There are 11 songs on When You See Yourself, filled with pretty words and lovely tunes, but I would struggle to tell you what any of them are about. Although blessed with a raw, raspy tone that could make a shopping list sound sexy, Followill’s vocals are buried in a bass-heavy mix.

Her smarter, odder lines (“Put your hand on my piano”) stand out amid the clubbing clichés, though her high, slightly strangled, often shouted vocals don’t.

Give Or Take presents Giveon as an undeniable talent who isn’t inclined to go deeper than his comfort zone for now; he coasts quite sweetly, between heartache and humblebrag.

Lakeman again shows off his fine multi-instrumental skills--songs such as The Wanderer buzz--and there is a delightful slow lament called Portrait of My Wife.

100 gecs can also be (perhaps willfully) irritating. ... At their strongest, though – as on punky standout Doritos And Fritos – 10,000 gecs is a wonderful exercise in letting creativity run amok with no rules at all and carefully catching the resultant gold.

Although what follows isn’t all as good as the opener, it’s solid, vertebrae-jolting stuff, often recycling old themes and melodies.

Their second album combines ballistic rave pop with tougher bass-laden sounds and is an effectively youthful update on the Prodigy's formula.

The good news is that, from its amusingly headlong title down, Different Gear, Still Speeding feels a good deal less lumpy than the last few Oasis albums.

As Watson sings about love, kindly and thoughtfully, the whimsical delivery and outdoorsy imagery recalls his fellow Oxfordians, Stornoway. At times it gets too pretty and shallow.

While Petrichor is a solid album that will surely cement 070 Shake’s visibility, it would be good if she embraced more of the poppier moments instead of obscuring them under foggy soundscapes.

The overall impression is of a super-slick exercise in generic, glossy, team-built, uber-commercial RnB-pop. Still, Anne-Marie has the kind of voice and presence that could make anybody’s day better.

Her worthier sentiments are balanced by maturing wit, self-awareness and the distinctive snap'n'slap of her funky guitar grooves.

It's wholly derivative, yet the tuneful, instantly gratifying choruses often trump one's desire to play spot the influence.

It is not unimpressive, with energy and attack and flashes of wit but there are too few of the kind of mad pop moments that make you stop in your tracks and not enough evidence that Williams is stretching and growing as a songwriting talent.

Overall, Idols fails to quell that second reservation: you’re left wondering whether Harrison has really accepted who he is as an artist.

Even if Years & Years aren’t taking any risks with the sound of the moment, they use it to good effect.

More solid, stadium stompers bulk out this second album.

Pick-n-mixing sounds and being savvy about who they work with has paid off beyond trying to maintain quality from track one to track 13. So take it for what it is: a collection of songs that happen to be next to each other, some of which are glorious (most of the singles) and some of which are a bit cringe (Gloves Up, A Mess).

The Dreamer is occasionally powerful and moving as James ranges across memorable songs including Otis Redding's Champagne & Wine.

For the Wu-Tang purists, twitchy for a return to the raw Only Built 4 Cuban Linx sonics, the music here isn’t exactly going to quench your thirst. But it’s further proof that what the RZA truly savours is stepping outside of his comfort zone, and it's a relief to once again hear a little weirdness in rap.

While You & I doesn’t break any new ground, it’s a spirited and smartly produced – if brief – album.

As always with Mehldau ambition often tips over into pretentiousness, but one forgives him because there’s a real musical sensibility at work.

Soft strings and Rapp’s silky vocals prevent it from being too jarringly TikTok-ready (though one imagines her record label will be hoping for just that). Overall, Snow Angel is a confident, accomplished debut.

There’s nothing wrong with these songs, exactly – innocuous fare that’s catchier than you want it to be – but they’re a far cry from Pink’s attitude-laden early hits: misfit anthems about depression and divorce that elbowed her a place in the mainstream.

Opener Ready to Go Home is toweringly gorgeous, the Fela Kuti-like frenzy of Circle of Life is thrilling and the one chord riffing Love Ain’t Enough is a blast. Ballads offer more of a challenge, where Gillespie’s wheezy vocals have nowhere to hide.

