It is music of emotion and imagination, shifting perspectives in ways that are deliciously intangible, intent on moving the heart rather than the feet.

While they make no claims to be a wildly original band--they listen to Black Sabbath and they have been described as the all-female Joy Division--what makes them so compelling is their fierce focus.

Although something of a melting pot, this is an original and accessible album, blending world influences with old time American music.

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.

Hegarty has mastered the art of turning performance into a kind of ritual ceremony and the magic of these symphonic concert recordings blows their previously released versions out of the water.

This is a laidback album, drawing on the dreamy Seventies milieu of Laurel Canyon with a touch of the easy listening sumptuousness of Burt Bacharach. It is about the ways lovers drift apart, evoking the fall of Autumnal leaves rather than blood on the tracks.

Del Amitri’s bracing feel-bad pop-rock won’t be for everyone, but for those of us who appreciate sweet melodies set off with sour sentiments, it is perversely good to have the old curmudgeons back.

An English one-off, in fine voice.

It’s a rarity to have an album in which every song could genuinely be a single, but they’ve managed it here.

Lambrini Girls’ music is not for everyone, but nor is it meant to be, and, taken as a statement of intent from one of Britain’s most hyped new bands, it’s a pretty ballsy one. Big d--k energy, indeed.

Death Cab are back with a bang and a new-found self-assurance.

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

While Touré acquits himself imaginatively in a variety of settings, the whirring, jangling opener Sokosondou, with just his own musicians, feels the most compelling track.

This record is rammed full of fantastically fresh and challenging beats and bears the hallmarks of Cherry's streetwise style.

While the Stones may not have struck oil with these songs, their energy remains undimmed, their back catalogue endlessly renewable.

It more than stands on its own merits.

Fifth time around, The 1975 get the equation right: pop first, art later.

Though certain tracks like In My Head leave you wishing she’d cut through the glistening sounds and breathy choruses with some power vocals, Mahalia’s pen is sharp, and her raw take on relationships and self-development is delivered with the diva attitude of Mariah Carey and the raspy cool of Erykah Badu.

Arrangements are simple and sparse, everything lightly touched, with only swells of strings and brushes of horn, harmonium and other instrumental colours buoying up her guitar and clear voice.

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).

It is an enormous pleasure to report that the new David Bowie album is an absolute wonder: urgent, sharp-edged, bold, beautiful and baffling, an intellectually stimulating, emotionally charged, musically jagged, electric bolt through his own mythos and the mixed-up, celebrity-obsessed, war-torn world of the 21st century.

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.

Amid all the delightful nostalgia comes one glaring disappointment. When Swift committed to the re-recordings, she promised they wouldn’t lose the heart of the original – and the lyrics would stay the same. But on Better Than Revenge, a bitter rebuke to a love rival, she’s done just that.

Despite the subject matter, this is an invigorating celebration of the joys of great songwriting and proof of the power of one man and his piano.

This is a classy debut, from a sophisticated talent who takes things at her own sweet pace. She may not turn out to be the next big thing, but Celeste sounds like she is in it for the long haul.

The toughness of Weller's art remains fully present here. An album of beauty and depth, True Meanings is further affirmation of a particularly sincere and probing talent, for whom music is a vocation rather than a career.

It's a gloriously mellow record, the sound of an artist remembering there’s a life beyond her touring schedule and daring to enjoy it.

He genuinely tries not to romanticise his despairing condition and is unforgiving about his own flaws, although the sheer gravity of his voice and dark appeal of his loner stance can’t help but exert their own seductive pull.