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.

Most of the stuff is catchy, with full-fat choruses on the excellent Dropping The Needle and Get On Your Knees, and while the rest of the album doesn’t push out any envelopes it offers up an energy-packed good time.

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.

Insular, yes, but in being laid bare it speaks with a strong purpose.

Sonically, it boasts richer textures than recent albums, thanks largely to the pair’s expanded touring line-up playing a greater role in the studio; a more fleshed-out sound than the occasionally irritating minimalism of yore. Arguably, the decision to beef up the instrumentation is designed to bring heft to the lyrics’ serious topics, even though the band are, as ever, likely to be preaching to the choir.

While Calexico have been bridging their influences and styles for long enough to be able to take risks, never letting an overriding mission statement cloud an album’s quality, here the foot is ever so slightly let off the gas, and the breathing space allows gems to be uncovered.

A third of the way in, there’s a sequence of up-tempo dreampunk numbers harbouring brattier attitudes and melodies of a more generically slapdash nature, at which point this reviewer’s notebook became overly burdened with ditto marks. The quality picks up later with a couple of shimmering near-ballads. As far as power duos go, that’s not a bad ratio and it certainly beats those impotent hacks known as The Black Stripes or The White Keys or whatever they were called.

Urgent, uncompromising, intelligent--Stick In The Wheel are the bristles on the clean broom the UK folk scene badly needs.

While its beauty may be a bit abstract for some, Mother is intense without being dark or oppressive; timeless, a windswept, life-affirming work that makes more conventional music seem stale and staid by comparison.

Tight drums that bring The Smiths to mind hold the whole thing down, as guitars and bass sparkle, their counterpoint (not to mention reverb applied with a trowel) creating a comic-book cool atmosphere throughout. Throw a few saxes into the mix and you’ve got yourself a vintage-yet-modern rock’n’roll classic.

While many elements of the 10 “love songs” on Mount Qaf are competent, deftly crafted efforts betraying a lifetime of attention paid to such things, any Walkmen magic is rarely present.

If you sometimes miss Tigers’ unruly improv-tumult, the pay-off is an album of poised beauty with its own pocket-universe logic, exemplified by the softly searching communion of synthetic/organic sounds on Marsh Chorus.

The emotional climax of The Little Things That Give You Away is one of several moments that promise more than the album as a whole can deliver.

As anyone cognisant with the likes of Tuff Life Boogie, Putta Block and Butterflies 4 Brains already knows, these discs aren’t without their misfires, but when doubled with their respective A-side partners, the likes of No Bulbs, Wings, Lucifer Over Lancashire and Brix’s majestic LA all lend their weight to the argument that--regardless of their chart positions--The Fall are long overdue recognition as one of the great British singles bands of the past 40 years.

These eight experimental tunes combine the old and the new, but funnel the former through the latter to such an extent there’s very little distinction between them. It’s an approach that’s much more successful on the shorter tracks here.

While there isn’t anything here that leaps out with quite the immediacy of Dunn slam-dunks such as Face The Nation, everything has the assured touch of a master, and will undoubtedly re-establish Dunn among the sea of young pretenders currently working in this zone.

He breathily conjures up memories of the excellent recent Anohni album, and drops an ominous-sounding male voice choir into the mix for good measure. The industrial vibes are there in the rhythms, but softened immensely by clean Scandi strings. One to keep an eye on.

From Wanna Sip’s opening videogame blitzkrieg to the Blade Runner drones of Mustn’t Hurry, Plunge is a complete thrill.

While there’s plenty of thrilling rock’n’roll here, his faith also gives us some flat-out gorgeous moments.

Wherever you turn, exuberance and invention are generously served.

Pinballing between modern fright and fervent fight, I Can Feel You... exults in the thrill of self-determined discovery.

Tthis dark horse of a debut isn’t just vastly superior to most of the recycled indie landfill swilling around--it’s one of the most emotionally-charged guitar-based debuts to be unleashed over the past 12 months.

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

By its very nature, RTVD is eclectic, and there is an obvious element of hit or miss to contend with. The sequencing isn’t fantastic, and the compilation does lose focus at times. It does however do what it sets out to do; it explores, and gives a good sense of the ways in which African-American music of the late 60s and 70s splintered off in different directions and absorbed outside influences.

At their best, Garrie’s songs are tender, well-observed vignettes of a life well travelled, mostly on dusty French roads with a bar at the end. At their not-so-best, Garrie’s lyrics are more than a touch hokey (the quite frankly awful Boy Soldier) while the jauntier back bar numbers (Bacardi Samuel) are for Francophiles only. The Moon & The Village is destined to again divide punters and purists. One for fans new and old it is.

This is a great place to start--and possibly to end.

What strikes you as the cast of thousands run through the Guthrie repertoire on these three discs is just how singable they were--Woody played fast and loose with his melodies, but his words still score and sear.

All Together Again proves to be a warm and diverse collection of mostly unreleased pieces for a series of commissions over the last 10 years.