Easier to admire than to care deeply about, Youth should confirm his status as the go-to rapper for people who don’t really like rap music.

Goldfrapp hark back to the bombast of a time when electronica was all about man (or woman) versus machine. On Silver Eye, the machines are ascendant.

From DNA’s punchy electro mantra about identity to LOVE’s tender sing-song reggae pop meditation on fickle emotions, DAMN is an album of surface sheen and hidden depths, where words and music operate in beautiful synchronicity, a constantly unfolding dance that lends each new approach a sense of investigation and revelation. It is dazzling.

Occasional lines jerk out of the mix as Dylan struggles for control of his vocal chords. But his unique phrasing and delivery is usually right on the nose of the song’s meaning.

Division is by far Sheeran’s smoothest collection.

If this was a debut, we would be hailing Andrews as a precocious young genius. But perhaps, in this age of acceleration, amid a pop blizzard of viral memes and instant digital fame, the slow maturing of a truly substantial talent is something to really celebrate.

What is surprising is how seamless and integrated the sound is--a really luxurious, supple groove of sparkling electronica and sinuous, melodic vocals.

It may not be the kind of definitive album statement that will rock the music world to its foundations but it more than demonstrate that the world’s greatest and longest serving rock band have still got what it takes.

Hardwired is two CDs, 12 tracks and 80 minutes of in-your-face, punch-to-the-guts, dense, harsh, shouty rage with absolutely no let-up. Frankly, if it was half as long it would be twice as effective.

Long Live the Angels is something special, the sound of a gifted, grown-up singer-songwriter using all the tools at her disposal to put her own heart back together.

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

While its modernity is expressed by mixing and matching genres or adding digital zing to familiar tropes, for all its bravura exuberance and pop slickness it is old fashioned to its core.

Leonard Cohen’s 14th studio album is a bleak masterpiece for hard times from pop’s longest-serving poet.

For Kings of Leon to remain interesting and relevant, they need to stop trying to be the band the music business seems to want them to be and start following Caleb Followill’s muse wherever it leads.

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.

His voice has that ability to spring from soulful growl to angelic falsetto that always gets TV talent show chairs spinning.

This would all be simply infuriating were it not for the melodiousness that binds these strange sounds and images together, the feeling stirred up by Vernon’s voice, and his gift for chord progressions that sweep you along almost against your will.

The Gouster [is] raised from the archives as the centre piece of a handsome new 12-CD box set, Who Can I Be Now? (1974-76). ... Finally given its moment in the light, The Gouster is unlikely to become a belated part of the canon, but it is nevertheless a welcome testament to the real heart beating at the centre of Bowie’s pop genius.

The album is a melancholic masterpiece not for the fainthearted.

It may be nothing more than an exercise in maintaining the brand of the 21st Century’s most vacant superstar but, in its perfectly distilled empty pleasures, Glory might just be Britney’s masterpiece.

Furnaces is an album of bold and brutal self-examination of masculinity’s darkest aspects, in which Harcourt seductively acknowledges the appeal of giving vent to selfish impulses while implicitly acknowledging their devastating effect on others, and indeed the world.

Blonde makes for sensationally beautiful background music that can morph into a bizarre hodgepodge of disparate ideas when you concentrate on bringing it into the foreground.

Hannigan rewards close attention, though. Lyrical phrases float up that demonstrate she is a writer of great care, with an eye for an arresting image.

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

Wild Beasts have shed a lot of excess, offering a stripped-back amalgamation of analogue Eighties synths, snappy machine rhythms and industrial rock guitar buzz, coloured with great swathes of harmonic panache, that is lean and mean enough to pass for modern pop. This newfound purpose is the real revelation of Wild Beasts’ strongest album to date.

A very fine debut album from Californian singer-songwriter, who has a wonderfully rich and mournful country voice.

This is an album that sounds like a world of music in itself.

He knows how to fill a dance floor. But his music comes with the sharp awareness of how it feels to stand, alienated and feigning aloofness, on the sidelines.

This is a beautiful, beguiling, disturbing and rewarding album of love, loss, grief and recovery from one of the most intriguing singer-songwriters currently active in British music, of either gender.

Black Terry Cat makes confident use of R&B grooves as a base from which to explore more exotic sounds.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in the snap ’n’ flex with which Kiedis flips out this nonsense. He and Flea (now 53) clearly know how daft they are yet you can also hear how happy they sound to still be pogoing along.

It teases and satisfies at once, which is why, unless you’re allergic to Snarky Puppy’s special charm, you’ll want to play this album over and over.

