Guillemots have never been short on ambition, and Walk the River opens accordingly, with trepidation and expectation wrapped up together in the title-track's foreboding intro riff, as Fyfe Dangerfield sings of "backing out of the race".

The densely-textured arrangements can get a bit stodgy in places, and the last few tracks slip into dreary bubblebath-boudoir mode, but Bootsy's blithe drawl, the vocal equivalent of a bubble, is usually around to lift one's spirits.

While the arrangements, built around producer Jay Joyce's shimmering guitars and Giles Reaves' keyboards and percussion, offer atmospheric settings for Emmylou's harmonies, the glistening, featherlight textures leave the album drifting in the doldrums.

Overall, it treads an uncertain line between bombast and sensitivity.

As a songwriter, Steve Earle is blessed with two apparently contradictory gifts: the ability to animate fictional lives, and a streak of cussed, lefty sincerity that gives bite to his truth-telling.

An interesting diversion, but not much more.

Zeffira's facility with reeds, keys and strings ensures constantly interesting textural shifts, while the combination of Badwan's imperious, Scott Walker-esque baritone and Zeffira's varied vocal stylings recalls not just Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra but even the effervescent charm of The B-52s.

Her casual observations on club life and love life tumble over each other with a light, mischievous touch that's refreshingly free of grating attitude.

Musically, the 400 Unit is equally at home on Little Feat-style swamp-funk, and more countrified collations of fiddle and mandolin.

An unmitigated disaster.

While a dozen singles will probably be lifted from Doggumentary, as an album experience it's an utter dogg's breakfast – as might be expected from a project that credits no fewer than 20 different producers and 35 engineers.

It's a gentle, woozy mood-scape in which nostalgia for the candyfloss summers of childhood shades imperceptibly into the sweet melancholy of encroaching autumn.

It seems like they just ran out of interest, and gave up.

The first Union Station album since 2004 is, as usual, something to treasure.

The three-year gap between albums will ensure this tops next week's album chart, but it's a drab, unrewarding experience.

The enjoyable only just outweighs the annoying on the opener "Never Let Me Go", where the auto-tuned vocal is a let-down.

The sort-of-romantic themes and sort-of-funk grooves lend a greater unity than usual, but save for a few tracks, the general impression is of lots of bustling, itchy industry – the scratchy guitars, the scuttling beats, the dying-firework synths – to no particularly attractive end.

Apocalypse is Bill Callahan's best release in some while, sustaining a unity and intimacy of mood throughout.

The pair have weaved Anderson's songs together with various ambient elements--traffic noise, birdsong, the tinkle of teacups on saucers--to create a song-cycle that illuminates the exceptional in the everyday.

There's something about the combination of their shoegazey, distorted drones and James Allan's cracked, sulky Scots brogue that leaves these tales of emotional turmoil oddly ineffectual: even at its most fancifully Spectorian, it sounds strangely insubstantial. And as with bad acting, it's not persuasive enough to make one care.

Despite being further from their comfort zone, this second foray into theatrical composition, a ballet based around a Hans Christian Anderson parable, is vastly more adept, involving the deft interweaving of electropop and orchestral elements within a series of impressionistic tableaux sketching out the theme of conflict between creativity and destruction.

Their problem is a lack of originality: they never suggest they'll find a new angle on well-worn roots-rock modes.

This six-track soundtrack EP of songs by Alex Turner finds the Arctic Monkey in appropriately reflective, wistful mood, as befits the hero's fanciful view of himself as a bit of a thinker.

On his first album in 13 years, Robbie Robertson resumes his fascination with the great American mythos.

Here, any trace of feedback or distortion has been eradicated to leave just a Fratelli-esque singalong punk-pop sheen to songs.

Though inspired by Grace Jones's new-wave disco torch-songs, the results are markedly dissimilar.

Burke's presence remains as commanding as ever even when the material sags.

She harmonises piquantly with herself over the languid guitar groove, and B.o.B's rap is pleasingly modest enough, too. The same can't really be said of such tracks as "Casualty Of Love" and "Rainbow", however, both singularly unimpressive songs tricked out with the showy vocal bling favoured by R&B divas as a substitute for genuine soul.