The production doesn't always give Nicks's gothic imagery enough waft, but fans will love puzzling over which of her paramours she's recalling on Secret Love.

Like Paramore Lite, the first half of this album bubbles and fizzes in a pleasing sugar-hit without delivering true satiety. ... If only the band had dared to follow this direction more consistently and thoroughly, it could have been stellar.

As with previous Tarantino soundtracks, this is an enjoyable, carefully constructed set, throwing up more hits than misses--and the occasional gem--but ultimately its songs will be brought to life on the big screen.

It remains a fairly relentless listen and at least a couple of tracks too long. Yet the album’s tale of survival against the odds has powerful personal relevance beyond its often clumsy social commentary.

The duo's sinister raps are as shockingly impressive as they are morally disturbing.

Wanderer is an album of peculiar little songs that you won't hear in anyone else's catalogue. It is ungainly, odd, and at times almost amateurish. For some, Cat Power will always sound slightly unfinished. For others, it is exactly that quality that makes her records ring with raw truth.

At least half of The Heavy Entertainment Show is made up of amusing dance tracks that never quite hit the spot.

It's more Glee Club than cutting edge pop queen, and, as is so often the case with big pop albums, too many production teams spoil the froth.

More of this crooned gothic gospel, like a Nick Cave/PJ Harvey murder ballad, would be welcome in an album that can dip too often into cheesy, handclapping sentimentality. First Aid Kit have the dynamic songwriting and performance mettle to deliver more nuanced, exploratory terrain than Palomino offers.

Blending hi-tech and lo-fi, modern synthesised sound and old-fashioned song writing, her work plumbs torrid emotional depths, similar to alt-rock stars such as Lou Barlow.

It’s refreshing to hear an album that so thoroughly ignores those strictures. That said, I doubt Cellophane Memories will ever be more than cult listening.

It's nice. A bit boring. The melodies are likeably predictable, warm and gentle.

The Fifth sees Dizzee dropping his aitches between generic, anthemic, autotuned American choruses.

There’s plenty to applaud on a promising debut, but, as yet, not enough to believe in.

Man of the Woods pitches unevenly between town and country, with folky campfire songs about the joys of nature arranged around electronic rhythms and electro funk. The two strains don’t really get along. When it’s bad, it’s cringe-inducing. But when it’s good, it’s world-beating.

With the hard-hitting yet loose-limbed playing of Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk, there is a real sense of top professionals at work.... Osbourne’s singing, by contrast, is strangely unexpressive, perhaps because there is no real possibility of emotional connection with lyrics that strain for grandiose effect but are flattened by clunking phrases and trite rhyming schemes.

She just needs to read more self-help than she spouts, and show us that she has more depth than bass.

Sutherland has absolutely earned the right to celebrate his success. It’s just a shame that, with 17 tracks to play with, Great is He doesn’t go a little deeper.

Her overemphasised enunciation puts Boyle firmly in the Julie Andrews stage show tradition but, at her best, she rises above inoffensive background music to gently brush the emotions.

Each track has the invention to be a smash hit but the cumulative effect is rather wearing, an album of no emotional depth, in which everyone is going all out to deliver the big single.

When they're playing to their strengths, the 1975 provide a robust platform for Healey’s witty, romantic, confused yet always committed interrogation of the essential artifice of his role as reluctant rock star with a conscience, shouting into a void already filled with the echoes of other voices. Like many double albums, there is a fine single album here fighting to get out. If only.

There are glimmers of his facility for earworm melodies and nimble grooves, but they tend to be overwhelmed by an air of bombastic stridency.

None of it will set the Saturday dancefloors on fire with pouting thrills, though it may sound cool enough over coffee in the cafes of Sunday morning.

Wilson’s vocals are endearingly shaky, as if he is too proud to submit to the autotune and chorus effects that make every modern pop star sound the same. But if, at times, it sounds like a band trying too hard, it is surely better than not trying at all.

