PUP’s ability to enliven a tired genre with an abundance of ideas and exuberance is a small but exceptional feat.

The scattergun concept inevitably results in a broad range of styles and not all of them are entirely successful. ... Still, the above are minor quibbles, as the bulk of the album is a gorgeous concoction of disparate inspirations finding hitherto elusive homes. The guests get their works in progress nailed by an esteemed craftsman, while Rundgren himself, a man with a partial history of self-sufficiency bordering on the behaviour of a control freak, sounds reinvigorated by allowing others into his world.

A really gorgeous record, and well worth seeking out.

The result is a beguilingly inquisitive album, its meanings and methods nurtured into rich, sun-blushed blooms.

One of this set’s major strengths lies in the equal space given to fleeting names who made their statements then vanished.

Once more riotous than riot grrrl, Luscious Jackson return as a welcome blast of old school New York grit, happily still brandishing their smouldering, idiosyncratic magic.

Stewart hasn’t deviated from his love of pop music history. He understands its nooks and crannies as well as its hooks and melodies and handles them with reverent care.

A record that’s strongest when at its most unassuming.

Imagine: The Ultimate Collection is a fascinating snapshot of an artist if not quite in his imperial phase, then certainly at his most searching. From the new stereo remix down to the outtakes and an audio documentary pieced together from candid interviews with friend and DJ Elliot Mintz, we’re offered an exhaustive look at Imagine from all angles.

Live At The Cellar door could have been a consolidation of the year’s achievements for Neil, instead it’s proof that he couldn’t stay still.

Expands Pigs’ palette further.

Amid all the proto-ambient wash is much soul and even funk, albeit of a lo-fi variety.

Producer Glyn Johns captures a laconic, organic vibe throughout, aided by such top-notch players as Ryan Adams, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, on an album that oozes good taste and effortless class.

The results are very pleasing indeed, from the mean faith-bating blues of Face Of God to the howling prairie wisdom of Wind Don’t Have To Hurry, the nononsense declaration of love, Marlene, to the hobo jazz of the title track.

Produced by David Foster, it’s largely tremendous fun, even if the path on which it walks is rather well worn.

Melancholy without being depressing and intensely dramatic, De Biasio proves here on this superlative nine-song collection that No Deal was no fluke.

Suddenly is at its best when blending head, heart and feet to make another smart party album – among Caribou’s best yet.

The sigh of relief provoked by Doom Or Destiny morphs into a mile-wide smile as Pollinator unfurls some of the most resonant music Blondie have recorded during their second phase.

It’s a record to fall in love with.

It is a salve, and a beautiful, mysterious thing, which doesn’t necesarily need to be anything more than a beautiful, mysterious thing, however many hours of labour and technical nous have been spent crafting it.

It could run the risk of being a bit of a patchwork in its revolving styles and cast of five vocalists, but it works perfectly in being an ensemble creation that taps into a hazy nostalgia vibe.

After a handful of stirring ballads set to create further communal festival experiences, Here Is Everything peaks with Magic, golden funk worthy of Odelay-era Beck. The album cover depicts singer Jules Jackson during her pregnancy: her band have given birth to something magical here.

There’s a gleefully brash use of whatever’s at hand that recalls the one-man-band approach to his solo debut, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, but American Interior is also a far better exploration of Americana than Super Furry Animals’ Love Kraft turned out to be.

Rattle That Lock is a small, intimate album that maintains Gilmour’s impeccably tasteful quality threshold throughout.

Love Is Magic feels like three shredded albums spliced back together. But it’s nutritious, colourful and occasionally funeral-level mournful, an emotional pick’n’mix that, by its very nature, increasingly repays revisits.

Ultimately, it may not include anything that will endure as long as some of his Wings classics, let alone the Fabs’, but it’s a powerful and persuasive album from a man whose innate knack for melody is still firing.

This is very grown-up pop music; awash with the memorable hooks and lyrical dexterity we’d expect from Costello, with layer after layer of fascinating melodic conceits and themes.

The predictability of Alone In The Universe is its strongest suit, these are all cast-iron songs that will sit on an ELO retrospective beamed down from that spaceship in 10538 and nobody would imagine they were released 40 years after their golden age.

In short, if you collect Jansch you won’t regret investing in these for a second. If you’re new to him, you’ll find a musical universe opening before you.

It all adds up to reaffirm that The Unthanks are among the most quietly accomplished groups around.

All This I Do For Glory is a triumph of ingenuity, a genuinely experimental work that echoes with the multi-faceted cries of the human soul.

Cooper ventures further out, navigating abstract naval routes plotted by lonely hearts and plagued by daydreams, his tides of burbling static and deftly deployed lap-steel influenced by the solitary missions of real-life sea salts such as Vital Alsar and William Willis, their adventures a certain metaphor for Cooper’s own singular musical path.

Feels Like A New Morning is an apt title, because verve and a freshly recovered confidence seep from the Blow Monkeys’ eighth studio set.

