The winners prove to be the moments where the participants hold back on the bombast to groove. ... Alas, Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground suffers from heavy-handedness, a fate that awaits I Just Want To Make Love To You. Not quite a harvest for the world but no spoilt crops either.

Sure, there are standout, radio-ready moments, with Song #3 and Fabuless, while the bounce-along Friday Knights propels your arms into the air, but the grit has been sandblasted away and the edges polished. And with 15 tracks, it’s a bit of a slog. Still, when it hits, they know how to hit hard.

Punk can be a relative term, especially when applied to California. In comparison to The Pogues, Flogging Molly sound more like The Nolans. In fact, the Saw Doctors are nearer the mark. But all their rousing expat energy, best heard on The Hand Of John L Sullivan, can’t disguise a controlled finesse.

Melvins have made exactly the album they wanted to. The result? This is one for dedicated followers only.

If you’re a fan of the more raucous, high-octane twang-stompers this band are best known for, you might find this a strangely sedate, mid-tempo affair.

Apologists will see it as a paranoic update of the doom-rock blueprint laid down by King Crimson and Amon Düül. Anyone else will be reaching for the paracetamol.

They’re presented raw, ragged and (if you wanna believe the hype) completely unrehearsed. It’s kind of a mess, but that’s pretty much the point.

Sections within Things Buried In Water 1 and The Stranger’s House suggesting melody, the rest an offbeat, thrumming sound collage.

Baird’s weary, almost impassive croon and deadpan humour across both records can’t hide his serious resistance to our self-deceiving, digitally distanced lives.

Here he duly revisits his own past, on an album that blends new material with covers of his old work and that of others.

Accomplished but derivative.

Occult Architecture is pleasing enough, if a little deodorised at times.

Although micro-melody whimsy is at its heart, there’s a Tangs/Radiophonic Workshop slant that gives tracks such as Midwinter Rites a spooky Kill List/Children Of The Stones edge.

There are passages of experimentation around this album’s edges, such as the post-nuclear drones of Roots Remain, and electronic effects that suggest prolonged exposure to mid-period Tangerine Dream. But Mastodon never really develop these intriguing tendencies.

Their punk training doesn’t quite lend them that particular grace. As a result, this can feel like a bit of a rough ride in places, albeit an intriguing one.

Scratch the surface and nothing really shines. This nod to the past feels more like regression than a return to former glories.

Wild Cat does get samey with 11 songs, but it’s a whole lotta fun and fans will lap it up.

Almost every song plods along for six minutes or more. It’s punishing. The beauty of middleaged Overkill is that they weren’t middle-aged Metallica. Sigh.

Bush are far from the abomination of media repute, but Black And White Rainbows won’t convert the long-term haters, and seems too torpid to mobilise a fresh generation of fans.

A little bit of growing up wouldn’t go amiss.

This is modern life sliced up with the precision of a medical scalpel and then force-fed through a high-density filter of piss and vinegar.

As it is, there’s a certain Wagnerian tweeness about the record, its changes predictable, it’s progressions too easily resolved, his tunings over-familiar. The whole thing feels like drinking several pints of spring water.

The Anglophile lingo (‘He’s such a dear boy’), opiated nursery drawl and woozy organ of Charlie’s Lips is deep in homage to Barrett’s Floyd, just as the Hammond in You Never Learn is to Al Kooper on ’65 Dylan duty. More interesting is the tendency to trancey, transformative repetition on the likes of the autobiographical, sick-bed sweaty Little Stars.

There’s a theme, numbered from 14; dramatic, cinematic, dark but (disappointingly) modern-dancey. 18 hits an ambient spot, though, and 20 is the big ole cosmic epic we really crave.

There’s nothing novel or exciting here, but at least they seem to be having a ball.

Divorced from the visual spectacle--puppets, illusionists, avian transformations, ticker-tape poetry--and the thrill of watching actual Kate Bush actually singing, this audio recording is akin to John Lennon being resurrected to perform the Wedding Album--i.e. only mildly amazing.

All flutes and bubbles, A Jammed Exit could be a Jethro Tull B-side, and only dedicated lovers of the eight-minute free-form scree solo need apply to Nervous Tech (Nah John), which is essentially Frank Zappa having a fit. Run for the exits.

A bumpy ride overall, but with enough peaks to excuse the more pedestrian sections.