With Total Depravity, though, they’ve stepped up a level--with co-producer El-P ushering in psych synth squelches and creepy gospel (the epically titled Do Your Bones Glow At Night) and on the magnificent Low Lays The Devil a vintage blues squal equal to the Black Keys.

Produced by Deap Vally and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s guitarist Nick Zinner, Femjism drags the band forward into a brave new future while keeping their mean, sexy, muscle-bound rock’n’roll snarl fully intact. A real blazer.

Each track is a short story, a beautifully composed snapshot of a moment in a life, all set to choruses masterfully crafted to slot in alongside the radio-rock classics of the 1980s.

Springsteen has previously alluded to this [early] period of his career, albeit in the roundabout manner of fashioning songs (most notably on The River) inspired by the music he heard blaring out of jukeboxes in his youth. Similarly, formerly he has addressed feelings of emptiness and disillusionment on self-reflective songs such as Two Faces or 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On), although sat in front of a computer screen he has less recourse to clumsy metaphor.

The Crystals, Ramones, Blondie, Television, The Strokes, The Walkmen and the Friends theme all feed into Never Enough, their suave, glitter-ball garage pop debut, full of synapse-shagging surf punk melodies like Summertime, In Our Blood and I Don’t Wanna Live In California.

VDGG’s fourth album since they became a trio in 2007, Do Not Disturb is every bit as strange, angular and unpredictable as anything the band did in the 70s.

While nothing on this album will replace anything from Doolittle or Surfer Rosa in your affections, bangers such as Classic Masher and Um Chagga Lagga detonate with a palpable sense of fun that leaves you in no doubt who the authors are and that it’s a better album than Trompe La Monde.

The pair celebrate the (literal) tracks that made America, but also lament the railroad’s decline with tenderness on Jean Ritchie’s The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore.

The USA in the year of Trump, though, has inspired Drive-By Truckers to make this lacerating denunciation of the state of their nation, which stands right up there with Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and their own best work.

Live At The Hollywood Bowl is back, with new mixes by Giles Martin that sharpen the sound but don’t ditch the screams, plus extra tracks, including a wonderful I Want To Hold Your Hand. The great lost Beatles album just became the essential new Beatles album.

A mad, florid knockout. Strength through absurdity.

If Bowie gave Hunter the confidence to steer Mott through the hits that started with Honaloochie Boogie and opened up his solo career, the trials and tribulations of the subsequent 42 years have put him in a solid position to dish out sage advice and put cockier elements in their place, which he does on the opening That’s When The Trouble Starts and closing Long Time.

If you want progression, look elsewhere. Here is ‘just’ another routinely radiant TFC album.

Dense, rich and deeply rewarding.

A near-constant crisis of confidence isn’t always the best character trait for a rock’n’roll singer, but this Devon power(ish) trio make it work on their solid debut album.

Chunky but not over-egged at 14 tracks, Bury Me In My Boots is packed with honed tunes, new ideas and loveable old tricks.

Crucially, radioactive classics such as Blood Red River, Weird Love, Atom Bomb Baby, Swampland and their psychobilly spray-job on Jonathan Richman’s She Cracked still sound vital and audaciously genre-crushing. The Scientists well deserve this Mount Rushmore of a set.

California collects 14 hook-drenched punk-pop barnstormers that both reflect nostalgically on their youthful vigours (Bored To Death, Kings Of The Weekend, San Diego) and revisit them impressively (Teenage Satellites, No Future).

As with any compilation, it’s never entirely clear how much clearance from publishers impacts on the criteria for inclusion, but there are rare treats to be mined here.

It’s all smart stuff, but presented with tunes that hook into your brain. They’ve lost none of their spark in the 34 years since their debut, and have the edge on bands half their age.

If shiny, groovy, melodic, finger-snapping, guitar-led pop-rock is your tipple, you’ll want to guzzle down Washed Away in one.

All things considered, Lady In Gold is a more satisfying listen than its predecessor, with a host of truly great moments.

A fine album that’s more imaginative than reimagining.

Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel is full of things we’ve become accustomed to over the band’s previous three albums: psychedelic trippiness, carefree country-soul, swampy southern rock rolled out under a baking California sun. Yet it’s also wonderfully loose and instinctive.

By-the-book, yes, but still a page-turner.

We’re All Somebody From Somewhere sounds like an album conceived as a therapy project, one in which all the interesting corners of Tyler’s persona have been neatly rounded off. There’s no pizazz, very little spirit, not much sparkle and no sex.

Lyrically this has all been done better before, but it does show that Beck is fully engaged with the world. Moreover, Loud Hailer’s often stunning tapestry of vampy rock, funk, Southern blues and wah-wah wizardry proves that all of his considerable faculties are as sharp as they ever were.

Like their 60s albums, it’s a hodgepodge of self-penned songs and songs written by others, with a few vintage rave-ups thrown into the mix--‘mix’ being the operative word for this patchy affair.