Ones And Sixes sees Low churning out some of their most accessible work, with What Part Of Me having the potential to be an unlikely hit. As ever, strong stuff in every way.

Happily, it’s been worth the wait as Silver Bullets is fresh, exhilarating and the most essential Chills LP since the critically acclaimed Submarine Bells.

As it stands, Reflektor is Arcade Fire’s most diverse and sonically interesting work to date.

He’s still doing his thing but goes deeper when he digs (It’s A Jungle Out There’s litany of modernity’s failings), he’s more wicked when he picks a target (white privilege on Brothers), and is still pushing the boundaries of his craft (all of it).

On new album Daylight, Black’s voice is often less strident than it used to be, though she can still raise the roof in the chorus of songs like Pass The Power. She’s as fearsomely committed as ever, but there’s an agreeably lush sheen over the band’s blend of ska, reggae and pop.

While few would suggest that there’s material here rivalling Bowie’s 70s peak, there are more than enough elegant, standout moments. You may not exactly fall in love with it, but you’ll certainly strongly admire the work here.

Goin’ Platinum, meanwhile, places him in Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio with his house band--comprising guitarist Duane Eddy (yes, that one) plus Memphis Boys Gene Chrisman and Bobby Woods--and the results elevate his work even higher.

What they do well, they do here in spades, and the new experiments come off as more than memorable.

The overall sense of experimentation arguably makes Dizzy Heights Finn’s most surprising and accomplished release since Crowded House’s Together Alone, the work of confident tunesmith daring to stretch himself.

Raw and unfiltered, Invitation oozes with the exuberant energy of an 18 year-old, but shines with their collective experience, delivering heavy strikes to both the head and heart in the process.

There are times when Music Complete seems like the result of a newly passionate group’s desire to squeeze a decade-worth of ideas--and another quarter century of influences--onto one album. That said, it’s still their best work since the age of Republic.

What Mind Over Matter does exceptionally well is meld the playful and the cynical while always bringing it back to the songs--in both a lyrical and musical sense.

Like all Los Lobos albums this owes little to anything else, the band single-mindedly going their own way--and getting away with an extraordinary collection.

There’s much to pore over here, including two full live sets from 1984 and the experimental patchwork collection Gasoline In Your Eye. Get ready to have your earth shaken.

While you couldn’t say Inside The Rose goes beyond the furthest reaches of moments such as V (Island Song), from its predecessor, neither does it play things safe. Newcomers may feel that elements of Kate Bush circa Hounds Of Love or Hansa Studios-era Depeche Mode provide reference points, yet nevertheless, a track such as Beyond Black Suns is nothing but pure TNP: overlapping motifs, doom-laden beats, interweaving vocal lines and a song that resolves nothing, but does so with the utmost confidence.

Finn senior’s prescient lyrics, sugarcoated with melody for ease of delivery, help make Dreamers Are Waiting both tart and timeless.

More of the same then, maybe, but if it sounds this rich, just keep ’em coming Charles. Dues paid.

Humanz’s flaw is what gives it its energy: like the scattered flashes of (mis) information flying out from every handheld and household device, the album throws it all at you in one gloriously delirious barrage that has no real anchor. Richly energised and energising, it’s not only infectious for the listener.

Live... never drags, remaining furious throughout.

Pylon is propulsive, girder-heavy and demands to be played loud. But like the best of their oeuvre, from early single Requiem to last album MMXII, it features chord progressions of intense melodic beauty like glimmers of the divine shining through the depths of hell.

Opener Let’s Make Out begins with 60s-style, chorused “whooos” before Mjöll (imagine Karen O with Björk vowels) urges us to have a snog, embracing you in a hook so strong you may well find strangers puckering up. That of the blissful, blistering Fire is even harder to escape, while Love Without Passion is a sweet hymn to a pure, non-sexual deep connection. Whatever their mood, Dream Wife are a band to fall for.

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.

A mixed (body) bag it may be, but Danse Macabre is a fiendishly fun collection that only the undead would remain unmoved by.

So it’s an album that demands your attention.

Torres apparently took five years out of recording between his debut and this album, and it feels like he’s matured, honed himself in that time, producing a most considered beauty.

For the most part, however, [Bob Dylan's] contributions feel like a step down from the level of those of his former bandmates, emphasising just how far they had come.

That this is a good album should surprise no one; that she managed to make it at all is another matter.

Fittingly, Central Belters ends on the monstrous My Father My King, the band at their most uncompromising and vital.

That this is a subtle and seamless love note to music, rather than a case of too many cooks speaks volumes for the man at the helm.

The re-ordered track list reflects what had been noted in the MPL archive. At first it may seem like another money grab, before steadily, something rather beautiful emerges.

They’ve now created an album which towers above the nostalgia market which could easily have been their fate.

It’s a refined downer, enriched by self-lacerating wit (I Only Smoke When I Drink), indie-boy piss-takes (Sleeperbloke), story-song skills (unwanted-pregnancy tale Johnny (Have You Come Lately)) and briefly off-guard touches of synth-pop wistfulness (Big Blue Moon).

