Underneath the almost soporifically smooth old-soul and country polish, Adams's ear for a delicate melody and feel for the shadowy nuances of emotion give this latest chapter beautiful depth.

The album has a bruised but tough essence, which comes across in 10 elegantly tailored songs detailing a disintegrating relationship.

An album of real class.

Vega’s enduringly classy knack for quirky rhythm, sleek ideas and direct-but-detached delivery shines through much of this album, though it does suffer at times from the leaden, ye olde phrasing hinted at in the title.

Alison Krauss and Union Station have a marvellous chemistry as a band - and it's as impressive as ever on Paper Airplane, their first album together since 2004.

Together they make efficient, likeable, club-friendly pop, with the house numbers less memorable than her drum and bass leanings.

The personality that emerges here is surprisingly gentle, with lots of slow jams about self-awareness, positive personal philosophies and respect for others. Musically, it would seem that Alicia Keys is a stronger personal role model than Rihanna. For all the swagger, then, Kehlani proves rather more sweet than savage.

There is a flowing sense of melody and dreamy atmosphere to mid-tempo songs (Actual Daydream, Nowhere to Run, Don’t Stop the Bleeding, Ease Me On) and a fistful of thrillingly raucous rockers (Nothing to Do, Hesitation Generation).

This is a record Guy Clark can surely be proud to have as a tribute.

It may be interesting to hear what Flowers would do if he could resist the urge to turn the dial up to 11 every time, but you really can’t fault his ambition when he delivers another album that is all killer, no filler.

It's surprisingly exhilarating stuff.

A lovely, and rewarding record.

Following 2009's hookup with Drive-By Truckers, Potato Hole, his latest record finds him backed by hip hop combo The Roots, who nudge the 66-year-old organist towards his funkiest excursion in years.

It’s fervid, feverish and never less than ferociously funky. And far from unnerving the listener with a haunting voice from beyond the grave, Welcome 2 America serves as a call to arms for Prince fans. For all its lyrical and sonic contortions, the ultimate message is simple: even as twilight descended, his genius endured.

These exquisitely voiced musings on love, healing and mortality really hit the spot.

There is a lot to take in on this big, bold, madly ambitious album, but Rocky has made a frequently dazzling spectacle, another reminder that hip hop is currently setting the bar very high indeed.

The covers of their favourite maverick songwriters more than matches for the originals.

A gorgeous noirish set of cinematic songs with a bittersweet emotional core.

A nice comeback album.

For although the album’s called Into Colour, its spectrum is mostly warm vintage tints: a cosy blend of sentimentality and sophistication.

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.

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.

The whole album is a lot of fun. .... Britpop may ultimately be too old-fashioned to put the 51-year-old Williams back on the pop throne, but if it had come out in 1995, it might be counted as a vintage Britpop classic by now.

Still Woman Enough makes it clear that she is still up for a lively session.

[Even] if Alabama Shakes do nothing original, they strike classic poses with real guts.

Atlanta-based producer Ben H Allen (who has worked with Animal Collective and CeeLo Green) has beefed up their sound, although a taste for clean sonic lines and cheesy keyboards retains a power to grate.

Overall the compilation makes its way towards a bigger story of many ideas, emotions and textures.

In terms of emotional insight and sheer singer-songwriter genius, it is not in the league of such heartbreak classics as Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell's Blue, but at least it reaches for such heights.

Eyeye may be more of the same from Li, but as a distillation of her music to date, and a final confrontation with heartbreak, it’s flawless.

If (oh dear) you haven't got a Richard Thompson album in your collection, then this is a great way to get to know a truly inspired songwriter. But even if you know his work inside out, then you will still find much to enjoy listening to a master re-touch some of his best works.

Tape Deck Heart unfolds as an album of emotional revelation, full of elegantly melodic, perfectly formed, lyrically astute songs that always find that little bit extra.

She's continued to move away from electronica, but these rich, emotionally sophisticated songs (which will appeal to Cat Power fans) still have a strong rhythmic core.

A clever range of textures (from raw cello through stuttering piano to popcorn-light synths) keep things interesting and there’s a bravery in the way she spins inspirational lyrics from her long battles with addiction and bipolar disorder.

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.

Coming Home is a hugely impressive reminder of Usher's pop skills, and another testament to the enduring appeal of high class RnB.

