All 4 Nothing ultimately fails to expand his sound.

While its modernity is expressed by mixing and matching genres or adding digital zing to familiar tropes, for all its bravura exuberance and pop slickness it is old fashioned to its core.

British rock desperately needs a big new act to capture the popular imagination. Though hyped in the music press and rising extra-fast, this London-based quartet lack the vision to fit that particular bill.

Rizzle Kicks are evidently clever, well-mannered fellows. Refreshingly, they don’t pretend to be anything else.

His sound has matured considerably: he's less intent on blowing your ears off with dancehall's battery, than offering his own, still highly piquant take on slow-grind R&B.

This third comeback album unearths some of the band's less visible roots, in Broadway musicals, soul balladry, Stones-y orchestral pop and Fifties R&B.

Heartfelt, spirited, lyrical, moody and mostly magnificent pop rock.

Despite her weak voice and empty lyrics, the troubled Disney graduate has placed herself at the avant-garde of pop with this masterful mixture of über-cool dubstep and sugary pop.

Sing In My Meadow is unsettling, interesting and, when it works, very affecting.

There’s a lot of great stuff on here, but it doesn’t hold together and doesn’t come close to being one of Springsteen’s great albums.

It's not an album that takes itself too seriously (one song is called I'm No Elvis Presley) but it's an upbeat romp of a CD with some fine song songs such as Black Fly.

Delightfully daft.

While Petrichor is a solid album that will surely cement 070 Shake’s visibility, it would be good if she embraced more of the poppier moments instead of obscuring them under foggy soundscapes.

Less the return of a pop titan, Swag feels like a cry to be heard. At times it’s uncomfortable, messy and a little confused – but perhaps after all this time, music is the only thing Justin Bieber knows will make people listen. Whether he has anything worth saying is another matter though.

They’ve always been more about energy than songs and old fans will certainly pick up on a few recycled ideas. But they’ll still find this the band’s most spirited release since 1997’s The Fat of the Land.

The 12 track Volume 1 of Scorpion is a sharply focused hip-hop album, with Drake delivering eloquent zingers over stripped back beats and spine-tinglingly atmospheric hooks. ... Meanwhile, the 13 track Volume 2 showcases Drake’s flip side, sensitive R'n'B loverman whose simple two-note melodies offer nights of pleasure on dance floors and in bedrooms yet somehow always end with broken hearts (usually his).

There are inevitable misses as well as hits (House of the Rising Sun is a bit flat) but there is enough variety from musicians such as The Secret Sisters, The Milk Carton Kids, the Punch Brothers and Marcus Mumford (also the associate producer) to keep things rolling along.

Sparks, Fun., Norah Jones and Jarvis Cocker imbue pithy vignettes with their own personalities, Jack White and Jack Black play with chirpy nonsense songs and Swamp Dogg’s soulful take on America, Here’s My Boy is heartbreaking. This is certainly more than an academic exercise.

Their second album combines ballistic rave pop with tougher bass-laden sounds and is an effectively youthful update on the Prodigy's formula.

Recommended for the drive home from festivals.

She infuses this crepuscular collection of songs by the likes of the Rolling Stones, The Band, Neil Young and Gnarls Barkley with a compelling voodoo.

The album that emerges from all this is both busy to the point of overload and proof of a complex, inspirational figure in full command of his many gifts.

Full of sparkling hooks, the results do a good job of melding Minogue’s effervescent pop grooves with the dense, heavily treated vocals and deep sub bass of modern electro dance trends.... Subject matter and delivery are strained by coquettish pandering.

Although rejected by the singer in his lifetime, this is pop, not high art, and it has been handled with considerable care, giving us a glimpse, however illusory, of what this extraordinary talent might actually sound like had he lived.

Only a couple of cumbersome yet oddly elegiac acoustic ballads push the Stooges outside of their comfort zone.

Weird! is his most crunchy and sonically streamlined work to date, replete with catchy earworm hooks and meaty singalong choruses.

Creative but by no means cohesive, Crossan has clearly enjoyed himself with this album.

Those who loved The King Is Dead should certainly enjoy the EP--a sort of CD extras from a fine main production.