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.

She just needs to read more self-help than she spouts, and show us that she has more depth than bass.

Sutherland has absolutely earned the right to celebrate his success. It’s just a shame that, with 17 tracks to play with, Great is He doesn’t go a little deeper.

Her overemphasised enunciation puts Boyle firmly in the Julie Andrews stage show tradition but, at her best, she rises above inoffensive background music to gently brush the emotions.

Each track has the invention to be a smash hit but the cumulative effect is rather wearing, an album of no emotional depth, in which everyone is going all out to deliver the big single.

When they're playing to their strengths, the 1975 provide a robust platform for Healey’s witty, romantic, confused yet always committed interrogation of the essential artifice of his role as reluctant rock star with a conscience, shouting into a void already filled with the echoes of other voices. Like many double albums, there is a fine single album here fighting to get out. If only.

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

None of it will set the Saturday dancefloors on fire with pouting thrills, though it may sound cool enough over coffee in the cafes of Sunday morning.

Wilson’s vocals are endearingly shaky, as if he is too proud to submit to the autotune and chorus effects that make every modern pop star sound the same. But if, at times, it sounds like a band trying too hard, it is surely better than not trying at all.

Simultaneously beautiful and befuddling, dazzling and irritating, Utopia has something of Stravinsky or Stockhausen about it. On some level, it may be a work of brilliance, but I suspect it is too far adrift from the rest of pop culture to appeal to anyone but a Björk devotee.

Fans will miss the mordant voice and songwriting of Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin (whose 2014 solo debut Odulek found him pondering how to recover your youth and giving up the booze: “What have I got to lose?”) But the brothers acquit themselves well here.

The results sound as if Lynch's old protégé Chris Isaak had taken a left turn into lyrical eccentricity, pulsing synths and sinister atmospherics.

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.

Defiantly puerile, LMFAO stake out their world of champagne and "hotties" with shout-along slogans. Harmless hedonism.

One Breath may not be a masterpiece but it does enough to suggest she has a chance of making one someday.

There is much to be admired here, rather less to be enjoyed.

Garratt still has a tendency to overelaboration, compressing armchair techno, James Blake-like digital manipulations and McCartney-esque flair into lush, shapeshifting tracks replete with pushy synths and layers of harmonies, where every sonic space is stuffed with activity. The effect is quite prog rock, reminiscent of such busy 1980’s synth songwriters as Nick Kershaw and Thomas Dolby.

Nothing on this, her fourth album, rivals that hit [1234] for toe-tapping immediacy, but it is rich in atmospheric beauty.

N.K-Pop will be a treat for Heaton’s fans. But it could probably use a little K-Pop power if he harbours any desire to reach and preach to the unconverted.

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

An atmospheric ode to the anxieties and rewards of new fatherhood on his debut solo album.

Mercy is not an easy listen, but it is nevertheless inspiring to hear an octogenarian artist declining the comforts of nostalgia, still forging his own wayward path, opening byways for others to explore at their leisure.

A brew of sinister synth waves nearly stagnates where we want it to cascade, and harmonies twine around one another where we want them to soar into anthems. In short, a potential blaze delivers a fizzle.

There is plenty of passion in songs about Tennessee striking miners in the Thirties, or about the English Civil War.

Hucknall appears to have got some of his mojo back, with added sincerity.

Whilst it is purposefully lacking in intention, the experimental album has its moments of whimsy but feels noticeably devoid of humour, surprising for a musician known for his zaniness. Still a cohesive affair, it’s an apt depiction of transience and Mac DeMarco is taking us all along for the ride.

It's a pleasure to hear her scatting her way through moods and melodies, sketching vocals out, even when they don't work.

Kiss Each Other Clean recalls Scritti Politti, or Sufjan Stevens--perhaps not what his folky fans were hoping for, but it's an impressive makeover.