A solid addition to the canon, but not quite a classic.

With a disc including live outtakes and priceless B-sides, this is an essential collection.

You want depth, originality, surprises? Look elsewhere. But as the rock equivalent of comfort food, they don’t disappoint.

Much of We Can Do Anything, their first album since 2000 and following on from last year’s Happy New Year EP, is a breezy return to what they do best: acoustic folk-punk with ragged edges, held together by Gano’s ear for a ringing melody and delivered like a peculiarly skittish Lou Reed.

On the evidence of Painkillers, Fallon doesn’t really need the backup of a regular band. With this debut he’s placed his stake as an American singer-songwriter of style and substance.

Chaosmosis is not an explosive comeback, but it does at least contain flickers of the band’s lysergic disco-punk magic.

While the results haven’t got the near-reckless zeal of the young Yorn’s records, the sense of longing reflects the broken-down feel--strumming acoustic guitars, the light thrum of a snare--of some of the material he was writing back in the early 2000s.

Not everything here grabs the attention first time around: the Anthrax of today often favour a slow burn to a startling slap. But as a cohesive and dynamic whole, For All Kings delivers the goods with swagger and style.

Some of the retro-crooner murder ballads risk straying into cliché, but there are inspired sound-collage experiments here too.

This is beyond immersive; this is music to suffer a cleansing obliteration to.

As the rest of rock scurries to condense its charms into sync-friendly Shazamable nuggets, Britpop pioneers and eternal outsiders Suede slice gloriously against the grain once more with a grandiose semi-concept seventh album that demands to be consumed as a complete piece of art.

It’s Silversun Pickups rolling up their blazer sleeves, plumping their shoulderpads and cruising out of Silver Lake, LA with a fourth album that buzzes like pink neon and rolls like convertible wheels on steaming tarmac.

Sartain ramraids rinky-dink 80s US radio teen romps on the frenetic Black Party. His rare sense of mischief deserves to be encouraged.

On 33 Crows he channels his inner Dylan, giving it lots of nasal drawl. Holy Flame brings things up to date, recalling Dandy Warhols. If you fancy some 60s-centric pop-rock, this might work.

Stockdale’s magpie career continues to show not an inkling of musical mutation. Let’s call it treadmill rock--one man putting a lot of effort into going absolutely nowhere.

X – No Absolutes is the sound of Prong feeling comfortable in 2016; still underground and recognisable as the band who snapped our fingers and necks, but also adding essential modern detail.

Hold On! sounds utterly effortless: an effervescent streak of soul, bossa nova and rumba tunes.

In a different musical climate, the driving No Love Lost, the U2-aping Dance The Night and the beautiful Birds Of Paradise would all be hit singles, but even if The Cult’s commercial heyday is firmly in their rear-view mirror, album number ten is a reminder that they’re gracefully assuming ‘national treasure’ status.

For its place in his canon, the 4 1⁄2 album is a relatively scant 37 minutes of sessions created around the recording of Hand..., and it’s easy to see where the songs might have fitted into the conceptual jigsaw of the original work.

Never mind dig in deep: this is an emotional excavation.

A set of songs whose freshness reflects the spontaneous manner in which they were recorded.

Skunk Anansie find their groove in the album’s latter half with arena-sized anthems like Bullets, a gnarly funk-rock bruiser which erupts into a landslide of guitars and voices.

Not just vast in musical scope, The Astonishing offers an entire Dystopian world of its own, not to mention exhibiting the potential to be an overblown Broadway rock opera, eye-frazzling sci-fi movie and nerd-delighting video game into the bargain.

White Bear, in its expertise and clarity, feels refreshing, like the shock of the new, despite its traditionalism. Better still, you feel they’ve got a lot more in the locker still to come.

Needless to say, this is irresistible stuff that demands to be listened to while twerking in a 70s style (Steve Priest pout on your face; mock-surprise eyes à la the disgraced Gary Glitter).

The fuzzy space rock of Same Hands and Know One Will Ever Know also prick up your ears, bearing testament to a songwriter who never quite fitted in but, for those who took the time to listen, always stood out.

Perhaps The River could have been even better had he used a couple of the outtakes--Restless Nights and Whitetown--in place of fillers such as Sherry Darling and Crush On You. But the two biggest decisions he got absolutely right. In the end, The River was more than big enough.

At three hours-plus, it’s a lot of breadline bluster, but it’s life-affirming nonetheless.