A visceral and intriguing record, and one that doesn’t always gel, but it at least stands by it’s own convictions.

Songs to Play is a quiet success, maybe not as quiet as it seems at first, but operating with a definite modesty and restraint. It’s a record that takes some playing before its warbly charms come clear, but it’s worth the time.

It sounds, at times, less like a proper shoegaze act and more like a memory of one: the hooks as pronounced, but with an ineffable dreamlike quality thrown in, less something quantifiable than something to be experienced. Thankfully, this is an album that both satisfies and mystifies; both are welcome qualities.

The music can sometimes obscure the words, with only snippets allowing themes of love, loss and solitude to creep into the listener’s consciousness.... Have You in My Wilderness is another arresting album by an equally arresting artist, one who is clearly at the forefront of the global avant-pop scene and will be for some time.

Stepping gingerly and keeping balanced in precarious places, Wald is a cat. It’s as pleasing as a purr.

With Ones and Sixes they’ve pulled together many of their disparate sides in a masterful survey of what makes them one of the great rock bands of their era.

Far from being an emperor’s new clothes situation, it simply feels like the band is settling into a sound built for endurance rather than excitement.

Despite the album’s disparate material, it has a lulling cohesiveness. All the songs, wherever they come from, feel like they have been reimagined at the same volume and tempo and in the same wistful ambience.

If you can get past the non-audiophile recording, there’s some great music here.

It meanders stylistically all over the map, but unites all those styles in a pounding, obliterating “Bristol Road Leads to Dachau”-style drum beat that punches you right in the soft tissues.

Ultimately, however, too many of these tracks, whilst foundationally strong, don’t linger much in the memory. The Neo-Realist (At Risk) remains the strongest aspect whilst the singles and outtakes feel more like filler. As such, Artificial Dance feels more like a beguiling curiosity than a lost masterpiece of American post-punk. And yeah, those Eno and Byrne and Talking Heads similarities are a bit problematic at times.

This is Frog Eye’s most elegantly structured, premeditated, composed album ever. It is also miraculously, unexpectedly the band’s best to date.

There are innovative and fresh beats and voices, and the record rarely falters.

Piteous Gate is an absorbing listen front to back.

It’s the kind of album you can listen to many times without wearing it out, without even getting much of a grip on why you like it.

Lost Time is a spiritual statement, executed through but not limited by drum kits, and it works towards revelation.

Eleventh Dream Day are living in the moment, and they have never sounded madder than they do on Works for Tomorrow. They also sound, on their own terms, quite superb, and not at all like they’re trying to keep the past alive.

Given that everything here is a like a jam from musicians suspicious of jamming, the charms and defects are like a whole album of B-sides.

The band’s mechanics are becoming more masterful, with Marian Li Pino’s drums particularly boosted on this outing.

Skeleton Closet is like a good novel, full of implications and shadowy contradictions and complexities. It’s pop craftsmanship with a touch of vertigo, an uneasy sense that something dangerous resides underneath.

There’s nothing bombastic about it, but it’s large in a way that folk-picking seldom is, and it fills every inch of a sonic landscape.

It’s the wholeness of his style that is so arresting.

Soothing but subversive, Green Lanes is never quite as easy as it seems. You could hear it as the perfect summer record, but if you listen to it carefully, it’s a bit more than that.

Wolfe’s act appears, from a distance, to dare that kind of cheap easy success without succumbing to its tastelessness or disposability. Abyss wins that bet across all of its 11 songs, steering close to the simple release of power chorded, full-throttle choruses but often withholding complete release.

Pain isn’t a record you need to dwell on in order to understand.

I Am All Your Own could be mistaken for a depressing and soul-searching breakup record if it weren’t so beautifully calm and thematically ambivalent.

There’s actually a groove there, however, and Author & Punisher’s lot is to never give in to the base aesthetics of speed or pummel. Instead, Melk En Honing explores every corner of sub-doom tempo, with occasional detours into extreme melody and harmony buried deep enough to avoid comparison to Alice In Chains and neo-doom sweethearts Pallbearer.

It is the first album he ever recorded in a studio, and both the clarity of the recording and the precision of the performances betray considerable effort spent getting it right.