Wherever you listen, Ruins pairs tough truths and tender melodies with tremendous expressive punch, from the piercing self-investigations of the title-track to Hem Of Her Dress, where heartache and rage merge with raucous honesty. Meanwhile, Nothing Has To Be True hews beauty from transformative circumstance.

While the album is relatively low-key and meandering, that’s arguably what we want from The Orb--and hence it might just be the one you’ve been waiting on from them for 20 years.

Through its folksy acoustic front, Vol 1 brims with passion.

Winter has a distorted, almost industrial grind, fitting incongruously with an uplifting chorus, but saving the best for last, closer After Something is a rather beautiful ballad.

Arguably superior, its confident follow-up The Knowledge is again enriched with songs relating to Difford and Tilbrook’s old stamping grounds.

From the heartfelt rhumba of I Don’t Wanna Be Without You and the title track – the perfect showstopper for the Harlem Square Club crowd--to Blisters, a captivating shuffle, and How Long, a going back to church blues, every song’s a winner.

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.

Vol 2’s serrated guitars, sawdust vocals, tipsy piano and sardonic wit are a scalping delight, while still tapping reserves of tender beauty for Jumpstarting and Pulse.

The leaping chorus of Exile Rag’s hysterical country-rock, Jon Spencer-ish juke-joint holler of Belmont (One Trick Pony), the Dylan-indebted Slice & Delta Queen and fell-off-a-barstool theatre of Fake Magic Angel are vivacious vagabond story-songs with vim and character to spare. A colourful cast of wayward angels and thrill-seeking beatniks populates their fringes vividly.

The results, mixed by Foster, are a broken, heady collage of cracked reflection and ramshackle cabin confessional. Acoustic ballads such as Soy Un Hombre are draped in luminous opiated frazzle, while The Whores Above recalls the most melancholy Alex Chilton psyche-trawl, reaching a desolate low on funereal closer The Knife.

Wrangler make vibrant, organic electronic music that respects the genre’s history while turning a fresh page.

The bonus disc corrals the single Pool Hall Richard and the jokey trumpet version of I Wish It Would Rain. Faces didn’t outstay their welcome and never took themselves that seriously.

Seeger has rarely been in better voice, imbuing folk melodies with jazz phrasing on the tender tale of innocence lost, When Fairy Stories End, and the smoky You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are.

How Do You Spell Heaven channels GBV of old.

The overall mood is, ironically, not dissimilar to drifting in and out of consciousness while the TV murmurs in the background, occasionally jolting you awake with a ringing phone or a spray of gunfire.

It all adds up to a bold celebration of difference that feels like an album made for these times of divisive unease.

It is an album, certainly, that carries the magic and surprise that belongs only to strange times, that belongs to this moment completely: a record of the way we saw the world, once, the way it sounded, the way it felt, as we all stood still and watched.

Great vocals are a bit of a given here. The real treat is in discovering just how eclectic Gargoyle has turned out to be.

Whatever’s ailing him, he cuts through the murk for his most confident, affecting and clear-sighted album yet here.

A fine addition to a weighty catalogue already packed with duets.

Not since The Smiths or Pulp had an indie band so keenly evoked and vivisected the spectacle of lubricious, learned masculinity at large. On this final hurrah, they sound like the last of a dying breed.

Though a snapshot of a still-embryonic Fugazi, First Demo remains a formidable statement of intent.

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.

The thing about Mulcahy is that he can try on all of these voices and it never once feels contrived, the sensitivity of his readings means you believe in him. That, along with the quality and variety of songwriting makes Possum a rare gift.

Standards Vol IV will get deserved airplay thanks to its electronic take on classic pop (from Bacharach and The Beach Boys to early Harry Nilsson) but hidden in all that sunshine and heartache is a progression from a sound that once so defined them. Standard? Above standard, more like.

It pulses with synths and electronic soundscapes overlaid by harp and violin, as if the early, experimental Pulp re-emerged as an electro Velvet Underground.

Taken at a meditative, reflective pace, it’s a dense, magisterial record, but there’s always space for Fay’s humble, declamatory “alternative gospel” ruminations.

The duo’s drone-driven proclivities loosen these tunes from their secular shackles, freeing them from the earthly confines of time and place.

Songs like Fire Burn and Close The Door show the band still have a passionately political edge, and Bounce is a worthy addition to their canon.

Second LP Seems Unfair offers the kind of melodic prowess, lyrical wit, sensitivity and social awareness that harks back to the days of Felt, Hefner and The Smiths with the band capable of effervescent, wonky guitar attacks more in keeping with the early material of Stateside benchmarks Weezer, Pavement and more recently, Waxahatchee.

Four Stones is not quite as immediate as his previous collection, but McPhee’s work is remarkably underrated and all well worth hearing.

In attempting to circumvent the human mind, Everything Everything have found their heart, and made their finest album yet.

It’s warm, rewarding and a very, very comfortable listen. And therefore definitely not pysch.