It’s a pleasingly consistent collection of songs, but special mention goes to the raunchy Relevant (complete with solos for Reinhardt-like guitar and swaggering piano) and May You Never Fall In Love’s wordly advice. All said, it’s a good look on him.

You become mesmerised by Der Kaffee Kocht, its contagious rhythm produced by the rasp of a file, or the clanging Sur Le Ventre, with Peron exhorting in French.

While Find Me Finding You won’t necessarily offend dyed-in-the-woofer Stereolab aficionados--no apple need ever fall far from such an efflorescent tree--it still successfully stakes out a corner of its own, its abstract yet meticulously formal layers suggesting an aural Mondrian painting.

Harking back to Automatic Midnight and Suicide Invoice more than it resembles its immediate predecessor, this is one electrifying comeback. In short, Jericho Sirens absolutely smokes.

It’s not that it’s a bad record--it is an enjoyable listen and is successful in achieving what it set out to do, namely to evoke the true sound and spirit of the London orbital world that claims bored teenagers, squaddies and suburban rebels as its own.

Packed with motifs and allusions to cinema, it’s also a subtle commentary on the singer’s stratospheric rise to superstardom, lyricist Bernie Taupin retrospectively suggesting disillusionment was a recurring theme.

It may be a touch overlong and that relentlessly 80s production won’t be for everyone’s ears, but this is a triumph.

Things become a little more introspective later on, with acoustic guitars, abstract soundscapes and restrained percussive patterns taking the fore, but, thankfully, the material remains hypnotic throughout.

With themes of adult responsibility and parenthood bearing heavily on his mind, it might sound solemn in places, but it’s a hugely rewarding listen, a baroque-folk companion to the gorgeous undulating mysteries of Rock Bottom.

Unbelievably good and groundbreaking, even at a point in heavy metal history when every third band sounds more like Pink Floyd than Pantera.

Just one minor grumble: more phin next time, please. That thing cuts through a crowd like a backstage pass.

Along with equally genre-transcending Ryley Walker and James Blackshaw, here is stunning proof that Tompkins Square have serious intentions beyond the reissue market. Watch this space, listen to Brigid Mae Power.

The band lace all 14 tracks from Psychocandy with attitude, adrenaline and volume: their collective belligerence peaking during Never Understand and the relentless metallic KO of Inside Me.

This is effectively juxtaposed with ominous understatement, and the shifting moods, combined with varied instrumentation including harmonium, banjo and electric piano, make for an intriguing, satisfying listen.

An exciting follow up to 2014’s Foundations Of Burden that edges the band’s sound forward while keeping sight of what they do best, Heartless is a glorious open wound that bleeds melody. Right on.

It’s difficult to imagine many better rock albums being released this year; it’s the record Springsteen fans wish he had in him.

As expected, these 13 tracks live up to Fairport’s high musicianship, and are greatly helped by their rich variety, the maturity in song choices and the breadth of moods they evoke.

This follow-up to 2012’s magnificent Poor Moon is no less exemplary than its predecessor.

Available on vinyl for the first time, and heralding the reissue of Jansch’s entire catalogue, Live At The 12 Bar is a cut above many of the similar live captures of Jansch’s work.

The one-time folkie’s fourth album exorcises romantic demons by taking another bold leap forward.

You will hear her work ethic throughout, positively Spartan, and tinged with rueful truth. A courtly service for all to attend.

Earthling gives an uplifting sense of the creative energy shared between Eddie Vedder and his keenly empathetic collaborators, distilled into striking, memorable songs, and unified by a fresh, cohesive sound. On this evidence, it’s to be hoped the partnership forges ahead as the day jobs allow.

He’s on top notch form; sparking, soaring and grinding through five spirited new instrumentals and three from his back catalogue.

Employing a Drake-like emotional honesty (though thankfully minus the Canadian’s tendency for self-pity) he recounts unflinching vignettes of Seattle street-life shot through with harrowing biographical details.

It all gives the sense of a fun, messy but inspired recording session conducted in a fug of weed smoke.

