The best of the album is so fantastic it makes me want more from the rest.... Yet there is something tepid about the overall emotional temperature.

With the hard-hitting yet loose-limbed playing of Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk, there is a real sense of top professionals at work.... Osbourne’s singing, by contrast, is strangely unexpressive, perhaps because there is no real possibility of emotional connection with lyrics that strain for grandiose effect but are flattened by clunking phrases and trite rhyming schemes.

Its dark, off-kilter twists and trapdoors become moreish as liquorice.

Something Beautiful has three decent tracks (fizzy dance song End Of the World, emotional ballad More to Lose and the elegiac Golden Burning Sun) and one absolute monster of a sad banger, Easy Lover, that stands out like a blazing beacon amidst a parade of trite ditties overstretched far beyond their natural life to encompass banal poetic codas.

Not really a blockbuster, it’s the kind of album that makes most sense in the small hours, after the party is over.

The most compelling tracks take drastic liberties with the original material, deconstructing Kinshasa sound systems into industrial-tropical hoedowns that reflect postmodern London more than Africa's teeming townships.

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

The range of the album is impressive.

Not as cohesive as their very best work, R.E.M.'s 15th album is still as smart, sonically rich and emotionally resonant as a guitar band can ever hope to be.

Every track is polished and purposeful, but the sheer busy quality of her singing and overactive variety of the production ensures that Liberation never settles into a coherent listening experience.

What gives it freshness and conviction is Liam’s performance.

The album has to be judged a late-period triumph, even if I am not entirely convinced The Voice's avuncular judge is quite as deep as the material demands.

The don’t-bore-us, get-to-the-chorus model followed by the top half of Night Call works fine when taken in pieces, or as the beat-driven soundtrack to a gym workout. But it frustrates and alienates in its album sequence. Yet, Night Call delivers in affirming Olly Alexander as an artist capable of connecting with a varied, multi-generational audience.

The songs are anthemic, surprisingly upbeat calls to arms which suggest that Templeman is one to watch.

Muse are a blockbuster band, and this is another box-office-demolishing spectacular – it would feel like self-denial not to surrender. Honestly, the end of the world has rarely sounded like so much fun.

Mascara Streakz may not reinvent the wheel, but it does stand confidently among their greatest hits while making a compelling case for having that fifth shot of tequila.

There are glimmers of his facility for earworm melodies and nimble grooves, but they tend to be overwhelmed by an air of bombastic stridency.

The fortunes of this soundtrack will ultimately rest with the success of the film but its brooding mix of old and new styles certainly wets your appetite to see it.

It’s a brave band that unleashes such an extensive body of work. It’s lucky, then, that it’s all so eminently listenable.

The sound is lean and clean, sharply separated with individual instrumentation shining through and not a lot of over-dubbing or effects.

It is only eight songs and comes in under 25 minutes long, yet it packs more hooks than a whaling armada. It is short, punchy and sweet enough to cause tooth rot, every moment crammed with crafted earworms and swaggering beats.

The Civil Wars offers up 12 perfectly elegant, subtly arranged Americana songs of bad love, misplaced emotion, cheating hearts, fighting and fleeing.

That Cabello is clearly a fine singer hasn’t stopped producers smoothing her with Auto-Tune. Romance is state-of-the-art pop yet it lacks the real romance of music made from the heart. If you feel like you’ve heard it before, it may be because you literally have.

Avonmore is classic, if not quite vintage, Ferry, lacking the distinctive songcraft of his finest work.

Their pairing might well be bananas, but it works. Buckley is certainly no luvvie on leave. This is, at times, a dazzling album.

Their tenth studio album kicks off in fine form with the first single, San Quentin. ... If only the whole album was like this, but instead listeners will get whiplash from all the genre changes, which spans American rock, country and frat-boy pop.

What feels right (or at least absolutely right now) about Metric is the perfect balance, every element in its place and in service of a set of sinuous, hook-laden, elegantly crafted pop songs.

Gaga goes over the top and keeps on going: exhilarating, exhausting blockbuster entertainment.