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

Hardcore fans should be satisfied, but Road recycles outdated myths of rock machismo from a pantomime villain determined to go out in a blaze of clichés.

Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of this funny, hard-hitting, thrilling album is that it actually sounds like a coherent and purposeful piece of work, a statement of what hip hop can mean, and where it can go.

Sharp observation and emotional engagement raise her material above the level of celebrity Twitter spat.

Nick Lowe is pop's master of pastiche, and this delightful collection of country bar-room and lounge ballads sounds like a game of spot the musical references.

The 'Revue Boys'--Jonny Bridgwood (double bass & rhythm guitar), Robin Gillan (harmonica), Jason Steel (guitar), Dave Morgan (percussion), and the two Paleys --swing nicely across a range of styles and songs.

Hozier sounds like what you might get if the late, lamented Jeff Buckley had thrown his lot in with Radiohead to conjure up folk music from the dark side of the moon.

Four albums in, the band are still no closer to honing in on a sound that’s recognizably theirs. There’s no denying the band’s impressive ear for melody, but on Smitten, they’re no closer to answering the question they posed three years ago: who am I?

The music is stark and edgy, with inflections from doo-wop and heavy rock. Songs are ephemeral, and not easy to decipher without listening to them repeatedly.

His songs are charming but inconsequential, resolutely old-fashioned, drawing influences from offbeat singer-songwriters of a certain vintage.

A sparse, mid-tempo acoustic account of lost love, almost the definition of a sensitive singer-songwriter album. Yet it is so focused in intent and precise in performance, it seems to mark an advance rather than a retreat, the mature arrival at the realisation that sometimes less really is more.

Atkins makes the material sound genuine, largely because it is perfect for her. Where previously her slight, observational songs seemed barely able to carry her powerful voice, the emotional and musical heft of these styles enables her to really spread her vocal wings.

If you like Knopfler’s flavour, One Deep River will be a treat. Indeed, if you walked into a bar and caught this outfit in action, you’d surely stop and pay attention, nodding along in gentle pleasure at the veteran musicianship and easy-on-the ear ambience. Yet in the context of his own discography, it lacks the imagination, ambition and stratospheric guitar playing that made Dire Straits one of the most popular bands of all time.

With Home, Before and After, Spektor surely proves she is a songwriter for the ages.

Recorded in just three days, it suffers many of the problems familiar from blues or jazz jam sessions, a sense of introversion as musicians focus their attention on each other rather than the listener, producing overlong grooves full of technically audacious moments and no overall purpose.

ht Sun is a bold album, and much of it seems to be about casting off the comfortable. But when it works, it works very well.

The album is full of strong characters and quirky observations.

In a mood of nostalgia, Albarn is looking back at his life as it unspools over some of his most subtle, beautiful and melancholy melodies, rendered in a slightly hung-over, low-fi tone, occasionally pepped up by samples from producer Richard Russell.

She really does sweep the listener away, spinning wild webs of sound and carrying us off to her own aural dreamland.

Across a baggy 18 tracks, Egoli maintains a sense of purpose, but only comes into sharp focus when a particular artist grabs the reins.

The great joy of this late period album is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lifetime Achievement is not so much a last will and testament as a bravura insistence on Wainwright’s intention to carry on living and loving for as long as he can.

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

It's a fine album--and well done the conciliatory middle son for bringing the family together. Well, musically, at least.

This whole album sounds like an attempt to seize and memorialise the giddy freedoms of youth. Like the best indie bands, the Big Moon sound like a gang you would want to belong to--whatever your gender.

Food for Worms is all the more exciting for its contrasts in brutality and beauty. It’s challenging, consummately constructed, and thrilling throughout.

Every track offers up a smart blend of snappy lyrics and catchy hooks, and at least half are absolutely glorious.

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.

If the production is too clean, it does at least reveal Johnson in glorious high definition with his Telecaster, simultaneously stabbing the chords while letting the licks bleed out with liquid heat.

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.

A defiantly bravura set of melodic metal on which the 73-year-old genuinely sounds as though he’s having the time of his life.

These are songs rich in detail, soul deep, often burdened with worry and a lifetime’s baggage, yet it’s the hazy sense of a drifter’s freedom in New Magic II which wins through, lifting your spirits time and again.