The band’s signature slow riffs and brutal, unison forces are all present, while it’s between these chord changes that the interplay of feedback, overtones, drones and whistles play, against and with, in and out of the bludgeoning drive of the enormous, portentous menhirs of minor melody.

Ghost On Ghost completes Iron & Wine’s transformation from simple soul-searching singer-songwriter into fully-fledged bandleader. Beam firmly remains a master at both.

From The Trees is simple and unadorned, with generous ladling of his legendarily wayward backing vocals. Skeletal, appealing melodies support tales of inertia (“Torpor rolls upon me in a fog, settles like a sweat upon the skin”), lost love (Girl To The North Country’s “just like that, she’s gone”) and the wane into old age (“only yesterday you were pegging out your tent”).

Endless Arcade represents the biggest demand on their followers the band have made for some time, with pensive contemplation underpinning an eclectic, experimental set of songs. But they have long earned the right to venture off in whichever direction takes their fancy. They are still growing, still evolving and still learning. Endless Arcade is a brave record by a brave band. There are few of Teenage Fanclub’s ilk.

Ever-evolving they may be, but Satomi’s oddball pop songs are another band staple; this time they deliver the cutesy, punky, and thoroughly entertaining Nurse Me.

An album of endless revelations, its dry wit and dreamy tunes suggest a mash-up between Pet Shop Boys and Jimmy Webb.

The feeling is one of two planets that happened to get into each other’s orbit, with pleasing results. Hopefully they’ll eclipse again soon.

On an initial spin, the listener likely won’t understand Juarez’s cult appeal or indeed Allen’s own obsession. However, as superbly documented by the excellent liner notes and art prints (reproducing the 1974 lithographs that accompanied the album’s initial 50-run release), repeated listens will quickly have Juarez clawing at the brain and the heart.

Despite his heavy pedigree, the poppier songs are some of the best here, the only blot being an honourable but lacklustre run through 20th Century Boy.

Fun, typically subversive and largely memorable, Copeland’s latest work could be one of his most enduring, whether we were meant to hear it or not. Makes you wonder what else he’s got up his sleeve.

This is sweetly strange and often emotional music--an album of disquieting tone poems and outlandish lullabies.

One suspects Gibbons agonised over every word and note on Lives Outgrown, but the result is an album to fall deeply in love with. If you allow them to, these songs will envelope your soul.

Van Morrison’s voice is in fine a form as ever. The important thing is that while he – and the rest of the crew – head down a well-travelled road, they certainly don’t sit in the middle of it.

A Common Truth is mountainous and haunting, yet also exhibits a certain vulnerability.

While this is unlikely to achieve the same status [as their debut], it proves that these veterans are definitely not yet ready for the scrapheap.

The radio-friendly gene appears to be lacking entirely from their approach, and as a result the album is among the most immersive listens in some time.

Staples is in strong voice throughout, yet on All Over Again, the closing folk blues look back on a lfe lived without regrets, she sings even lower than usual, sounding her age--impossibly wise and dignified. A fitting end to a great record.

A definite return to form, it’s not 24-carat gold all the way through but there are more than enough nuggets to keep old fans happy and attract some new ones.

Cosmic art country (Infinite Surprise, Pittsburgh) and skewed power pop (Save Me, Evicted) dominate, but most impressive are Sunlight Ends and A Bowl And A Pudding, moments of experimental beauty at the core of a constantly surprising album.

Overall, Source is a thing of wondrous beauty, revealing that the hyperbole accompanying Garcia patently isn't out of proportion to her talent. [Sep 2020, p.101]

Well worth the extended wait.

It’s a grower--and a cunningly deceptive one at that.

The arrangements for all 11 songs are exquisite; much has been said about the proliferation of vintage echo and reverb machines used during recordings but much more central is the orchestration and use of instruments, with Tom Moth’s diaphanous but pulsating harp particularly notable.

Another big step for Silberman and required listening for any Americana aficionados.

