That this is Manson’s most accessible and focused album in years counts for very little; there is simply no shock value when all you have to offer are cheap shocks.

Atlanta-based producer Ben H Allen (who has worked with Animal Collective and CeeLo Green) has beefed up their sound, although a taste for clean sonic lines and cheesy keyboards retains a power to grate.

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.

Uptown Special veers wildly from high to low brow, stupid to sophisticated. Occasionally the mix jars but mostly it’s a compelling collision, falling somewhere between a chin-stroking jazz poetry recital and a riotous teenage disco.

The result for Take That is what you would expect: slick production-line pop that puts all the verses, choruses, hooks and beats in the right place, or at least the places we usually find them.

Its dark, off-kilter twists and trapdoors become moreish as liquorice.

If the production is too clean, it does at least reveal Johnson in glorious high definition with his Telecaster, simultaneously stabbing the chords while letting the licks bleed out with liquid heat.

Although what follows isn’t all as good as the opener, it’s solid, vertebrae-jolting stuff, often recycling old themes and melodies.

Her smarter, odder lines (“Put your hand on my piano”) stand out amid the clubbing clichés, though her high, slightly strangled, often shouted vocals don’t.

The album is full of strong characters and quirky observations.

This set is a fine reminder of his magnificent legacy of film work.

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.

This is some kind of triumph for Blige and for Britain.

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

It's a fine album--and well done the conciliatory middle son for bringing the family together. Well, musically, at least.

The predictable result is an album that sounds far too reverent to the originals.

Avonmore is classic, if not quite vintage, Ferry, lacking the distinctive songcraft of his finest work.

Four is hard to dislike: it's cheery, uplifting, high spirited and good fun.

High point Honest Town, gives a slick, new-Millennial pulse to all the retro heartache. But title track Big Music is a wince-inducing reminder of naff, leather-trousered bombast.

The blatant, stocking-filler money-grab of tagging these songs on to a quirky hits compilation (minus Bohemian Rhapsody) isn’t in the Christmas spirit.

The lyrics cleverly incorporate words and ideas from each programme. But a soundtrack featuring all the oddball artists from the series would have been more interesting.

Although the 18 tracks (12 of which are co-credited to Wright) are short on catchy tunes, it’s still an effective 53-minute trip.

It’s a long way from the rocker's angry persona, but he’s always had a soppy side. Sometimes the lyrics are also sloppy.

This is a warm, bluesy album of country-fuelled rock ’n’ roll that oozes old-timer class.

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

Sharp observation and emotional engagement raise her material above the level of celebrity Twitter spat.

She oversings to compensate, as if by keeping notes moving we won’t notice weaknesses, and there are moments of synthetic fluctuation that suggest recourse to autotune techniques routinely used to polish performances of lesser contemporary pop singers. The material does her no favours.