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.

An album by turns terse, sinuous and playful, streaked with disgust and delight in roughly equal measure.

Although an improvement on 2011’s The Errant Charm, this finds Vetiver mainman Andy Cabic struggling to impose greater definition on his sun-bleached West Coast throwback style.

It’s starker and sharper than you might expect--the most pop-conscious piece is a collaboration with Robyn, “Out of the Black”--but it works well on the sinister shuffle of “Spit Three Times” and bleak jitter of “Naked”.

For the most part, LaMontagne isn’t reinventing the wheel on his seventh album, but he once again proves his music is as reliably good as ever.

A strong thread of anti-corporate, anti-corruption liberation ideology runs through A Long Way To The Beginning.

Arriving several months after the tragic documentary, this soundtrack has a waif-like quality that’s touchingly appropriate, with Amy Winehouse’s demos and live tracks interspersed with brief snippets of Antonio Pinto’s incidental music.

Her soothing voice, though very lovely, doesn’t always sell the cleverness of her lyrics.

White's albums have tendrils that imperceptibly wrap themselves around one's attention; and such is the case here.

This 2CD set features one disc of early rarities, and one of sundry items from Cash's Columbia catalogue--not the most comfortable combination, but not without interest.

“Wanderlust” establishes the overall thematic impulse to live culturally beyond one’s means, but in practice this can lead to the preference for smarts over suitability that spoils a track like “A Dog’s Life”. But there are moments of greatness here and there.

With Urban Turbanm, Tjinder Singh reinforces his position as one of the UK's more engaging musical minds.

Jermaine Cole’s fourth album is highly principled and skilfully wrought, but those aren’t always the most prized or effective elements when it comes to hip-hop.

Stephen McRobbie's wan vocals remain an acquired taste, but the way the music lightly folds in dark and light, innocence and experience, reserve and euphoria, lifts the likes of "Slow Summits" and "Summer Rain".

It’s a record of heartbreak cauterised by hope, so alongside the routine tears and recrimination is a recurrent element of recovery and optimism that sets it apart from most other soul-diva offerings.

Two Vines glows with a relaxed, beachside warmth that brings to mind “Standing On The Shore” from their debut.

It’s not a bad album, but you still get the feeling that, as Ryder notes elsewhere, “someone who looks like me is living in my skin”.

There’s prodigious ambition here, and moments of great pleasure.

This debut album is awash in buzzsaw guitar riffs and splashy cymbals, while the wild-child vocals of Arrow De Wilde channel the jaded disdain of Courtney Love (minus the rage), occasionally peaking in a Lene Lovish-like squawk. It’s a formula which works best on “Love’s Gone Again”, which has something of the elemental primitivism of Pink Flag-era Wire as it treats perverse carnal urges to a dose of distortion.

Head Carrier is an altogether more convincing affair than 2014’s comeback album Indie Cindy, the intervening months of roadwork having helped relocate the band’s classic mode.

Ultimately, despite a few high points, LM5 is so scattershot, both thematically and musically, that it’s hard to find much to grab onto.

It’s a delight, full of rich textures and subtle touches, from the harpsichord, hi-hats and horns of “Apollo’s Mood” to the sumptuous opener “Sirens Of Jupiter.”

It gets a bit noodly-doodly at times, but with some stand-out moments, notably the lovely, meditative grace of the bass and guitar alliance in "XII."

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

Off the Record contains few surprises, with several tracks pleasantly echoing his time as co-composer of some of the group's most glorious pieces.

If I’m honest, it’s as hard to tell this Future Islands album from the last one as it is to tell one seagull from another. But that’s not to say they don’t all soar and swoop in a way that’s guaranteed to lift the heart.

On Remember Us To Life, Regina Spektor exhibits stronger affinities with Randy Newman, thanks to a turn of phrase often leaning towards the ironic, and a deceptive worldview which, like the sardonic string arrangements and ominous piano settings, gives most of these songs a slightly sour sting in the tail.

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.