The effect is classic Suede, with mature moments of recollection in tranquillity.

Now he inhabits classic lines by songwriters like Johnny Mercer with weathered ease.

His weary regrets are cradled in a simple, swaying hammock of piano, violin and mournful horns. ... It’s a miserabilist masterpiece.

Sturgill Simpson has recorded an interesting album about the lure of home. Musically, it's a bold step away from the excellent Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (there's more soul and brass in A Sailor's Guide to Earth) but the songwriting remains strong and beguiling.

Radiohead's most melodically accessible collection, almost meditative in its ethereal mid-tempo loveliness, yet shot through with the kind of edgy details that never quite let a listener relax. It is chill-out music to put your nerves on edge.

It may be resolutely old-fashioned and, for sure, we’ve heard it all before, but the sheer pleasure in Porter’s singing is all but impossible to resist.

Twelve top-class tracks also feature Chicago-born guitarist Dennis Cahill.

Lemonade is by far Beyoncé’s strongest album.

Views genuinely makes for mesmerising listening, even if much of the album seems to consists of lazy meanders through Drake's psyche.

[Willie Nelson] brings feeling and charm to these 11 covers.

The songs Memphis Women And Chicken, Tuscaloosa, 1962 and Foolish Heart are highly enjoyable, but the highlight is the complex and moving Errol Flynn.

This began life as an art project at Somerset House, with Harvey composing and recording in a makeshift studio before a viewing public. Such pressurised circumstances might explain the absence of any sense of real pleasure in the finished work. I don’t hesitate to hail it as impressive but it does feel more civic project than classic album.

At times, though, the bleepy, burbling “fun” gets too wacky and cheesy for even PSB’s long-standing irony to uphold.

She wields the survivor's axe of righteousness and you listen up, because she sings with the no-nonsense generosity of one who's telling you how to keep your own darkness at bay.

Distance Inbetween is by some distance the Coral's most muscular offering.

There’s not an ounce of fat on these eight, energised tracks. Everything is sharpened by the awareness of mortality and there is alchemy’s in Pop’s ability to infuse such resignation with real electricity.

Although it's a bright and buoyant effort--with recognisable touches of ska and reggae--her new album lacks the left-field flourishes that make her special.

Bright character studies of predatory women, manipulative gurus, sleazy lotharios and outdoor sex fiends are peppered with non-sequiturs that force listeners to fill in gaps.

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

The album, which was funded by producer Jeffrey Gaskill through Kickstarter, is full of treats; and Johnson deserves 21st-century acknowledgement.

Inspired playing by Sam Sweeney (fiddle), Rob Harbron (concertina), Roger Wilson (guitar, fiddle), Ben Nicholson (bass), Toby Kearney (percussion), and guests appearances from Jon Boden (guitar, fiddle) and Martin Simpson (guitar) add to a delightful album.

The album, produced by the celebrated Béla Fleck, has treats galore.

O'Donovan knows how to sing perfectly with sparse and delicate arrangements and the album, which also features Tucker Martine (the Decemberists), shows she can create some magic of her own on this her second solo album.

You and I lacks the depths and textures of Grace--the intoxicating communion with other musicians, the wild strangeness of his own nascent songwriting and the assuredness that came with locating his place in music. Yet, even without all that, Buckley’s raw talent alone remains an astonishing thing.

At 66 Raitt’s warm graze of a voice is better than ever, balancing the confidence of experienced with a more nuanced perspective. Inspirational.

The sound on this pivotal sixth album, however, is subdued, moody, even dark at times, the instrumentation stripped back to bare essentials.

A treat.

The harmonies are gorgeous and the lyrics thought-provoking. A good start to the year for folk music.

This, for better or worse, is clearly the music Rihanna likes: leftfield, stoned and strange. It is Rihanna without hits. This strange album, released without warning over the internet for free, may well be a reflection of the fact that not even her own backers really expects this to be a commercial blockbuster. It is more an exercise in rebranding, transforming the hit girl into a serious artist.

Rod Picott achieves his aim of making an authentic studio version of his live shows in his new album Fortune. The material is sometimes contemporary.

The harmonising on Call to War is excellent and I particularly like the short and sweet To the Woods. An enjoyable album.

Athough the two old giants of country music can't hit all the notes of youth their phrasing is neat and nuanced on their fourth album together.

Producer Jacquire King, who worked on Tom Waits’s Mule Variations and Norah Jones’s The Fall, allows Della's gutsy sound to soar.

At times the music feels more like a classical arrangement than a bluegrass record--but it works.

