythagoreans believed that music purified the soul. This album offers a more superficial spiritual shower. A fleeting invigoration.

The Experiment’s increasingly obvious fault, though, is how close they keep to the middle of their many musical roads.

A soundtrack that is always fun, if undeniably erratic – Ronson can’t decide on a consistent tone or approach, instead ping-ponging between satire and celebration, sincerity and spoof.

George hasn't been as enjoyable in ages.

His quest to bring sexy back to Britain founders amid gauche come-ons ("Your aura/ It's so shiny") and strained emoting.

Her follow-up to the popular Mayhem finds Imelda May still indulging the boisterous rapscallion character suggested by titles like “Wild Woman”, “Hellfire Club” and “Gypsy In Me”.

There’s something grippingly wide-eyed and manic about her performances here and on the mounting hysteria of Beth Orton’s “Alexandria”, while more reserved shades of mental imbalance are evoked in “Window”, where the petrifying effect of obsession is considered over a stealthy, furtive arrangement.

As a soundtrack album to meditate to, Aporia is pleasant, but there’s no denying that the absence of Stevens’s typically ornate songcraft is keenly felt.

This 1991 album is the best of three reissues of their work – also available are their debut, Isn't Anything, and a 2CD compilation of outtakes and EPs.

Although their go-for-broke approach furnishes ideas to spare, the unwitting effect is a set of lurches from impressive to hopelessly ill-integrated, often over the course of a single song.

Måneskin are a band who know what they are and what they’re good at – because while it’s true that Rush! starts to feel amorphous, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single moment in its 50-minute runtime where you’re not enjoying yourself just a little.

Chlöe and the Next 20th Century is another shocking left-turn from indie-rock’s chief provocateur: a charming (huh?!), innocuous (gasp!) sojourn into lovely baroque-pop.

The contrasts of the title are evident throughout John Legend’s latest album--in the push and pull between devotion and desire, indulgence and empowerment, and musically in the dialectic between comforting familiarity and exploratory urges.

The sole constant is the skeletal, staccato patter of peppery percussion throbbing beneath each track, the everpresent heartbeat of a project in aid of Oxfam.

While "Lioness" is a far better posthumous collection than Michael Jackson's Michael, from almost exactly a year ago, it's a poor substitute for the high-octane musicality of Frank and Back To Black.

This revamp does at least serve as a reminder of the album’s untouchable greatness.

Restless Spheres is the first release in nine years from Blue States, the nom-de-disque of chill-out stylist Andy Dragazis; and sadly, it sounds somewhat mired in the modes of an emptier era.

An intriguing mix overall and further proof that Pearl Jam play by their own rules--a fact that real fans would never want to change.

Blood is front-loaded: I can’t think of another album that follows such a relentlessly downward course, all but giving up the ghost completely on the insipid closer “Good Goodbye”. But the opening three songs are aces.

Overall, it's their most spirited effort yet, and the changes have been deftly effected in a way which shouldn't alienate their core fanbase too much.

Finn has a nice line in sardonic, declamatory assessments – "Certain things get hard to do when you're living in a rented room"; "I'm alive, except for the inside" – but there's little comparable imagination to the arrangements, which lean towards ironic country-rock and dispirited blues-rock.

Her debt to Grace Jones is evident in the elegant melodrama of “Ten Miles High”, but her application ranges much further on an album of intriguing strategies.