A slight tone of weariness may have crept into 1D’s lyrics with songs about break-ups and yearning for home but musically it remains anthemic, up-tempo, superior pop, with elegant song structure, ear worm hooks and radio busting choruses.

The contents of this 8-vinyl, 4-CD set are mighty impressive.

For the most part Divers is a magic carpet ride that finds Newsom still spinning wild (and generally impenetrable) interwoven yarns with the jaw-dropping dexterity of a modern-day Scheherazade.

You can hear his love and enthusiasm bursting out of these grooves, not just in the way he roars over the top of melody lines but in the spaces he creates for other musicians to shine.

He brings his expressive voice and interesting lyric-writing to traditional-minded Irish ballads.... Class.

Clocking in at over an hour, it’s a classy work which doesn’t try to reinvent its star, so much as give her a space in which to shimmer, simmer and occasionally simper her way through a surprisingly subtle and inventive spectrum of musical moods.... Lyrically, there’s often a lack of narrative, but Jackson succeeds in reining in the badly written sex talk which let down her last few records.

By re-recording the whole of Taylor Swift's 1989, the maverick alt country star has turned a world beating chart smash album into a tender masterpiece of bruised Americana, in the process emphasising the perfect songcraft and exposing the dark heart of emotion beating beneath Swift's gleaming surfaces.

As an art experience, Honeymoon is gorgeous, and needs to be heard in context with her atmospheric home-made videos. But as pop music, it can fall a bit flat.

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.

Foals’ fourth album is an exciting, immersive experience that picks up where 2013’s Mercury Prize-nominated Holy Fire left off, adding epic arena rock muscle and lustre to their previously rather winsome and overly-cerebral style.

This is a terrific album, full of dignity.

There's a real grace about The Longest River, the debut album from self-taught multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney.

Trio The Bad Plus are joined by saxophonist Joshua Redman, and the intricate compositions challenge and inspire the soloists.

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

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

Dornik’s voice wafts past like a poolside waiter, in service of the scenery, not standing out from it. Ultimately, the album has the same effect: but it’s still the season’s coolest British background music.

He seems to have found a new and more sincere voice, less bullish than we have heard him before, whilst using a fantastic roster of contributors to push the mood and narrative.

At times his roar-throated tone gets repetitive, but Denver singer/songwriter Esmé Patterson adds subtle vocal contrast on the haunting Silent Key.

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.

It is not very hip, and it doesn't really hop, but Sleaford Mods have arguably come closer than anyone else to creating a uniquely British form of rap: rant music.

At its best, Born in the Echoes is gloriously disorienting, restoring a woozy mania to a genre in danger of self-combusting in search of ever more euphoric pop highs. The kids will probably look on aghast. But old ravers will find themselves transported back to a time when electronica really did sound like the future.

At times she strives too hard for Tom Waitsian wonky Americana. But more often she makes the Canadian wilderness her own.

There are motivational numbers such as Get Things Done, with its great elastic-bass hook. But more often Hesketh is in the trenches.

Even if Years & Years aren’t taking any risks with the sound of the moment, they use it to good effect.

Songs maintain a facade of well-mannered, old-fashioned structures (waltz times and Fats Domino-style “swamp pop” piano bass) that gradually reveal murkier interiors restlessly inhabited by Jones’s unique, meandering ghost-child of a voice.

Accessorised with Staxy horns and handclaps, the resulting album has a genuine groove and glow.

A record with moments of pure, solar heat.

Her new album is a successful repetition of the formula: sweet, crisp country licks with witty twists of live-and-let-live philosophy.