Simultaneously beautiful and befuddling, dazzling and irritating, Utopia has something of Stravinsky or Stockhausen about it. On some level, it may be a work of brilliance, but I suspect it is too far adrift from the rest of pop culture to appeal to anyone but a Björk devotee.

Fans will miss the mordant voice and songwriting of Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin (whose 2014 solo debut Odulek found him pondering how to recover your youth and giving up the booze: “What have I got to lose?”) But the brothers acquit themselves well here.

The results sound as if Lynch's old protégé Chris Isaak had taken a left turn into lyrical eccentricity, pulsing synths and sinister atmospherics.

Although rejected by the singer in his lifetime, this is pop, not high art, and it has been handled with considerable care, giving us a glimpse, however illusory, of what this extraordinary talent might actually sound like had he lived.

Defiantly puerile, LMFAO stake out their world of champagne and "hotties" with shout-along slogans. Harmless hedonism.

One Breath may not be a masterpiece but it does enough to suggest she has a chance of making one someday.

There is much to be admired here, rather less to be enjoyed.

Garratt still has a tendency to overelaboration, compressing armchair techno, James Blake-like digital manipulations and McCartney-esque flair into lush, shapeshifting tracks replete with pushy synths and layers of harmonies, where every sonic space is stuffed with activity. The effect is quite prog rock, reminiscent of such busy 1980’s synth songwriters as Nick Kershaw and Thomas Dolby.

Nothing on this, her fourth album, rivals that hit [1234] for toe-tapping immediacy, but it is rich in atmospheric beauty.

N.K-Pop will be a treat for Heaton’s fans. But it could probably use a little K-Pop power if he harbours any desire to reach and preach to the unconverted.

Sing In My Meadow is unsettling, interesting and, when it works, very affecting.

An atmospheric ode to the anxieties and rewards of new fatherhood on his debut solo album.

Mercy is not an easy listen, but it is nevertheless inspiring to hear an octogenarian artist declining the comforts of nostalgia, still forging his own wayward path, opening byways for others to explore at their leisure.

A brew of sinister synth waves nearly stagnates where we want it to cascade, and harmonies twine around one another where we want them to soar into anthems. In short, a potential blaze delivers a fizzle.

There is plenty of passion in songs about Tennessee striking miners in the Thirties, or about the English Civil War.

Hucknall appears to have got some of his mojo back, with added sincerity.

Whilst it is purposefully lacking in intention, the experimental album has its moments of whimsy but feels noticeably devoid of humour, surprising for a musician known for his zaniness. Still a cohesive affair, it’s an apt depiction of transience and Mac DeMarco is taking us all along for the ride.

It's a pleasure to hear her scatting her way through moods and melodies, sketching vocals out, even when they don't work.

Kiss Each Other Clean recalls Scritti Politti, or Sufjan Stevens--perhaps not what his folky fans were hoping for, but it's an impressive makeover.

Full of safe risks, Gigi’s Recovery is very much a transitional album as The Murder Capital look to evolve without alienating their fanbase. Doors are left wide open for subsequent reinventions but for now, the five-piece are comfortable sticking close-by what they know.

The Now Now ultimately sounds exactly what it is: music made on the road as an escape from homesickness.

There have been many great sci-fi concept albums before, but Coldplay’s offering is not so much about exploring the outer limits as continued world domination. It's Zippy Starburst and the Earworms from Marketing.

This album continues the striptease of Britney’s career. But behind each discarded veil there is just another veil, an insubstantial gauze masking teams of (presumably unphotogenic) producers, writers, stylists and sloganeers.

Raul Malo, the Cuban-American singer, has a wonderful voice but it's unlikely that his new album Sinners & Saints will bring him a host of new converts.

It is a testament to just how utterly robust these songs are that the results are, inescapably, joyous. The recordings have been given a bit of digital oomph, with all the sounds polished and honed, and levels kicked up a notch, so the result is dense and shiny, with a relentlessly modern attack.

To have four songs over 10 minutes on your debut is brave; when the record recalls Neil Young's sadder moments and explores the anguish of a break-up, it is foolhardy.

