It's not all suddenly-grown-up rock music, of course, with tracks like “No Control” and “Fool's Gold” retaining the boys' perky teen-pop charm; and whatever style is adopted, the choruses are all reassuringly collective singalongs.

Garth here sensibly celebrates simple good times in songs like the twangsome “Honky Tonk Somewhere” and its cutting-loose continuation “Weekend”, where copious location namechecks enthuse that “it’s weekend all over the world”. Elsewhere, “Baby, Let’s Lay Down And Dance” tacks its cheeky proposition onto a “Long Train Running” groove, while the chugging boogie of “Pure Adrenaline” suggests how ZZ Top might sound if they were country.

The sound here is occasionally brasher--most notably on the gentle opener “Everyone’s Looking For Home”, suddenly overwhelmed by a startling, brash mariachi climax--but generally sticks fairly close to the Laurel Canyon soundalike stylings of Outlaw’s “SoCal” sound.

While the record could have been a few songs shorter, Expectations is expansive in that it isn’t one big radio hit after another, which proves Rexha is opting for longevity instead of manufactured pop.

Beady Eye may be just Oasis minus Noel, but this debut is rather better than the past few Oasis albums, if sadly no more innovative.

This debut album proper fails to develop or change-up his formula of predatory sexuality expressed in tremulous tones.

Rockstar is so long that it can feel like a bit of a slog.

The tremulous piano ballad “Young Blood” is far from the dance fodder singles of Ellis-Bextor’s past, while the sombre tone of tracks like “Until the Stars Collide” suggests that she’s re-positioning herself in the prim Nordic-diva territory of Agnes Obel and Ane Brun. A good move.

Relaxer is effectively Alt-J’s folk album: still studious and tending towards complexity, but here tempered by a rootedness that snags emotions more directly.

Producer Hal Willner has surrounded Marianne Faithfull with some great New Orleans musicians, and got her covering a few Crescent City soul numbers. But it's not territory she occupies comfortably: she doesn't have the abandon to animate Joe & Ann's "Gee Baby", and her delivery of Allen Toussaint's "Back in Baby's Arms" is painfully stilted.

The Lost Sirens actually bests its parent album, which was not New Order's finest hour.

Vessels’ remix of “E.V.A.” and Copy Paste Soul’s “Tomorrow” both temper brisk, scuttling pulses with tender string textures, while Petar Dundov’s take on “Sputnik” builds from spartan beginnings to an epiphanic, widescreen electro synthscape.

“Paradise Is Under Your Nose” is the stand-out, a stirring folk lament kept on track thanks to the vocal duet with co-writer Jack Jones of Trampolene doing the heavy melodic lifting and some keening fiddle from Miki Beavis, but there’s only so much the Puta Madres can do. As with most Doherty releases, it’s back-loaded with meandering, semi-bothered filler.

Some of the backing tracks have novelty appeal--the cartoonish, kazoo-like loop of “Bird Song”, the Qawwali elisions percolating through the Zayn Malik duet “Freedun”--but the most striking work here is her virtually acappella treatment of “Jump In”, with just a sparse beat beneath her rhythmic vocal repetitions.

Bovelle’s dub skills ensure there’s depth and disturbance in the band’s angry bricolages of whines, whirrs and harsh, stabbing guitars dancing around Mark Stewart’s edgy, political caterwauling on tracks like “Instant Halo” and “Pure Ones”, while Shocklee cooks up a bulldozer funk maelstrom of splintering sounds for “Burn Your Flag” and “City Of Eyes”.

While it's pleasantly effected for the most part, it's hard to get involved in someone else's nostalgia.

A sort of also-ran footnote to the diva tropes handled with so much more panache by Mrs. Z.

The main failing lies in the lack of distinction of the material, and the lack of excitement in its execution: the only time the album teeters on thrilling is when Neil Young’s Les Paul disturbs the peace of “Down the Wrong Way”.

Debut album Up All Night consists of 15 installments of inoffensive daytime radio pop.

[TWGMTR] is pitifully thin stuff, with far too many nostalgic hankerings.

Despite the involvement of producer Danger Mouse, the more experimental leanings of albums like Achtung Baby and Zooropa have been abandoned in favour of the all-too-familiar blend of vaunting, declamatory vocals and juddering guitar riffs; but sadly, that knack for irresistible pop hooks with which Danger Mouse helped hoist The Black Keys to superstar status is almost entirely absent here, restricted to just an occasional keyboard counter-melody like that on "California (There Is No End To Love)".

Melancholy of tone, it occasionally attains the antique industry of Michael Nyman's early Peter Greenaway scores, but the overall effect is more akin to the musical equivalent of a mock-tudorbethan semi.

“Build Music” is a fast, scuttling riff of loping bass and stabbing organ, its call-and-response lyric celebrating the act of making music; while on “Santa Monica”, an itchy but fluid guitar motif is threaded into the groove, as Nabay protests LAPD harassment--“Investigation, interrogation, yea!”--like Fela Kuti recounting oppression in a less balmy clime. But crucially, the backing vocals still sparkle lightly despite the heavy hand of the law.

This River is surely the most accomplished album yet from Florida-based songwriter JJ Grey.

Wildness is an attempt to return to form, but it’s an unsuccessful one.

Themes of anguish and otherness are littered in Davis’s frequently cliched lyrics, though some listeners will welcome such lyrical clarity.

It’s one dizzying burst of energy after another.

Though the elements don’t always hang together, there’s no shortage of intriguing ideas.