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

His fifth album, however, finds him still in peak form, voicing socially aware hip hop and outré electro-disco, all with an eloquence which often eludes the newer generation.

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

Recorded partly in Senegal with contributions from Youssou N'Dour and Orchestra Baobab, the good hearted energy of this second album announces him as a potentially major figure to watch.

As protest music goes, it is not particularly uplifting. Yet despair is kept at bay by the sheer majesty of the lush, dense, beautifully sculpted, wonderfully alien sound.

She hits the mark with stripped-back Room Service, but the more mainstream, hook-laden numbers Antichrist and Into Your Room don’t measure up to her earlier anthems Scarlett and The Wall is Way Too Thin.

This latest effort is more muted, but no less complete, with fabulous images of rustic solitude and existential dread married to smouldering country-rock.

Welch's singing throughout is extraordinary, shifting gears effortlessly from melancholic softness to high-powered exultation, even ululation. Every gasp, growl and fluttery trill seems perfectly placed.

Even where the musical ideas are strong, they're sapped by the determinedly relaxed ambiance.

From the clarion call of The Hosting Of The Shee to the haunting The Faery's Last Song, the result is a fabulous feast of words and music.

Ten years ago, Icona Pop were electropop trailblazers: for the most part, this second album is a promising next step in their recording career.

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.

These are powerful nuggets. Whether he’s addressing God directly or meditating on the nature of religion in more abstract terms (you never quite know), Cave’s words are potent and evocative.

The rapping hasn't been completely abandoned, but the emphasis here is on his sweet soul voice and a thumping Motown groove, an intriguing change of direction that's both passionate and populist.

Sonically adventurous and genre hopping.

Individual songs don’t matter quite so much as the overriding mood. Compared with the brash appeal of Uptown Funk, I’m not sure you could really describe these as bangers. They are more like Catherine wheels spitting flames into the night before burning out. And all the lovelier for it.

It sounds gimmicky, but far from it: Raw Data Feel is a thought-provoking experiment that aims to reshape the dissociation and damage caused by endless scrolling into fodder for the dance floor.

This is not an album that will make The Strokes new friends, but it might satisfy the faithful. Sometimes it is enough just to sound great.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is certainly a bold way to drop the curtain on a phenomenal career, a luscious pop epic about how awful modern fame really is.

It is lovely stuff, replete with bucolic images of sheepdogs leathering around autumnal hillsides. As Pet Shop Boys enter their heritage years, they are still taking dance music into unexpected places.

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

A great deal of care has gone into the record.

Will loyal Snarky Puppy fans be disappointed? Not likely. They’ll be delighted by the band’s continued scale and grandeur; for its music that is as unclassifiable as it is virtuosic.

The pair tracked down musicians who worked on Sixties spaghetti westerns, then added Jack White and Norah Jones as singers, resulting in a delicious album, redolent of easy listening but with all flabbiness removed and replaced by a modern warmth and elegance.

High point Honest Town, gives a slick, new-Millennial pulse to all the retro heartache. But title track Big Music is a wince-inducing reminder of naff, leather-trousered bombast.

She's made her best, most accessible record for years.

It’s only once you can give this album a little time and space that you begin to realise that the low-slung 20/20 Experience is really a rather refreshing and assured kind of a sit-down.

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.

Though her career has been occasional, momentum from a recent Spex reunion has resulted in this terrific solo record, which channels her kitschy style into a synthy pop sound.

Slipping easily between lush orchestral pop and electronic symphonics redolent of Air, she also keeps a firm hand on the lyrical tiller, occasionally even bearing comparison to the poetic pith of Leonard Cohen.

Wilson unpacks her heart with poetically intimate lyrics about relationship troubles in a blur of downtempo RnB grooves and hip-hop flow, showcasing Wilson’s sensational multi-octave soul singing and masterful instrumental playing, all filtered through atmospheric digital effects that lend her old-fashioned analogue skills a contemporary sheen.

Rather than pivoting to rockstar to play the part, Cyrus is shedding some previous layers of industry artifice to speak to a genre that has always unleashed her voice from any electropop or hip-hop audience-baiting cage. Not only that, the arena of rock enables Cyrus to indulge controversy in provocative stage performances that needn't alert the cultural appropriation police.