They are beautifully crafted songs, sung with feeling and subtlety and with lyrics full of honesty.

Happily, the words are wonderful and Something More Than Free is an album that grows and grows on you. Producer Dave Cobb is in fine action again and gets the best from the settings behind Isbell's effecting voice. Some of the songs are simply splendid.

On Over and Even, which was produced by Daniel Martin Moore, she also sings harmony with Will Oldham and Glen Dettinger and allied to riveting guitar work, as it is on My Only Trouble, the result is terrific.

It is the 12 songs he wrote and co-wrote that sparkle.

It feels as bold and weird as anything in Bowie’s back catalogue, sure to delight some and infuriate others.

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.

Throughout, the band’s big, bittersweet sound is, as ever, wonderfully immersive: whalesong cycles of electric guitar echoing through a buoyant soup of synths that sound both pleasant and forgettable.

The melodies are lovely, if conservative: as elegant and classically tailored as her gowns.

It’s moderately uplifting, all pretty easy going and easy listening.

Art Angels is made of the same dark candy, with even more weird and wonderful flavour combinations. I began to think of songs as three-minute gobstoppers in which layers dissolved unexpectedly.

25 is certainly the equal of its predecessor. What it sacrifices in youthful rawness it makes up in maturity and sheer class. Adele Adkins has taken her time over her third album and it shows.

The result is more urgent, less reassuringly structured than your typical Elbow record.

The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears.

Bieber’s offering is less of a mainstream crowd pleaser and all the more interesting for it, a quirky, atmospheric electro R’n’B concoction with sci-fi sounds and offbeat vocal samples that focus attention on the star’s soft, supple and seductive singing.

A slight tone of weariness may have crept into 1D’s lyrics with songs about break-ups and yearning for home but musically it remains anthemic, up-tempo, superior pop, with elegant song structure, ear worm hooks and radio busting choruses.

The contents of this 8-vinyl, 4-CD set are mighty impressive.

For the most part Divers is a magic carpet ride that finds Newsom still spinning wild (and generally impenetrable) interwoven yarns with the jaw-dropping dexterity of a modern-day Scheherazade.

You can hear his love and enthusiasm bursting out of these grooves, not just in the way he roars over the top of melody lines but in the spaces he creates for other musicians to shine.

He brings his expressive voice and interesting lyric-writing to traditional-minded Irish ballads.... Class.

Clocking in at over an hour, it’s a classy work which doesn’t try to reinvent its star, so much as give her a space in which to shimmer, simmer and occasionally simper her way through a surprisingly subtle and inventive spectrum of musical moods.... Lyrically, there’s often a lack of narrative, but Jackson succeeds in reining in the badly written sex talk which let down her last few records.

By re-recording the whole of Taylor Swift's 1989, the maverick alt country star has turned a world beating chart smash album into a tender masterpiece of bruised Americana, in the process emphasising the perfect songcraft and exposing the dark heart of emotion beating beneath Swift's gleaming surfaces.

As an art experience, Honeymoon is gorgeous, and needs to be heard in context with her atmospheric home-made videos. But as pop music, it can fall a bit flat.

Real Life builds up to a pitch of doomed drama from a corrosive slash of guitar as Tesfaye confides that even his “Mama called me destructive”. But Ed Sheeran fails to rescue him on the tedious Dark Times and Lana Del Rey--who ought to be his perfect partner in pop-noir--adds nothing but a bored spritz of vocal perfume to the lethargic Prisoner.

Foals’ fourth album is an exciting, immersive experience that picks up where 2013’s Mercury Prize-nominated Holy Fire left off, adding epic arena rock muscle and lustre to their previously rather winsome and overly-cerebral style.

This is a terrific album, full of dignity.

There's a real grace about The Longest River, the debut album from self-taught multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney.

Trio The Bad Plus are joined by saxophonist Joshua Redman, and the intricate compositions challenge and inspire the soloists.

There's plenty of variety on Watkins Family Hour, with each member of the band getting a turn as lead vocalist.

He brings real feeling to his own compositions such as Let Me Sleep (At the end of a Dream).

Dornik’s voice wafts past like a poolside waiter, in service of the scenery, not standing out from it. Ultimately, the album has the same effect: but it’s still the season’s coolest British background music.

He seems to have found a new and more sincere voice, less bullish than we have heard him before, whilst using a fantastic roster of contributors to push the mood and narrative.

At times his roar-throated tone gets repetitive, but Denver singer/songwriter Esmé Patterson adds subtle vocal contrast on the haunting Silent Key.