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.