How to put a full-stop on an over 50 year recording career? For multiple Music Hall of Fame-rs The O’Jays, the answer includes a party track penned by Bruno Mars, a reworked 60s single and a final chance to ruminate on the state of the world. The appropriately-named The Last Word packs a lot into a mere nine songs, and while the result is a bit of a mixed bag, it’s great to see one of the leading lights of the Philadelphia sound call time on a storied career on their own terms.

When poetic London MC Loyle Carner first appeared a couple years ago he was hailed for his fresh take on UK hip hop. Compared to the street-centric machismo of much grime music, he offered a welcome insight into a more sensitive 21^st century masculinity that was a hit with both arts media sorts and the public.

Billy Wilder’s co-writing collaboration with IAL Diamond encompassed comedy masterpieces such as Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and several others, and One, Two, Three (1961) is just as polished a quick-fire performance of story-telling and dialogue.

Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 early masterpiece Rashomon was a revelation for post-war western screen audiences, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival that year and becoming a standard-bearer for the new generation of Japanese film.

The French have developed an international reputation for a certain smooth style of electronic music. It’s the place where disco and house collide with something more urbane and far less sweaty. Daft Punk provided a defining moment with their 2013 album Random Access Memories, but the sound referred to is touched upon all the way from the louche downtempo of Air to more recent yacht rock sumptuousness from Papooz.

And then there were two... again. Following on from the Original Line-Up tour, Bananarama are back to the core duo of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward for their first album in 10 years. If it is true that co-founding member Siobhan Fahey’s 1988 departure was due, in part, to the pop chops of 1987’s Stock Aitken and Waterman-produced Wow!, it might be just as well that she didn’t stick around this time. In Stereo is VERY pop.

Fat White Family’s second album, 2016’s Songs for Our Mothers, caused something of a stir in indie circles and even generated a fair amount of radio play with its wide-eyed exuberance and chaotic motorik sounds. However, after the musical madness of three years ago, comes the sonic crash of Serfs Up! Bonkers psychedelic sounds are now firmly out of the window for Peckham’s Lias and Nathan Saoudi and their musical confederates.

Impressively, this collaboration of three of pop's hardest grafters feels like a real group endeavour.

The Chemical Brothers just keep on coming. No Geography could as well be called No Surrender. It’s the sound of two men approaching 50 but still keenly attuned to making feet move on the dancefloor.

Reviewing the soundtrack for a film you’ve not seen is a tricky act. It’s like reviewing a book based on its pictures – you’re missing the context of the music’s purpose. But then, not all soundtracks are created equal, and Wild Rose is one designed to stand on its own two feet.