Smith’s vocals are, of course, beautiful. Creamy and curvaceous; liquid with emotion. But I often feel their voice is searching for tangier tunes to wrap that molten wax around. Without any sharpness to offset it, listening to the repeated wobbly rise of Smith’s lovely, dollopy notes can feel like the aural equivalent of watching a lava lamp.

Americana II feels like another chapter exploring a still-living, breathing relationship with an intensely complex land, that makes for a rich and invigorating listening experience, heightened even more by the news that a new Kinks album is on the way, too.

Like Random Access Memories, it’s an enjoyable dance-pop album lacking a central focus. But one whose diffident charm makes a pleasant change from the overwrought wailing that routinely afflicts R&B.

His guests include Lana Del Rey, whose affectless manner makes her a perfect match for him; though the best grooves here come courtesy of Daft Punk, bookending the album with the scudding title-track and Michael Jackson homage “I Feel It Coming”.

This ability to tiptoe between opposing positions brings a pleasing depth and grain to some of her songs.

Across two discs there are too many mediocre versions, most revering the polite preciosity of the original Laurel Canyon folk-rock settings.

Oddly, the busier things get, the less engaging they seem.

Rudimental’s follow-up to Home is not quite as impressive, though in fairness, most of the contributing vocalists lack the charismatic tone that John Newman brought to that debut album.

He's a bona fide hitmaker with a colossal YouTube following, working in the argot and style of his own generation

As you'd expect, it relies heavily on programmed beats of spare simplicity, and layered dubstep synth riffs over which Albarn sketches his impressions of life on the road.

Here, they find unsuspected connections between disparate sounds.

The homegrown characteristics of her distinctive style have been all but washed away in a flood of R&B clichés on All of Me, a routine blend of fidgety grooves and tiresome ruminations on life and love.

To a certain extent it works, especially when Josh Homme’s on hand to lend gritty riffing and imaginative lead lines to some tracks: his spiky but fluid breaks on “A-Yo” and “John Wayne” are undoubted album highlights. Sadly, the bombastic orchestral stomper “Perfect Illusion”, a much-anticipated collaboration with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, is less impressive, just stridently dull.

Cliched rock band they might be, but the problem lies more with the fact that they used to be bloody good at it. Night People is a painfully disjointed album that shows a band at an impasse, unsure about which direction they want to go in.

Here, any trace of feedback or distortion has been eradicated to leave just a Fratelli-esque singalong punk-pop sheen to songs.

Shorty here offers an explosive blend of funk, blues and jazz.

Away from his favourite theme, Wiley struggles to bring interest or insight to his workaday observations, and while many of his grimey "eskibeat" grooves have an infectious, spartan quality about them, it's likely that in future they'll be more profitably employed behind other wordsmiths.

Their minimalist aesthetic can sometimes work against them, as on the spartan, diffident “The Pop Life”, but it’s tempered by a winning romanticism on “Butterflies”, where the fluttering keyboards evoke a fantasy of a dead soul becoming a butterfly, one of “a thousand souls swarming”.

Through 14 tracks, Jordan and Harley offer a fast-talking, witty and well-meaning account of day-to-day life for sharp-eyed British youth.

It’s musically ambitious, if over-stuffed at times, but unashamedly impenetrable lyrically, even with the “help” of the accompanying gobbledegook short-story and supposed Map of Eyeland.

It lacks both unity and quality.

Elysium is bookended by two of the best songs the Pet Shop Boys have written in years, but flags badly in between.

Overall, a confident, clear-headed quantum leap beyond their previous work.

Gaga's music, let's be frank, is not that much better than, or even different to, that on Femme Fatale, but she knows the lingering appeal of playing dress-up.

There are a few too many tracks on which the hook outclasses the actual rap.

Though lacking the thematic unity one expects from Springsteen albums, High Hopes has much to recommend it, particularly the way that Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has re-invigorated old material like “American Skin (41 Shots)” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad”.

Pure & Simple sticks for the most part to an agreeable neo-traditional approach.

"Moonlit Car Chase" and "Base 64 Love" come perilously close to generic technopop.