Sleeker, stronger and more confident than ever, on Complete Surrender Slow Club flourish with each strum and every breath.

The finest thing that CSNY 1974 does is serve as a clear snapshot of this band at this extraordinary moment in their lives. It captures the musical excess of the era perfectly, and showcases how the four of them had grown in different directions since they’d first come together a few years earlier.

For the most part, it’s suitably overblown, cocksure and blunt, and still goes some way to capturing the genre's eternal, endearing refusal to grow up. For now, that's reason enough to celebrate their return.

These aren’t drastic alterations to the standard Sia formula, but what you do get is an album with a very specific identity.

What makes a person charming--songwriter or not--is that adaptability to a situation. It’s the sort of malleability we lose as age hardens us or we simply get stuck in our ways. But Eugene McGuinness hasn’t lost it yet.

By completely altering their focus, Wolves in the Throne Room have both carried on the strong tradition of black metal reinvention and proved themselves as composers with a distinct, if not world-changing, voice.

The bloat of Tigers and Postcards is gone without a trace; in its place is the sound of a band that’s slain the AOR dragon and finally got back to making the music they feel like making.

Unfortunately, however, no matter how listenable the latter half of this compilation is, it’s hard not to feel that it’s a shame Cabaret Voltaire abandoned their early abrasiveness as quickly as they did.

Initially overwhelming, Gamel is a gloriously bonkers concoction of flavours that turns out to be extremely delicious indeed.

It is an album which requires patience, which, once granted provides ever increasing rewards.

It’s definitely an accomplished one with plenty to recommend in its sonic traits.

This is music to be experienced, not read about or analyzed for political and sociological meanings.

The rest of the album has its moments, though mainly it seems like a chance for the GusGus gang to showcase what other electrified trickery they can muster.

What we’re left with is an 8/10 EP stretched way past the point of interest, five or six songs in you start knocking half a mark off with every fresh coat of same-old. A worthy idea, but one you’ll rarely reach for twice.

x's first third is not without its issues but there is charm, not to mention the feeling that Sheeran really is trying to raise his game. A pity, then, that the remaining 35 minutes is alternatively as generic and simpering as it gets.

The total lack of sonic subtlety can feel kind of exhausting, on repeated listens, and if you prize music which purports to sound ‘organic’ or similar, this may make you puke blood. If nothing else, though, they’ve made an album which is unlikely to be mistaken for many other bands.

Gioele Valenti and Nicola Giunta have created an album that is not a gale, or a draught; it is an engaging, sonic zephyr.

In its own oblique way, Shaken-Up Versions is the sound of The Knife having fun.

It really is one of the best things he’s ever put his name to.

Once More ‘Round the Sun has lots to recommend it, but it’s a very safe LP that simply doesn’t provide fans with much they won’t have heard before.

There’s no staggering departure from Total Loss, but the backdrop for his soulful R&B crooning is becoming worn-out, and you can feel Krell auditioning replacements.

Love Frequency might not be enough on its own to lift us from the doldrums of EDM--but it’s always refreshing to hear dance music with a human heart at its core.

It’s not a brilliant record, but if there’s good one thing to be said about 48:13, it's that it sounds like a band coming to terms with who they are and who they’re making music for, tossing pretense aside, and concentrating on being themselves.

One or two missteps aside, this is exactly what 9Bach do with Tincian--creating an ambiguous mood piece from fragments of traditional Welsh music and contemporary tension.

Too often you can get a good read on a track in its first few seconds, making moments of genuine surprise a rarity.

The lack of cohesion is not a criticism per se, but rather a recognition that The Air Between Words is not really an album in the classical sense, as its parts are greater than its sum.

It screams often, confused, like the mess that it is.

As an album to invest in, feel sentimental about, or be genuinely thrilled by, Ultraviolence falls short. Take it simply as a sumptuously-presented pop record, though, and you have to wonder if you’ll hear a better one this year.