Rubin’s experiment has paid off handsomely, even though at times you’ll find yourself comparing the new songs to any number of familiar signature tunes from Sabbath’s catalogue.

Grey’s skills are undeniable, but this feels too all-encompassing to pass muster as a perfectly rounded album.

QOTSA can still devastate and his lyrics still tread that delicious line between romance and nihilism, but ...Like Clockwork either runs too slickly, or the mechanism feels forced.

Re-Mit sounds alive, funny even, as if Smith has made peace with something--possibly his own genius.

Give yourself over to what’s not only a 21st-century masterpiece, but also something timeless that will resonate whenever you find it.

An uninspiring audio fluff. Cruel, after having previously reached such satisfying heights.

While MVOTC doesn’t represent a seismic leap from their earlier material, the general feeling is of a much more considered collection, with greater emphasis on song craft.

Ultimately, you don’t quite get the sky-scraping, genre-blending bangers mustered in the past, nor the negative synergy and diminishing returns of many collaboration-heavy, late-career albums.

Monomania retains those same Deerhunter kernels if you’re willing to forage. You might get your fingers grubby, but the fruit, often deep inside the shell, is still delicious.

While much of the record has one foot in 70s AM radio, Friedberger’s past cannot help but ensure that there’s an inquisitive, often eccentric worldview at the heart of each of these songs.

Signs of progression are, admittedly, belatedly embraced by the ham-fisted, if heartfelt dub-out Serious Business and the bowel-quaking Sunn O)))-style title track, but it’s too little too late.

It’s certainly the best down-to-earth storytelling item to emerge in ages.

The 90s revival starts here... maybe, but It Hugs Back is also a warm, fuzzy species all of its own, and well worth cozying up to.

Once I Was An Eagle represents a bold, adventurous step forward that’s resulted in her most fulfilling work yet.

The occasional moment of reinvention and the band’s tongue-in-cheek attitude make for a playful listen, but even an audacious twist on Divine’s Female Trouble can’t transform the covers album format from an enjoyable diversion to something more substantial.

To say it’s Stewart’s best album for more than 30 years may, ultimately, not be saying much, but it’s refreshing to hear him at the helm of a high-quality record, to hear him singing with heartfelt vigour, and--perhaps most importantly--having fun.

Wolf People invest every glowering note with a watchful intensity that signifies their unswerving dedication.

Trouble Will Find Me manages to pull off the impressive trick of finding the band at once at their most direct and musically inventive.

More so than anything in Harvey’s back catalogue, FOUR impresses with its purity, simplicity, accessibility and lack of pretension.

Ultimately, Mosquito sees the band reenergised, trying new things and, generally, succeeding.

As an exercise in showcasing the singer’s inimitably laconic way with a variety of styles it’s a real winner.

Even the bluntest songs (Angry Bird, Party Liquor) have a dark, cautionary subtext, while the bereft, beautiful Something From Nothing (“about becoming dependent upon faith, which is as much a danger as a source of solace in troubled times”) genuinely stands shoulder to shoulder with Rundgren’s finest ballads.

Every song is good, albeit not life-changing.

2002’s Title TK was a gentler, more measured and still wholly satisfying record, but its predecessor still holds pride of place in most fans’ strawberry hearts.

Each of these 10 songs is a piece in the Feltrinelli puzzle, resulting in an album whose ambition suitably matches its subject’s big ideas.

Though it falls some way short of the arid, acid-fried surreality of their key early releases Meat Puppets II and Up On The Sun, their 14th studio set, Rat Farm, is one of their better post-millennial efforts.

Another strong addition to Lanegan’s increasingly impressive canon, it makes despair sound worryingly inviting.

Musically, it’s primarily beefy, anthemic business as usual--fine for the most part, even if Road Rage and the glitterati-decimating Hollywood Goof Disease veer perilously close to predictability.

While fans can rest assured that rampage is still on the menu, be prepared to well up, too.

This suite of songs, from Infestation Of Grey Death and Tower Of Silence to The Last Laugh, sets out Cathedral’s stall once and for all: a metal band whose palette of influences made their songs more than merely headbanging opportunities.

Arguably, the album lacks a stand-out killer to take to radio but, by the same token, there’s hardly anything that could be described as filler; it’s a solid and confident collection from a veteran songstress who still has a lot to offer.

After a while, the lushness of the vocals becomes a little wearing if you’re looking for the cracked, dark heart of yore; a futile task in any case, as that heart stopped beating a long time ago.

It’s garage rock by numbers and sounds like it took as long to write as it does to listen to.

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

Inimitable, occasionally impenetrable, but never less than intriguing.

It’s wilful experimentation with no pay-off, sounding lonely, old, with only the occasional, tempting flicker of a genius that once burnt bright.

There’s nothing to dislike about their creeping dread, but it’s hard to engage with it.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

While ’Til Your River Runs Dry is unlikely to broaden his fan base to any large degree, longtime followers should be thrilled to find Burdon in such fine voice.

Ghost Parade and the sustained swell of Giant (which comes on like a less glacial take on Zeit-era Tangerine Dream) are frustratingly low-watt affairs, while Wray--featuring atonal viola from Mr Bungle/Bill Frisell collaborator Eyvind Kang--resembles the abstract strokes of Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock rather than doom-laden trailblazers such as Earth or The Melvins.

