When she sticks to the disco-pop staples of celebrating youth and dancing and fun, in tracks like "Young", "Live It Up" and "Live Your Life", once the energy dissipates, so do the songs, evaporating as if they never existed.

The Zolas are a Canadian indie band whose outsider-pop songs evoke a keen sense of disjunction with the modern world.

There is a strangely addictive quality to hearing something quite so aggressively sui generis as this.

An extra eight-track CD of new material, which is our primary concern here. [It does not] adds much to the Minaj experience.

The results evoke the fellowship of the emotionally bruised in a variety of ways.

The folksy settings are tinted with brooding strings and tearful pedal steel, adding colour to well-turned lines.

They've certainly lost much of their vocal character to the dreaded auto-tune, without gaining much by recompense.

While Take The Crown undoubtedly contains many individual tracks sure to tickle the mainstream pop palate, that doesn't in itself make for a great album.

Example's obvious delight in sensory experience shines through in his intricate play of syllables and the warmth of his singing voice. His best yet.

There's an assured balance of passion and restraint in his takes on "I'd Rather Go Blind" and "I Only Have Eyes For You", though his "Lonely Avenue" lacks Ray Charles' relaxed slouch.

It's a surprisingly enjoyable transformation for some of the tunes.

["When It's All Over"] itself is one of the worst here, mercifully outnumbered by the merely adequate and the few standout songs.

The Staves are like a distillation of all that's best about the folk heritages of England and America.

Though less ambitious than 2009's The Liberty of Norton Folgate, Madness's Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da confirms the benefits of spreading songwriting chores among the entire band.

The poorest served is hapless Ellie Goulding, struggling against the hurtling momentum of "I Need Your Love"; more successful is Florence Welch on "Sweet Nothing".

In some cases, that sugary voice which works so well as a pop vehicle lacks the full-bodied character to carry a big ballad.

The Weeknd weasels his way queasily into unprotected affections under cover of arrangements whose dark, miasmic synth tones and itchy, sludgy rhythms blend the apparently conflicting worlds of R&B and industrial new-wave.

Whereas most 75-minute albums of short songs swiftly pall, Lux never bores because it's never making foreground demands on your attention.

Hands of Glory is a smaller, more intimate work than Andrew Bird's recent albums.

Former Lives shares similarities with Gibbard's Postal Service work; elsewhere his scattershot stylistic approach weakens songs.

The Coup [has a] breadth of musical settings, which range from indie guitar riffs to itchy techno pulses to a string quartet and French horns.

Save for the opening "The Once and Future Carpenter", about a woodworker who abandons his trade to wander, this second album is pretty dismal fare.

It's all sounding terribly tired now.

Lone soul genius Cody ChesnuTT's in dazzling form on Landing on a Hundred, which must be the most impressive crowd-funded album ever.

Actor Maxine Peake delivers the combination of historical narrative and polemic in her blackest-pudding accent, over a gamelan tinkle of synth tones and string synths that evoke the blend of grit and gentrification now surrounding these events.

It's maritime in mood.

Young's best album in some while.

It's a gently moving meditation on the effects of solitude and nature on the soul, set to Lytle's characteristic blend of chugging guitar grooves aerated by bubbling synths and soothed by high harmonies.