There are interesting multi-part song structures and deft modern production quirks, with touches of autotune and sampling that don’t overwhelm the more classic guitar and keyboard arrangements. Melodies are big and bright and everything is encased in walls of harmonies.

An English one-off, in fine voice.

When the harmonies blend and Andersson’s piano rings out, it sounds enough like Abba to have hardcore fans tossing their feather boas in the air. But the dancing queens have lost the spring in their step, and the result is out-of-time rather than timeless.

Inevitably, the singer’s less appealing views do invade the material.

For every perfectly observed vignette of English life (Sunny Afternoon, Autumn Almanac) and pithily satirical narrative (Village Green Preservation Society, Dead End Kids) there's a clunking, unwieldy, elaborate novelty song (Supersonic Rocket Ship, Skin & Bone).

Unfortunately, most of Guts sounds like a simple continuation of Sour – there is little musical growth or thematic change, with Making the Bed and Pretty Isn’t Pretty seeming like mere overhangs from her debut

On Out of Heart, Flohio deserves credit for bridging the worlds of rap and electronica, but you’re still left wondering: who is the human being behind this aesthetic? If she’s to truly level up artistically, Flohio needs to give us a clearer idea of what the reflection in the mirror looks like.

The best of the album is so fantastic it makes me want more from the rest.... Yet there is something tepid about the overall emotional temperature.

This is smart, relatable break-up music for Gen Z listeners. But a more moot question, and one to which this reviewer suspects he knows the answer, is whether we need our own Taylor Swift when the real one seems to be doing a pretty good job as things are.

Failing to commandeer some stormy rockers, Faithfull proves most evocative on a couple of tender, stripped back ballads, Love More Or Less (written with Tom McRae) and Nick Cave collaboration Deep Water.

The atmosphere is ultimately so paranoid and competitive, he makes being a rap star sound exhausting. Ignorance Is Bliss is at its most interesting when Skepta's volatile emotional state pushes to the surface of his combative persona.

Holy Fvck sounds like a genuine attempt to deal with a troubled adulthood and leave the past behind.

On the pulsing, electronic slither of Vendetta X, on which Astbury speaks menacingly of “sucking on a dirty blade”, it’s closer to his work with Unkle than stadium rock. In these moments, and on the glorious, closing title-track, Under The Midnight Sun is brilliant. For much of its second half, however, its magic doesn’t catch quite so well.

It is hard to get overheated about something so determinedly tepid. And yet, dropped amid the frenzy of pop radio, Horan’s songs are immediately distinctive.

The production feels sturdy and busy. But there are no instant hits other than Manchild, and though the songs are dense with hooks and melodies, none of them are particularly memorable.

The result is both silkily seductive and moodily narcissistic.

There’s a lot of great stuff on here, but it doesn’t hold together and doesn’t come close to being one of Springsteen’s great albums.

Whilst Paramore's music tends to be all rage and release, solo Williams offers something much more quirky and cerebral, delving poetically and occasionally combatively into her insecurities. The elaborate intricacy of writing and production may be a lot to take in for all but devoted fans.

Even at its most ambitious, everything is swept up in a blizzard of overcharged guitars and stylised snarling that would have sounded old-fashioned in 1981, let alone 2024.

Her gorgeous 1960’s Dusty Springfield style version of World of a String could be a pop hit in any era.

There are songs about baseball, weather and enduring domestic love, acutely observed and delivered in tones so smooth they slip past in a soft blur.

The songs themselves may not be complex but the simple and sincere emotions expressed on anthems such as the chiming indie epic Forever, the rip-roaring AC/DC-style rocker Running Round My Brain and the Rod-Stewart-flavoured piano ballad Every Dog Has Its Day carry a potent weight of feeling and offer euphoric release.

Seven-minute mantra There Must Be More Than Blood is the standout, where Toledo’s vocals are absorbed into a motorik groove, his quest for meaning somehow dissolving into an act of musical surrender. Not all the songs reach these heights, however; too many run out of ideas very quickly. But at their very best, Car Seat Headrest are reminiscent of such fantastic bands as The The, LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads.