It’s as capricious and confusing as it sounds, yet the overall result is one of surprising cohesion.

The feel is desolate, doomed and desperate combining their hallowed 60s Texan psych with 80s and 90s influences. If not instant, it’s a grower.

Ray Davies’ dreams and reality combine to make Americana an absorbing listen. Just touching an hour in length, it is as curious and rewarding as anything he has ever done.

Beautiful as it sounds, Double Roses largely reminds you of other things without ever fully settling into itself. It’s deft and accomplished, but Elson has yet to fully bloom into her own talent.

They have that whole male/female duality down to a tee as well. It’s just that a few more sonic peaks and troughs wouldn’t go amiss.

Beneath the noisy sludge and distorted mire of these six tracks there lives a gorgeous, golden majesty.

It is, like its predecessor, a beguiling union of east and west--an album that quickly establishes its own universe and welcomes you in, with its reference points of Indian classical music, jazz, kosmische and dub.

Sincerely captures the mood of our dislocated times with style and bite.

Prolific in output, both together and in their separate projects, Sorcerer reflects a relentless drive to create something that’s restless and demanding in its realisation.

Records of this clout and calibre are ringing endorsements that Crowell is his own man.

It’s not so much that Robyn Hitchcock (the album) resonates with sonic surprise: its default paradigm of dense, shimmering neo-psychedelia is a home comfort that has sustained Hitchcock from The Soft Boys onwards. It’s more the fact that the bendy mirror through which he refracts experience offers a sharper view year upon year.

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.

Arguably not as good as his main act, it’s still a welcome addition from an otherwise “non-moonlighting” type.

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.

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

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

Rarely dipping below engaging, Doris is a welcome return that could all too easily have been dashed off or worse, ended up morbid.

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

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.

Nightmare Logic says it all over eight tracks in a damn near perfect 35 minutes.

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.

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.

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

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.

Holter is a master at conjuring up beguiling atmospherics. Here, backed by her usual live touring accompaniment of drums, viola and double bass she concocts a variety of striking permutations on familiar work.

While the album’s rear end succumbs to repetition, redemption arrives in the wistful Day Glow Fire and a bright-eyed duet with Debbie Harry on Shadows, where romantic doubts are treated as a spur to dream bigger.

If at times Silver Eye is easy to admire yet difficult to love, you are never that far from a tremendous hook or captivating vocal.

The messages of richly-orchestrated missives like Gun Clap Hero deserve to be heard; hopefully their contagious settings will take them to the masses.

The Navigator knows in which direction to head. Hurray indeed.

A sultry take on Burt Bacharach’s The Look Of Love, pitch-perfect version of Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage and an emotive rendering of Ruby Andrews’ soul classic Casanova (Your Playing Days Are Over), are among the highlights on this welcome boon for lovers of high-grade instrumental funk.

On Spirit, Depeche Mode aren’t quite repeating themselves, nor is there real revolution in their sound. But they are nevertheless going forwards, and fans will be happy to join the march.

With the likes of Hollow, all echoing goth riffs, the dance-around-your bedroom exuberance of Resolution, and the caustic Your Genius, it can’t help but win you over.

It works because it’s so astonishingly, genuinely clever.

If the album takes fewer side roads than long-term fans may be used to, it also rewards repeat listening, revealing a little more each time. They may have covertly tucked their idiosyncrasies behind an accessible sound, but their unique vision remains.

Boss Hog still thrill, still hint at a better future. Just one that comes before 2034 you’d hope.

Like the 1999 film Magnolia that earned Mann an Oscar nomination, Mental Illness would make a similarly engrossing mosaic of stories for the big screen.

Finding inspiration in the current climate, Taylor has created a modern blues masterpiece for troubled times.

Like its clumsy title, this release finds itself falling between two stools; stuck in mid-Atlantic, perhaps. It does have its moments, but may fail to win new converts.

Though recording since the 90s, Nichols seems to have found his feet by blending his lifelong country, soul, hip-hop and reggae influences then capturing them on tape with the southern soul intimacy of Tony Joe White.

A lot of the morsels are unremittingly 80s in flavour, which leaves them divided into sassy material that still works, a few oddments, and a significant minority that are almost unpalatable, and which could probably be dated down to the day they were recorded, they’re so of their time.

Deceptively simple, Cocker’s economical narratives sit atop Gonzalez’s evocative ivories, drawing you in with their intimacy, like an old rummy spilling the beans.

Iif you’re not in on the joke, the album might fall flat sporadically. Still, taken with the right level of salt, ICC is a brave, bold and multi-faceted experience that can knock one’s socks clean off.

Both songs [Stained Glass and Same Sun] lack that extra dynamic, and instead plod along in somewhat tepid one-dimensionality. Somehow, though, that doesn’t break the dreamy, wistful spell of the album as a whole.

With these band versions, Oberst seems more removed, drowned out by unnecessary country embellishments that only dilute the passion and emotion of the originals. That’s not to say these are bad, but they just aren’t quite as heart-stoppingly, heartbreakingly brilliant. Less, as it turns out, can be much more.

If Condition does not herald a radical artistic reincarnation, it does involve a subtler devolution into a slightly more primitive form.

Spoon have been together for over 20 years now, yet it’s clear from this ninth full-length that their inspiration remains plentiful. In fact, Hot Thoughts is a surge of vivid creativity that veers between straightforward indie-pop and more experimental art pop.

BJM’s 16th full-length begins with a sublime eight-minute krautrock corker and doesn’t get any less fun from there.

60s references, bloody mindedness, affairs of the heart and a whole ton of drug references make for a perfect storm. But what comes through clearest is the agelessness of the music they make.

Some tracks inspire more amusement than may perhaps have been intended.

One minute solid as a rock, the next seemingly in flux, Solide Mirage reveals itself anew with each listen: fleeting glimpses at a map into unknown territory.

After starting with a deathly gripping take on Motherless Child, his supernatural countertenor beautifully holds its own over the luminescent backdrops throughout, showing how charisma, soul and delivery score any time over technique. Pure class.

With its subtle and strange arrangements, Be Ok is a most engaging listen.

Genuinely touching tunes such Driving and Tomorrow add a layer of depth and will help fend off inevitable accusations of ironic retroism, but Delicate Steve’s core appeal will always be that of good times all the time.

It all adds up to a life well-lived, in affecting songs.

The track’s second half building gradually--if not as gradually as their less condensed recordings – to a more dramatic finale. In comparison, dronesome pair Overhear and Rise feel a little underwhelming.

Melancholy levels are high--but that’s a distraction, as beneath this motif is a wealth of songwriting nous that continues to set Mercer apart from his peers.

In short, sharp bursts, this approach [bubblegum-flavoured power-pop enhanced by youthful, punky vigour] remains a winner, though as Courtneys II’s samey second side reveals, it can just as easily sound formulaic.

Singer John Paul Pitts explains there are also other heavy themes on this record, varying from mental illness to car accidents. But still the sunniness pervades. Ironically perhaps, Snowdonia is a summery sounding record, produced in a time that could easily have called for a deep freeze for Surfer Blood.

Their first live album captures Brownstein and her bandmates Corin Tucker, Janet Weiss and new touring member Katie Harkin ripping rapidly through a selection of their strongest material, the sabbatical years having drained none of their finesse or ferocity.

Woolf Works, like SLEEP, is instantly accessible, its noise and careful hand holding often startlingly modern and never once patronising. A thing of beauty.

A covert moral conscience underpins Williamson’s lyrics, in among the barbed and barbarous wit, the austere reportage, the vitriolic calumny and the pop-culture detritus: and, almost despite itself, the scattergun English Tapas can’t help but represent a telling state-of-the-nation address.

Instead of the rich brass that embellished his band’s last album Familiars or the warm electronics of 2011’s Burst Apart, this is based around stripped-down guitar and hushed, sometimes mantra-like intonations, with plenty of space.

Bouyed by Reid’s honeyed vocals and Sam Taylor’s chiming guitar, the likes of Richard and Come Home To You may be two of Preservation’s more traditional tunes but are of a simply breathtaking level for such a new talent.

With Semper Femina, Marling is back on more assured ground, largely acoustic, with subtle arrangements and an exquisite use of strings that seem a natural, wholly fitting addition to her ever-expanding palette.

It’s a sound of today with echoes of a gloriously simple past. It makes you wish that Hank Williams was around for a duet.

It may be over a decade since their last album, but when Last Place chugs into life with Why We Won’t, it feels as if Grandaddy haven’t aged a day.

Aas Blanck Mass he’s always presented a rawer sound. While his third full-length looks to take that to an extreme, compared to his recent live shows, it falls just slightly flat.

Rooted in funk grooves and infused with squelchy and crackling electronic textures, their compositions flow in and out of krautrock, afrobeat, art rock and desert rock.

It makes for warm, complex but ultimately rewarding listening--the forboding swell of Songs Of The Marvels, the smartly rollicking The Angry Laughing God--and is the sound of muscles being gently but confidently flexed.

This is clearly a personal project following a specific template, tailored to Alison’s own passions, and is all the better for it.

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

When Julie’s Haircut get it right, they really get it right. ... By contrast, some of the Can-like vocal tracks are slightly less successful, the hushed chant of The Fire Sermon rendering the music repetitive without quite managing to capture the groove it hints at.

Chalice Hymnal is Grails’ kinkiest record to date but that doesn’t mean there ain’t an underlying poignant melancholy to their chameleonic offerings, just like that sadness behind the eyes of the man who’s been carnally distracted from fixing the kitchen appliance.

Dirty Projectors have released their career highlight to date and already one of 2017’s best. Encore surely.

The rebounding sounds that dominate Undying Color have a cumulative effect, and form a kind of aural mist within which the listener can get lost. Charming.

Like Iommi jamming with Bonham, Melvins duo Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover lay down the uncompromising riff-rock they’ve been prolifically perfecting since the 80s. Mars Volta axeman Omar Rodriguez- Lopez is the most muted talent present, resigned as he is to bulldozing basslines, so you’ll find none of his trademark proggy noodling here, which is probably for the best. And Gender Bender? Her fierce vocal dexterity channels the spirits of Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Plant, KatieJane Garside, Donita Sparks and even Russell Mael.

Farrar’s a reluctant figurehead for the down there and downtrodden. There are no gilded towers here, no tyrannies of elitist plutocrats, just the open highway and a ride in an old boneshaker with an engine leaking hopes and dreams.

A piledriver of a set, but it pulls you into his world.

Alex Nieto, the story of a police shooting of an innocent man in San Francisco in 2014 closes the album with a fire that recalls an on-form Neil Young. Described by Prophet as his first protest song, it concludes an often exhilarating album.

The texture of the more desolate songs, like Pegasi, the Americana-tinged Simon Says and the folky gospel of Songs Of Old is where the soul of the album seems to really reside, but when the two sides of Hoop’s talent come together, as on Unsaid, it has a magic all of its own.

If ever a record sounded like a herd of elephants, this is it.

It’s only on standout track, Kangaroo, that you could at any point pigeonhole PVT’s latest sound (in this instance, club banger). The remainder is far too elusive, a fusion of too many elements. Not confused, just produced in confusing times.

Unsurprisingly, Noveller has scored many films in the process of building her voluminous catalogue; out on her own, but playing a subtle role in realigning 21st century music.

While it’s probably a good thing that the rest of record isn’t quite as intense as that [Waiting On My Horrible Warning], the 11 songs that follow remain a deliberately overbearing barrage of droning, snarling and unrelenting noise punk.

Brasher, younger-sounding than the band’s previous records, but with the hard-won wisdom that experrience brings.

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.

Life Will See You Now won’t disappoint the devoted. Pop pleasures are myriad.

The thing is, by Adams’ standards, too many of the songs sound slightly underwritten.

Ty Segall itself reveals--even more so than Emotional Mugger and Manipulator before it--a willingness to park the DIY or garage rock tag, however momentarily.

The mixing of the waters, swirling around Merritt’s pure, soaring vocals, produces a record that’s elegant and intelligent, only country in the same way that Emmylou’s own later work (think Wrecking Ball) could be said to be.

A somber experience to the very end then, Piano Magic’s message--and sound--remains unsettling for the uninitiated. But there’s always warmth there, and when lounged in for long enough, it puts the chills to bed with some finality.

Words surface out of the swirling maelstrom, an occult ritual within the architecture, another tone adding to mood, but always subservient to the texture, which sweeps from the muscular to the persuasively melodic.

Minor Victories have torn apart their debut to uncover something more considered underneath. But apart from that, it’s a brilliant listen.

42 minutes of rewarding new music for those who still believe.

“I’ve got nothing left to say but that’s alright,” he sings in Sunday Morning Feeling, but the 13 intense, joyous tracks here suggest otherwise.

2017 could be the perfect time for Alabama 3 to bust out of their long-surviving cult status. This is the LP to do it.

In short, this compact collection is all quite interesting, and the Rashad Becker mastering makes it sound appropriately big, but it’s essentially one for the black turtleneck crowd, and sports soberly black artwork in order to ram the point home.

Hook-laden choruses and seismic riffs don’t feature heavily in the Fufanu sound--and nor should they. Like The Rapture before them, their sound is one of influences absorbed subtly.