The album can probably be considered the most successful effort of the band’s current incarnation, with members Fenriz and Nocturno Culto balancing the visceral and organic spirit that has long defined their output with an increasingly considered (but never, ever polished) approach to songwriting.

CATCS have matured during their absence, yet continue to burn with whatever inner flame drives Bonney and his rabid co-conspirators.

Machineries Of Joy proves that BSP are still in bloom.

A by-the-book cover of the arguably too familiar Rainy Night In Georgia aside, this is an engaging and enticing set of tunes breathing fresh life into a bygone form; they’ll melt your heart while making you want to dance.

Tooth & Nail is probably the most accurate and all-encompassing illustration of the great man’s worth.

At one end of the spectrum that means Snorri Helgason is sparsely faithful to the gentle Misty Roses, while The Phoenix Foundation imbue Don’t Make Promises with post-psych otherworldliness.

Really, it just suffers from sequel syndrome, as there’s a fine single-disc collection buried within some over-blown, try-hard choices.

Best approach it as a mixed bag which will give up its secrets slowly, if at all, and doff the cap one more time to its creator’s skewed approach to this rock music thing.

She Paints Words In Red turns out to be the Camberwell crew’s finest--and most consistent--platter since 1990’s Fontana album.

An attack on the lack of dissenting voices in popular culture, if this isn’t Mason’s bona fide masterpiece, it’s certainly approaching it.

There’s no instant standout, but the album both withstands and repays repeated listening.

Low still sound beautiful, but there’s a nagging feeling that The Invisible Way represents a slight drop-off in focus.

Clearly, Bartos carries the romance and self-aware humour of the “classic” Kraftwerk in his genetic code: the sweet, buoyant, dignified and melodious Nachtfahrt and Hausmusik, for example, breathe the same rarefied European air which rendered The Man Machine and Trans-Europe Express such heady and immaculate touchstones.

Unashamedly traditional it may be, but there will be few better country records released this year.

Understated is an absolute triumph, matching any of the high-water marks of his past career.

This is Banhart’s best work because it functions as a unit.

The Next Day is certainly his most engaging and intriguing since Outside. For now, that’s more than enough.

Longtime fans will be pleased to hear that not all of Exai is a mature, intellectual exploration of the possibilities of electronic music.

There are moments of warped magic--haunting melodies, neat instrumental hooks, surprising turns of key and mood--but there are also times when you suspect it might have been more interesting to hear what Yorke and his collaborators came up with in the studio before it got eaten by ProTools.

Despite the eclectic background material, it feels like a consolidation rather than a development.

The results are simple, subtle arrangements that highlight their song craft.

Across the album as a whole he works towards a sort of mid-world territory, between air and water, dream and reality.

With a warmth uncommonly found in Weber’s work, Elements Of Light emerges as a real triumph.

The songs on Electric are given more opportunity to breathe and worm their way into our hearts.

What remains a constant is the warm murmur of the voice delivering tales from the heart with a literary confidence few in his field can match.

Sounding classic on arrival, Lonesome Dreams is certainly the best album of its kind since Damien Jurado’s Maraqopa.

Selected Studies Vol 1 is an entirely successful undertaking on its own terms, enriched by the quiet absorption of congruent confederates who intuitively understand that all manner of gods and devils are in the detail.

Trouble is, the songs themselves are instantly forgettable, devoid of alluring melody or interesting lyrical content, and sung by a limited vanilla voice lacking in character.

A pulsing electro cover of Floyd’s Have A Cigar might be an unexpected (though warming) surprise, but the closing quartet of Shadow Memory, Walk, Myriads and Only Lovers Left Alive sees Foxx and Benge simmering in exquisite fashion.

Occasionally, this approach doesn’t match the heartfelt sentiment (see the lyrics to both You’re My Friend and A True Original) but, on the whole, this is the sound of a man reinvigorated, happy to be recording and with a dependable, more involved backing band than ever.

Kouyate has recorded more consistent albums than this but, as a statement of defiance, Jama Ko could be his most important work.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the Lemonheads-style chug of the remainder, though it plants its flag firmly in the same sonic terrain they occupied during 2010’s The Dissent Of Man.

Into The Diamond Sun fully captures their kaleidoscopic vision over 11 songs bookended with the terrific The Garden (full of warped guitars, nursery rhyme harmonies and Blakian innocence) and Bear Tracks, a haunting, mesmeric sound mosiac.

The CDs don’t sit properly in their sleeves, and the booklet, which was once speculated to include photography from Shadow’s visual cohort B+, delivers only the scantest imagery and discographical detail.... Still, as far as the music’s concerned it’s a thrilling journey sizeable enough to make an impression on your shelf.

He may have been too pure for widespread appeal at the time of the album’s original release, but an arguably more open and receptive 21st Century country fanbase should delight in this reissue.

While certainly not all things to all comers, this deluxe edition makes a good fist of it.

It’s when Villagers are at their most pure--be it on the brilliant chamber pop of Northing Arrived or the pure, instrumental pastoral of the title track--that {Awayland} is strongest; as opposed to when it’s trying to outsource itself to stylistic whimsy or fad.

It can’t ever realistically hold a candle to The Modern Dance or its seismic follow-up Dub Housing, but it regularly flirts with inspiration.