His talent survives in these songs. So does its fatal fracture.

Arrows may also be trying for anyone tired of Welch/Goulding/Houghton orchestral overdrive. But it's worth fighting through that for the cacophonies of prettiness.

He quietly champions racial harmony on “Get Along”, and embraces stylistic experimentation on the mandolin-driven “Pirate Song” as well as the reggae-tinged “Love for Love City”, which features steel drums and a guest turn from Ziggy Marley. It won’t be enough to alienate long-standing followers or to attract too many new ones, but Songs for the Saints is nothing if not heartfelt.

Departures in sound are often unwelcome when we're already so happy with where a beloved band are, but, in this case, their experiments are a complete success.

Throughout, he's supported by Stooges guitar riffing of brutal directness and simplicity, occasionally fattened by the horns that lend an apt touch of soul sleaze to the latter track.

An impressive show, but not one likely to persuade doubters.

Produced by the Coens with T Bone Burnett, the album captures well the sanctimony, bogus bucolicism and beatnik romanticism that characterised the age, along with that tang of “revolution in the air” (to quote its most successful adherent).

Valgeir Sigurosson’s production of 2013’s Tales Of A Grasswidow lent it a cohesion which is sadly absent from Heartache City.

Weird!’s eclecticism frequently threatens to overwhelm. ... Where Yungblud is consistent is his lyrics.

He goes straight for the pop-rock formulae. This would have worked better over a shorter span, but yawning as it does on the same mid-tempo pacing means that tracks blur to filler and some good lines get lost in the sludge. The lack of guest vocalists doesn’t help either.

Listening to Piss in the Wind can be a pretty gloomy experience, as it piles futility on futility. Ideas and tunes go unfinished. Yet its graceful, open ended melodies and raw emotions also tune into a very human ghost in the machine.

A comeback shouldn't sound this much like treading water.

[Lead singer] Justin Young assert[s] that he's "too self-absorbed" to be the voice of a generation. This wouldn't be so bad if the music didn't follow suit, with lumpen punk-rock grinds and spartan guitar-rock trudges.

On Between the Walls, About Group continue to explore the space between free collective improvisation and Alexis Taylor's songs.

Bar an impressive freakout on “I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to Be Free)”, his piano playing rarely warrants centre stage. But his character--a kind of suave jazz-bar lech--is the heart of the show. ... As cash-in celebrity Christmas covers albums go, Goldblum’s has a lot of spark, and even a little soul.

Despite a four-year wait, the songs on their second album, For Ever, still sound like understudies for Mark Ronson mega-hits.

As a listener you want the artist to sound comfortable in their own skin. But by the end of Case Study 01, it’s hard to be convinced that this is really him.

This Jack White-produced comeback album suggests there can be few septuagenarians keener on raising hell.

It's beautifully presented in an absorbing blend of acoustic guitar, piano, cello, and the occasional tint of vibes or ambient colouration.

Repent Replenish Repeat follows in much the same vein as 2010's prickly The Logic of Chance: glitchy industrial-electro grooves and jerky, uncomfortable rhythm programmes, over which rapper Scroobius Pip inhabits the grey area between maverick articulacy and feral antipathy.

At its best, on “Ride My Dub”, “Expanding Dub” and “Call It Dub”, the results offer snatched glimpses of the eternal in the fleeting moment. Even better than its parent album.

It does seem as if Paloma’s sacrificed some individuality for some of that bankable overwrought wailing.

There are lots of little things to like about Little Mix’s third album.... But there are too many instances here of registers painfully over-reached, and uneasy compromises between emotion and arrangement.

It’s the quiet weariness of “Shipwreck Love” that’s most effective, its minimal alliance of guitar and violin gently emphasising Steve’s promise to offer a safe harbour from the “hidden shoals, breaker of souls”.

Essentially, this is yet another album of formulaic EDM pop and Latino R&B dancefloor grinders, more market tester than art.

While not entirely successful, this high-level summit meeting of two giant talents from half a century ago confirms that neither of the principals’ distinctive talents has suffered serious decline.

If it's not quite the jump from Bob Dylan to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, it's the closest recent equivalent, a prodigious rate of development for such a tyro talent, all the more remarkable for not being reliant on significant musical progression, so much as raw songwriting ability.

As ever, California gets plenty of mentions, though there’s less filler than usual, the album reaching a yearning epiphany in the string-draped song for a son, “The Hunter”.