In the best possible way, their songs feel like being trapped for over a quarter of an hour within the mind of the person whose bathroom is the filthiest you’ve ever seen, but if you want a better picture you should attend one of their gigs gigs gigs gigs gigs gigs gigs.

These floaty psych-funk grooves are more fun than a barrel of chimps, even if the lyrics fret about global warming, nuclear fusion and other harbingers of doom.

This is probably their best record in years--so jump on board.

Blue Weekend isn’t a perfect record, with the folky No Hard Feelings and Safe From Heartbreak (If You’ve Never Been In Love) a little whimsical next to everything else going on. It matters little, though. Rowsell’s rallying cry in Smile that “I ain’t afraid of the fact that I’m sensitive” is borne out in a wild and tender third album.

Back in 1970, this must have sounded like music from the future--over 40 year later, it still does.

The Colour In Anything is wall-to-wall longing for old flames and tales of relationships in freefall. It’s also infinitely beautiful; a meshing of gloomy piano and club-ready sounds that show Blake still can’t quite be pinned down.

[Vanishing Point is] raw and unrefined, it has as much energy and attitude as any of their previous albums.

The wry, Chris Difford-esque football analogies in the ailing relationship-related ‘Injury Time’ (“they think it’s all over, it is now”) show Astor has retained a keen sense of humour, yet Dead Fred and the mortality-facing titular track are befitting of a record stuffed with songs intended to both “celebrate and grieve”.

While the musical performances are expert, the real appeal of the record lies with Friedberger.

[Phoenixes is] given layers of treated guitar and robotic backing vocals, creating a stillness that ramps up the emotional effect of the song. It’s indicative of the qualities of the album as a whole; potent stuff.

Temple Of I & I is the most rounded and enjoyable album of theirs to date.

Making up for lost time, Strut have produced a collection that’s broad in scope, detailed in its sleevenotes and packed with a raft of outstanding music.

An appropriately joyful and celebratory eulogy.

Inevitably, it’s a time capsule, rather than a new album proper, though the best moments make you wonder what might have been.

While you can’t draw a direct line from PT to Anathema, Steven Wilson’s hand is in some of the mixes, but, by standing on the shoulders of giants, bands such as this one have themselves become gargantuan.

It’s a witty, endlessly creative look at where we are, where music is right now and what’s next; it all makes for essential listening.

The signs were all there, even though Bowie briefly ignored them as he recorded the landmark Hunky Dory. But as The Width Of A Circle shows, everything he’d put in place would soon come around.

These are not easy songs to sing, but Harvey, more than anyone, gets to the heart of darkness within even the most luscious Gainsbourg arrangement.

The Low Highway is an album brimming with characters, be they Earle himself, his collaborators, his fans or, just as importantly, the long roads he’s pounded all his adult life.

It’s very much a full-band sound, yet the detail in the arrangements proves to be vital.

It might have taken four years to map out, but Tall Ships’ latest voyage is one that very much deserves discovery.

Serious Miles and Coltrane aficionados will already be familiar with these recordings, no doubt, though the incentive to acquire this fresh iteration sanctioned by the Miles Davis estate is the superlative quality of Mark Wilder’s audio restoration, which makes it hands down the best version to own.

The poignant This Nearly Was Mine from South Pacific (“now, I’m alone, still dreaming of paradise”) and I Who Have Nothing, are both imbued with equal measures of yearning and malice. It’s almost as if In Translation has tied up all the strange, raw emotions of the past year and made some sense of them.

Goodbye Weekend sees DeMarco take issue with his critics, particularly the way his sometimes bizarre live shows have been reported. On this evidence, his talent should be celebrated. Salad Days, indeed.

Her most assured album yet and one that will undoubtedly garner her some well-deserved attention.

It reveals The War On Drugs at their most song-conscious and streamlined. The epic, immersive, unfurling tracks that have become a Granduciel trademark are notably absent (Granduciel says he abandoned a 32-minute jam track). Psychedelic flourishes are few and far between. Many tracks boast a hitherto unheard immediacy: prominent synths, unabashed choruses, and big-sounding songs.

