Things go rapidly downhill, soured by the earnest, self-important tone of songs like “Grace” and “Ego”; while “Love You Any Less” is just achingly dull, a slice of blandly sepia soulfulness that stains the songs around it.

The group have been around for well over a year without arousing much of a stir, and the monumentally tedious poesie-rock of Violet Cries offers few hints that this should change.

The erosion of control is palpable as the show progresses, though it's hard to tell whether it's due to damage or just boredom.

For the most part, the mood here is pensive, the ballads plentiful and the pace glacial, with little evidence of the wild abandon that the singer supposedly longs for. It’s to Smith’s credit, but also their undoing, that they are just too damned nice.

MDNA represents a determined, no-nonsense restatement of the Madonna brand.

It finds Skelly in more emotive manner than with The Coral.

Eminem belittles the trauma of a then 26-year-old Ariana Grande for kicks on “Unaccommodating” by comparing himself to the Manchester Arena bomber. The sour taste of this track lingers well beyond the album’s centrepiece, “Darkness”, which is intended as a searing critique of America’s toxic gun culture. Instead, his use of gunfire and explosion samples feels grossly exploitative.

As ever, it's an eclectic mix of styles.

While imparting a palpable sense of immediacy to the performances, there are some tracks that could do with more work.

The cycling, Wendy Carlos-style synth figures of "Searching For Heaven" offer brief respite, but hardly enough to rescue an album promising far more than it delivers.

It's a sound with all flesh stripped off the bone, but Lynch himself sounds like an intellectual playing bogus trailer-trash.

While Graffiti on the Train is a significant improvement, it's still something of a patchwork affair.

Deadbeat starts intimate and confessional, with what might be the best opening track of the year. .... From there, the tracks flow and blend hypnotically, tied together by the piano. Sometimes a song’s coherence is sacrificed to tranceyness, but hooks keep bobbing to the surface like lava lamp bubbles.

Things go slightly awry with the stodgy prog-rock textures of “Clockwatching” and “The 6th Wave”, but it's the work of a band obsessed with a multitude of musical directions, which has to be A Good Thing.

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.

Dictator is everything fans might expect from Malakian and more; a complex, thoughtful and invigorating album that nods to his own personal history and simultaneously links to the wider, tumultuous landscape of America.

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.

Virtually every piece is too leisurely extended beyond its natural span.

Recorded with friends in Conor Oberst’s house, it has a nice, homely ambience which allows the imaginative arrangements to work their understated charm.

"Cockiness" is barmy enough to stand out from the routine dubstep/electro beats cooked up by such as Stargate, Calvin Harris and Dr Luke.

An enjoyable diversion.

The result is a sort of mannered, formalist rusticity that only occasionally develops a convincing momentum.

Lyrically, Horan pushes no envelopes, sticking to earnest love plaints and poignant reminiscences for the most part, and even offering to listen to his girl’s problems in “Fire Away”.

Simulation Theory seems to fall into two territories--songs are either half-hearted nods to the best of their heavier rock-opera back catalogue, or futuristic, electronic pop-heavy tracks that borrow from bands more adept at that particular sound, and the vast majority of which are burdened with Bellamy’s political paranoia. For a new listener, it’s baffling. For a former, diehard fan, it’s disappointing.

Routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.

Though the Nashville experiment is finally too half-hearted for the desired transformation, “Shelby ’68” mines Melbourne memories for a more personalised rural makeover.

Too much of the album is drably formulaic, a series of gambits shuffled into passable shapes rather than memorable songs.

Admittedly, with 15 full-length tracks, the record does run a little long. That said, there’s something alluring about such an unapologetic and candid album.