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.