Yello (Glue Head), Cluster (Caramel) and even Factory label signatories Minny Pops (Son) also make the cut, but the most effective entries tend to be the unfriendliest ones: PIE (Versión) by Esplendor Geométrico, redolent of filthy concrete blast walls and quasar radiation; Sexual Discipline by Die Form, robot-blank and remorseless; and Krematorien by Universalanschluss, a strobing migraine of dots and squiggles.

Sure, there’s a mildly preposterous, posturing axe-warrior in there, but it’s tempered, often joyously, with a self-mocking feminine side here, and makes for some of his most carefree but considered music in a very long time.

Half Japanese albums are like the proverbial buses, and this is their third album in as many years, after nothing for the previous decade-plus. Jad Fair’s art-punk outsider unit return with an album that reflects their early days while taking the Half Japanese story into a new chapter.

Produced by Edwyn Collins, it’s full of immediately infectious tracks that burrow deep into your head before working their way down to your limbs.

The uncharacteristically tonguein- cheek, Bowie-esque Japan To Jupiter is arguably the record’s apex, but quality and contemporary relevance abound, ensuring Folly is a comeback that equates with anything but the absurdity suggested by its title.

Blue Elephant is like a soundtrack to a classic ITC TV programme, with lots of jumping into sleek jaguars and speeding along Chelsea Embankment. If that ticks your boxes, this is one of the best albums you’ll hear all year.

It’s a fabulous voyage that delights at every unexpected turn.

Taken as a whole, the album recalls the literate elegance of 1993’s Kindness Of The World, albeit with more sharply observed snapshots of the nuts and bolts of romantic relationships.

Post Plague is stronger, more menacing and, as ever, on good terms with melody.

The real magic on 50 doesn’t come from the coterie of younger tyros, but the great buck himself. The frailty of the 75-year-old’s voice (he’ll be 76 when this album comes out) can render homespun parables as biblical portents, in much the same way that Rick Rubin reinvented Johnny Cash as a latter-day Nostradamus.

Change Becomes Us sounds almost like a lost fourth Harvest release.

Listening now, it’s easier to understand. Buffed to perfection by Scott Litt and John Keane, Out Of Time is a proudly pop album that demands new audiences. ... For hardcore fans, the extra material is a full but mixed bag.

Those lyrics [from previously unreleased demo, Tired Of My Life], slightly tweaked, would also make the final It’s No Game; that they date to this period of self-doubt and self-discovery and ended up bookending one of the greatest decade-long streaks in music is revelatory. Demos of Hunky Dory standouts have fewer surprises: written during a spate of fevered creativity in Haddon Hall, his boho Beckenham pile, everything is all but there, a few lyrical improvements aside.

Trouble & Love is perhaps her most thoughtprovoking set since 2005’s Mercy Now, full of literate musings and believable characters.

He shifts back to the modern world, with the excellent trio of Who To Love?, Come Close To Me and My Last Affair adding deep house backing to snippets of disembodied piano, guitar and soulful vocals.

Even if Clapton is the only member surviving to see it, at last they get to say goodbye on a suitably representative monument.

Like Hacquard, Fussell has the gift of the gab, born to tell his tales with a dark humour that raises these fabulous fables up to splendid life.

Despite the general autumnal mood, the easy-going charm of Oval is worlds away from Almond’s rumbling menace. It’s all compelling enough to keep drawing listeners back for the next 14 years. Magnificent.

The kids aren’t alright as decades get mashed; conspiracy theories and misanthropy, leavened with wit, abound. A fantastic record. You auteur hear this.

And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is a rich, nuanced and brilliant reflection of a world in turmoil.

As he goes on to dig into toxic masculinity, his own ageing process and urban isolation (on the striking Safe & Well), Malcolm Middleton’s music is masterful, a combination of dense electronics and angry guitars which perfectly meet the mood of a fiercely current album.

Between concept and clamorous noise, Exile is the sound of an unflinching, old-school, outsider-punk voice rising to modern challenges.

Soul Of A Woman finds Jones bowing out in the finest form, somehow filling the space between Gladys Knight and Etta James.