Ores & Minerals, its [A Thousand Heys'] follow-up, is arguably less direct, but more fully realised, and likely more enduring.

All in all, it’s a refreshingly varied voyage.

While some of this album is beautiful and delicate, at other times its vocal and musical honey smothers the intimacy of the lyrics.

You want the mix to jump and pound and excite. But it doesn’t, and the choruses feel hung out to dry. This makes for a frustrating listen, because the talent is there – damn, even the songs are there.

With the ceaselessly inventive, engagingly cocksure 180, Palma Violets have given themselves a base to build a career, should they be in it for the long haul.

For a debut album it’s accomplished stuff, though like the Manics before them Anthems is not without its stodgier moments.

The result is a stylish, intelligent record that does exactly what it set out to do: Girls Names have reinvented their sound and come up smelling of roses.

Mainly, though, if Caitlin Rose is the future of Nashville and American country music, then it would seem that its future is in safe, appealing and mellifluous hands.

By calling their album Rough Carpenters, the Pickers are inevitably alluding to their creations as constructs of old timber, offered up with spontaneity and passion rather than precision. But it’s also a misleading moniker, for what is unquestionably the group’s smoothest ride yet.

This singer knows what suits his voice, an undeniably rich and powerful instrument, and uses it without showing off.

There are enough moments of deft, delicate brilliance here to remind us of what a gifted songwriter he is.

The broad, stuttering beats do fatigue the listening experience eventually, but music this animated and unrelenting demands a very specific ear in a very specific setting.

With its extra content engineered to appeal to collectors and casual fans alike, this is a justified addition to the many Rumours already making the rounds.

It’s accomplished, mixing studied nostalgia with current concerns, but not a standout in its field.

The overall impression remains of a bunch of clever chaps who are able to avoid over-intellectualisation and weave bags of charm and fun into their complex pop songs.

The reason that such a potentially pointless enterprise in trash retro works lies entirely in Lidell’s extraordinary talents as musician and producer.

What remains is an adequate compilation of nostalgic sounds, largely void of Clark’s unique voice. Greater consistency would have worked wonders.

Streten proves that potential mass appeal need not come at the expense of creative flair or fresh ideas.

These gifted siblings have come of age. You’ll want what they’re having.

Shorter is firmly at the helm, yet benevolent enough to play the background when needed. The rhythm has taken him far.

The results are both reminiscent of preceding emissions from rap’s fringe-mentality movers and shakers, and compellingly unique in their colourful fusions.

Not absolutely everything works, but so much of it does that Reason to Believe performs a neat trick: it makes the listener want to discover exactly where these songs came from and why Hardin wasn’t more appreciated in his lifetime.

It’s an album whose ingenuous, often nakedly honest songwriting offers an emotional fist gloved in arrangements of seductive velvet.

What remains is a nocturnal set of refined resonance.

An LP as weighty, compelling and brilliant as The Bad Seeds have ever produced.

Metheny’s use of it here delivers a pale, expensive shadow of what a real band can achieve. The project doesn’t feel like it has longevity, and this release is for the hardcore only.

Where that album [2008’s Supreme Balloon] over-extended a limited palette, this set bridles with impish imagination.

Easy on the ears they are not, yet it’s hard not to get swept along by Iceage’s droll, disaffected but ultimately joyous punk surge.