At its best, Born in the Echoes is gloriously disorienting, restoring a woozy mania to a genre in danger of self-combusting in search of ever more euphoric pop highs. The kids will probably look on aghast. But old ravers will find themselves transported back to a time when electronica really did sound like the future.

It’s easy to make fun of, but the melodies are uniformly gorgeous, the layered synth and string arrangements are bright and exciting, Smith’s singing is filled with pliant emotion, and it all adds up to a pop album so addictive that it feels as though it had been intravenously injected into my system.

The melodies aren't as strong as those on Backwoods Barbie but Dolly Parton's wit, sincerity and plucky pragmatism allow her to get away with simplistic advice like: "Lead the good life, just treat this planet right and try to all be friends" and icky lines about painting pretty rainbows in the sky.

For all Byrne’s other endeavours, music is the forum where his quirky, zany, challenging ideas achieve emotionally satisfying expression. American Utopia is another glittering offering from an old master.

Fairport Convention are like the Stanley Matthews of folk music--age does nothing to erode essential quality.

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

A pleasant, enjoyable album from a multi-talented man.

It's a heart-warming who's who.

Their bluesy approach doesn't draw anything truly rich and strange from their vintage Cambodian material.

The familiar is as classy as ever.

The highlight [of Mystic Pinball] is an affecting ballad called No Wicked Grin. It's Hiatt at his tender best.

Elusive and ethereal, it hints at the late night soulscapes of the Blue Nile but remains boldly, if at times frustratingly, out of focus.

The 14 songs ooze energy and style and feature long-term collaborators such as Alan Kelly, Ian Carr, Roy Dodds and John McCusker.

This is a warm, bluesy album of country-fuelled rock ’n’ roll that oozes old-timer class.

Easily the best thing she has done since her album of Muscle Shoals sessions, New Routes, which she made in the early Seventies.

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

Disco offers a set of familiar grooves. ... Her comfort zone is effervescence and escapism, in the pursuit of which Disco stays light on its feet and easy on the ear. We’ve heard it all before, but Kylie has the floor, and, honestly, she sounds like she’s having a (glitter)ball.

This appealing set of 12 short, sweet, heartfelt songs rattles along with gorgeous vocals, silvery guitar lines and perky bass and drum rhythms, stirring a jaunty singalong spirit of friends on a mission. But if the Lathums truly aspire to be the indie voice of a new generation, they are going to have to sharpen their quills or invest in a rhyming dictionary.

The tension and ambiguity implicit in downbeat songs with upbeat choruses lies at the heart of an album that may not easily yield its secrets but will keep you singing as you try to work them out.

At the heart of Ezra’s mainstream pop appeal is a sense of joy that infuses his music with radiant positivity. In such troubled times, Ezra’s escapism is pure gold.

Mabel also retains the tender, thoughtful quality that infused her debut album High Expectations (2019), and this makes for an impressively nuanced flow.

More than half a century later, those youthful ambitions are herein fulfilled, in 10 tracks of maturity and majesty.

The Endless Coloured Ways could have been just another exhibit on the exquisitely curated but ever growing pile of Drake nostalgia. Instead, it’s an essential manual on the art of songwriting.

If you simply want to revel in the elemental pleasures of sleek, clever, catchy songs played with rough vigour by a band who love to rock, then the Vaccines deliver their usual payload. .... They lack the boldness of the bands that most influenced their sound (The Ramones, Jesus and the Mary Chain) or the flair and ambition of others still flying the pop-rock flag (The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines). On this evidence, The Vaccines are approaching their expiry date.

At times you might wish for a bit more sonic edge to match some of the biting lyrics, but this is a solid debut from exciting young talent – there’s little evidence of any teething problems here.

If the song strategies seem predictable and the sentiments over familiar, the album as a whole still grips my heart and squeezes. I find myself wanting to listen to it again and again, and I can’t say that about every album I review.

This may be the most raucously uplifting divorce album ever heard.

Hynes's voice is refined into an emotive croon. Inventive pop from a bright indie talent.