Album: The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You

★★★ THE AVALANCHES - WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU Australian sample-stitchers return with an album of big themes and small details

The Australian sample-stitchers return with an album of big themes rich in small detail

After a 16-year wait for the second album from Australian sample-stitchers The Avalanches, their third, a mere four years later, feels like a rush release by comparison. We Will Always Love You has been preceded by no fewer than four singles which, while welcome, are in danger of distorting the overall picture slightly.

Dua Lipa's Studio 2054 online - pop sensation locked into the spectacle

★★★ DUA LIPA'S STUDIO 2054 Pop sensation locked into online spectacle

Does Dua Lipa's new-found musical personality come through in performance?

As with so much in these unprecedented times, online performance is evolving, and fast: different approaches are becoming established formats. Some go ultra intimate – raw acoustic performances, live chats with fans – as if trying to strip away the digital divide. Big, serious rock bands with like Metallica and Radiohead try to keep their established fanbases sated with sheer volume of professionally recorded archive performance.

Album: Miley Cyrus - Plastic Hearts

★★★ MILEY CYRUS - PLASTIC HEARTS Miley's ever-shifting sound alights on a Big Eighties aesthetic

Miley's ever-shifting sound alights on a Big Eighties aesthetic

Miley Cyrus has always been, broadly, A Good Thing. A Top Pop Star. A sassy, funny, puritan-scaring, omnisexual chaos monkey at the heart of pop culture, doing pretty much whatever she fancies when she fancies. Not that this has always meant she’s made good music, mind you.

Album: Róisín Murphy - Róisín Machine

★★★★★ ROISIN MURPHY - ROISIN MACHINE Delivering the disco goods

Murphy and long time Sheffield comrade deliver the disco goods

This is a musical homecoming for Róisín Murphy, both geographically and figuratively. She may have been raised in Dublin and spent her gig-going adolescence in Manchester, but Sheffield is where she began her life as a clubber and performer – and it’s with Sheffield scene mainstay of almost four decades, and Murphy’s friend of quarter of a century, Richard “Parrot” Barratt that she’s collaborated here.

Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdue

★★★★★ EVERYTHING: THE REAL THING STORY, BBC FOUR The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time

The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time

This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and fallings-out, coping with huge success and its aftermath – not to mention sex, drugs, mental illness and death.

Album: Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia

Lipa frees her inner disco diva, and the world is a better place for it

Dua Lipa's self-titled debut was unmistakably the sound of a musician feeling their way. It had all the flavours of trap, tropical house, autotune and Lana Del Ray-ish triphop introspection you'd expect on a 2017 pop record. The multi-billion-stream single “New Rules” was the most transatlantic-sounding thing there, and it must have been tempting to try and repeat its success by following current generic templates.

Album: Baxter Dury - The Night Chancers

★★★★ BAXTER DURY - THE NIGHT CHANCERS Skilfully drawn vignettes

The singer turns storyteller with a collection of skilfully drawn vignettes

“I’m not your fucking friend,” intones Baxter Dury as recent single “I’m Not Your Dog” begins. As opening salvos go, it’s right up there with the best of them, full of sneering hostility and fiery intent. As an introduction, it’s a writer’s hook – pushing us away while drawing us in.

Album: Sink Ya Teeth - Two

★★★★ SINK YA TEETH - TWO Norfolk post-punkers push their sound toward a dancefloor-friendly second album

Norfolk post-punkers successfully push their sound forward on a dancefloor-friendly second album

Norwich is not the first place most people think of as a hub of riveting music but it’s where female duo Sink Ya Teeth hail from. Consisting of bassist Gemma Cullingford and singer Maria Uzor - with both throwing synth into the pot where necessary – the pair have proved themselves a vital presence in the live arena.