This highly enjoyable celebration of the Lord is co-produced by country star Jamey Johnson.

It’s emblematic of the album itself, which sees Burna Boy unsure whether he wants to be a gangster or a lothario. Fortunately, there’s just enough highs here to justify the listen.

Given that it's for dancing, Butler's production tends toward the cool--even plodding--but his polishing up of 20-year-old stylistic tics still entertains.

Although some of his anecdotes could drag on repeated listening, he is an engaging raconteur.

This is a brave album both sonically and strategically. Mendes’ previous four albums topped the US album chart so changing lanes is admirably risky. But I’m unconvinced this represents a great leap forward.

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.

Sting sounds earnest and isolated: like a man singing bleakly out to sea. But he veers towards hammy at times, laying his Geordie accent on a little too thickly.

On the whole, My Soft Machine lacks the clarity of Parks’s exceptional debut, and can veer too often into repetition; there’s a lack of journey in the individual songs, meaning you end in much the same place as you started. Her lyrics are, as ever, expertly crafted, but they deserve much more musical supporting oomph.

FLO’s debut has one glaring problem: it fails to make these girls seem real. They’re excellent singers, yes, but there’s no introspection, no personality, that shines through Access All Areas.

An uneven yet entertaining album.

Lopez’s voice is technically fine but has a thinness that doesn’t really suit the exposure of digitally clinical modern production settings. She jettisons all Latin flavouring, which might have been her superpower.

Hardwired is two CDs, 12 tracks and 80 minutes of in-your-face, punch-to-the-guts, dense, harsh, shouty rage with absolutely no let-up. Frankly, if it was half as long it would be twice as effective.

Everything on this flashy, melodramatic album punches its weight. If it had come out in 1985, it would have ruled the world.

Mostly this is a gimmicky album with ill-fitting techno and electro influences on plastic, poppy songs.

Archive seem strangely restricted, dulling their more inventive edges with a black-and-white quality of mood, texture, rhythm and melody, that leaves you craving emotional colour.

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

Pitched somewhere between his two most famous albums, Play and 18, it's hardly groundbreaking but is enjoyable none the less.

The opening four tunes are extraordinarily catchy, yet each is marred by queasy allusions to sex (Zombie Love) and drugs (Dirty Luck), which’ll be a turn-off to many listeners.

Rod Picott achieves his aim of making an authentic studio version of his live shows in his new album Fortune. The material is sometimes contemporary.

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.

Her soprano singing is a little derivative of Krauss's but is still sweet and clear and is surely a work in progress given her youthfulness.

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

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.

It's a fully-acoustic affair (guitar, piano, upright bass, drums, etc), with a luxurious, live-combo presence and some gruff musings on time, humanity and music.

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

It can be a little underwhelming but it is music with its heart in the right place.

The affection is winning, as is Metheny's mastery of the guitar and harmonic subtlety, but the tone of ruminative gentleness does start to seem unvaried.

Without the hip-hop beats that peppered her first album, the songs here lack a sprinkling of brashness--a little of the Kim and Kanye touch would have helped.