As packed and punchy as Black Eyed Peas on steroids, this is the sound of the overground.

Apart from the smattering of country inflections, there are no great surprises in store.

14 songs over an hour's running time is a lot of nonsense to digest. For the Chili Peppers, songwriting is a medium without a message, unless it's just to let your inhibitions go and dance.

It's a mixed bag.

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.

Views genuinely makes for mesmerising listening, even if much of the album seems to consists of lazy meanders through Drake's psyche.

I worry about where they can go next with such a restrictive musical template, but here they have managed subtle refinement without sacrificing the essence of their primitive appeal.

The glossy results lack any particular character. Peppered with hooks and catchy melodies, everything sounds like something you might have heard somewhere before, which in the case of Ed Sheeran soundalike single No Judgement you almost certainly have.

His voice has never sounded better, but it’s the lyrics that let the album down overall.

Forever is exactly the kind of record you’d expect from Jon Bon Jovi at this stage of his career: reflective, lightweight, a bit tinnier than those glam-metal hits. It’s an album that will remind some why they can’t stand Bon Jovi, and others why they love the band.

This, for better or worse, is clearly the music Rihanna likes: leftfield, stoned and strange. It is Rihanna without hits. This strange album, released without warning over the internet for free, may well be a reflection of the fact that not even her own backers really expects this to be a commercial blockbuster. It is more an exercise in rebranding, transforming the hit girl into a serious artist.

If you're already a Biffy Clyro fan, Opposites might be your idea of a masterpiece. If you're new to Biffy, it'll just give you a headache.

The son of Richard Thompson is capable of writing his own striking lyrics but sometimes they are straining a little too hard.

At times, though, the bleepy, burbling “fun” gets too wacky and cheesy for even PSB’s long-standing irony to uphold.

While still manic in its tempo-changing lunacy, Hellfire is more approachable and organised, as the production by sometime Björk engineer Marta Salogni asserts a certain order amid the vari-speed chaos.

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.

Real Life builds up to a pitch of doomed drama from a corrosive slash of guitar as Tesfaye confides that even his “Mama called me destructive”. But Ed Sheeran fails to rescue him on the tedious Dark Times and Lana Del Rey--who ought to be his perfect partner in pop-noir--adds nothing but a bored spritz of vocal perfume to the lethargic Prisoner.

The Other Side of Make Believe scarcely risks driving away disciples. Nor does it cravenly go after fresh converts.

Despite having been layered and processed through Autotune, her voice conveys genuine intimacy. Cabello had a hand in the writing, and a few songs convey a charming honesty and vulnerability, perhaps a relic of the album’s original themes. But there remains a gulf between the craft of commercial pop and the artistry of confessional songwriting, and there is not much doubt about which has been prioritised on Camila.

Delphi Dancing has a nice meaty electronic bass line and Cocteau Twins-like vocals. Meanwhile the single At Your Feet is a lulling piano waltz. Being covered in puke at 3am would have been much more tolerable had I known about this song five years ago. Elsewhere, though, the songs feel a bit too improvised.

Alpha Games should please their established fanbase, but Bloc Party still sound strangely ambivalent, trapped between the visceral thrill of lean, modern guitar music and their doubts about its form and function.

It is bright and busy, peppered with guest appearances. But the risk is that this extremely versatile star winds up sounding like a guest at his own party.

An all-killer, no-filler approach ensures every track pulls its weight, yet the album never quite adds up to more than the sum of its pleasant parts.

All in all, another real treat from the 63-year-old queen of English folk.

An enjoyable and soulful album, the highlight of which is the title track Indian Ocean.

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.

He brings real feeling to his own compositions such as Let Me Sleep (At the end of a Dream).

There's plenty of variety on Watkins Family Hour, with each member of the band getting a turn as lead vocalist.