This new album's skinny-jeaned funk, Arctic Monkeys have stayed close to the spirit of their debut's title while minimizing its excess at the same time.

So while softer and more empathetic the band isn’t quite tamed yet; On Oni Pond is a Man Man album through and through, delivering an occasionally bizarre and fantastical look at the very real human condition.

Taken as a whole, The Electric Lady is a convincing argument for the virtues of micromanagement, but some of the most powerful, tender moments come from acknowledging limits.

Count Coming Apart as another fascinating step in that journey, and Body/Head’s musical path as one that she and Nace will hopefully follow for a long time.

It’s an adventurous, impressive display of instrumental can-do, a music nerd’s romp through high-fidelity magic that’s only occasionally hampered by insipid writing.

It's remarkable that an album with so much fast, dynamic percussion still has such a lugubrious pace, which makes all the sharp details drift by in an indistinct mass.

The album falters in spots because of the disparity of its urges. Age Against the Machine seems to want to ease Cee-Lo back into the Goodie Mob’s world while not-so-gently tugging them into his.

In total, Stitches is exactly the sort of Americana record that can act as antidote for what’s happening in the genre right now.

Kiss Land sounds every bit as isolated and singular as Tesfaye feels.

This is a genuinely sincere, silly, joyous record that seems difficult to actually look down at. What it sometimes lacks in heavy groove and get-down raunch it makes up for in sheer enthusiasm and unpredictability.

They feel like the pieces that stuck to the wall when he threw everything at it.

There's a propulsive quality to much of the beat-oriented Pain, but there remains a relative sense of privacy.

Rado might be derivative, but at least there’s an admirable consistency to his prodigious output.

This is the sound of musicians confident in their legacy and what they can do with it.

Somehow, The Worse Things Get is Case’s tightest record and also her strangest. With its off-kilter arrangements and eccentric turns of phrase, it’s a world unto itself.

All songs on Repave begin quietly and almost none stay that way for long, so when those crescendos hit, you’re supposed to envision waves crashing on cold, barren outcroppings, white mist spraying as seabirds take majestic flight.

Surrounded is polished and persuasive enough that everyone should give it a try.

Its fusion of Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones paisley pop and Spectorian pomp pushes Khan and the Shrines beyond their usual JBs jones, but the album’s title speaks to a burgeoning social consciousness.

On Forever, Holograms take lofty themes and personal trials and make them a communal experience.

John Wizards is, to paraphrase the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss' opinion on animals, "good to think with." But that won't make people want to listen to it. What will is its hip diversity, sunny disposition, and the fact that Withers never asks more of his audience than he's willing to give: A man of contract, he puts his clients first.

Perhaps when performed live these songs will accrue the desperation and dynamism their studio versions lack, but for now The Silver Gymnasium too often makes the act of remembering sound like a consequence-free undertaking, as though certain horrors are too far in the past to do us much harm in the present.

For every circuit-overloading workout like “Copy of A” and “Disappointed”, there are a number of tracks where Reznor reverts to the teeth-gnashing angst of old without the pig-marching blitzkriegs to back it up, applying undue pressure on the the songs’ brittle structures.

At 45 minutes it's shorter than Penance Soiree, but lacks its concision and punch, at times wading a little too deeply into the indulgent waters of burdened, discordant blooze.

Instead of reclaiming the past, they've pooled their resources to create a new present.

Truth is, it usually works the other way; next to this rich, peculiar music, Nicolaus' reticence to reveal too much leaves Golden Suits' story feeling a little unfinished.

It sounds quite good, another weird and sloppy record from a guy who released a lot of them. And hearing it again with all the fantastic music that surrounded it, music that further cements Dylan’s Bootleg Series as one of the most important archival projects in modern pop history, it remains a beguiling artifact.

His vision of how to build bridges between his own music and the music others is already his own, and Mon Pays puts it on brilliant display.

As a box set, Higher really does reinforce how creatively rich a band Sly & the Family Stone were, while making it seem almost unbelievable that their peak only lasted seven years and seven albums.