Stewart remains a firebrand intent on creating skull-splintering sounds and society-skewering words.

What Praxis Makes Perfect might lack in fresh musical directions--their percolating analogue-digital pop remains little altered--it makes up for in apposite italophile detail.

Though the album is formulaic and polished, there is enough crackle in its dark, lustrous soundscapes and tales of nocturnal romance to intrigue.

Overlong, and sounding a little like a lot of other things, High Anxiety nonetheless reveals an unexpected talent hidden in plain sight.

No one could ever mistake this band for sonic outliers, even when they hit their distortion pedals, but Walking Like We Do sets the Big Moon up for much bigger, more mainstream things.

It’s a shame that the album overstays its welcome a little. As always, the Casady sisters are best in small, surreal doses.

The mood, set by affectless guitars and minor-key piano, varies little over 10 tracks, but even when contemplating homelessness (on the title track) or foundering relationships (Yes, I Helped You Pack), Ejimiwe feels more at ease in his own melancholy.

The appeal of this latest Cohen live offering hinges on a brace of more rarely performed tracks--Joan of Arc as a too-sweet duet with Hattie Webb; the lyrically dense Field Commander Cohen--sweetened by two new songs and two new covers.

Over the course of the album, however, his mannered delivery grates, turning Ken, with two notable exceptions (Tinseltown Swimming in Blood; Saw You at the Hospital), into a twisted strain of cabaret.

Overall, an enjoyable, imaginative and at times uncanny assault on the senses.

What the album lacks is that corona of curious magic their hero Neil Young calls “the spook”. Fortunately, it doesn’t feel like it’s far away.

English Electric acts as a rejoinder to those who think that synth-pop is best left to the young.

These highs could have been more musically vertiginous and the lows more chasmic. It is a privilege to have them back, but you wish their music had the courage of Gossip’s convictions. Don’t Be Afraid is an epic intentionally trapped in a cheap Casio keyboard: underpowered.

Things are less compelling when the tempo drops, as on the undistinguished Rear View Mirror, but this is a welcome return nonetheless.

These 11 songs balance mainstream appeal (Someone I Don’t Know) alongside an intimate sense of being cocooned with someone who has plenty of worth to impart.

Overall, a mixed bag.

There are lapses in quality control (Jen Cloher cover Fear Is Like a Forest is especially leaden) and they’re rather less sure-footed when they cover each other’s songs--or tackle Belly’s Untogether together. Not the triumph it could have been, then.

Next to this shimmering peak ["Clearest Blue"], a few songs pale in comparison.

[I Forget Where We Were] hangs together well, his David Gray/Damien Rice-like vocals resting on a bed of skittering drums, crafty guitar and fedback chords. Individual tracks take their time to get going (only one song here comes in under four minutes) and numbers such as opener Small Things break after two or three minutes to build back up from a pleasant plod to a sustained fug of sound.

Iglooghost’s formerly punishing BPMs give way to atmospheres and tracks – such as Light Gutter, featuring a female vocalist called Lola – that might be mistaken for actual songs.

Although songs such as Things Don’t Change That Fast favourably recall many doleful US barroom bards, voice and words don’t actually improve Nugent, who packs more lyricism in his fingers than most.

Welsh-language band 9Bach’s third album takes simple elements--Lisa Jên’s ethereal vocals, piano, bass and percussion, harp and hammer dulcimer--and weaves complex patterns.

There are some excellent songs here (Hailstones Don’t Hurt’s atmospheric build-up is a fine example of dreamy folk-pop), though at 14 tracks long, the album could be tighter.

Ultimately, it’s a jarring mix, though Tricky has hit upon something interesting with the Unloved-style desert blues of Like a Stone and Vietnam.

Although the likes of the punchy 1981 and the poppier Suzie Chapstick roll back the years, too many of the songs here sound laboured and/or pedestrian, and there’s a real paucity of memorable material.

Crutchfield rides a middle road here. Same producer yet different band; same sprightly Americana vibe yet more emotionally placid than its predecessor, which recounted a troubled reckoning with her newfound sobriety.

Though nothing on this record gives the impression of being overthought, there’s a familiar strangeness to his songwriting too.

If Insano is to be Mescudi’s musical curtain call, it showcases his capacity to attract big names, without delivering on distinctive songs.