Imagine: The Ultimate Collection is a fascinating snapshot of an artist if not quite in his imperial phase, then certainly at his most searching. From the new stereo remix down to the outtakes and an audio documentary pieced together from candid interviews with friend and DJ Elliot Mintz, we’re offered an exhaustive look at Imagine from all angles.

A mischievous balladeer with a spicier bag of ingredients than most folk heroes, Joe Strummer was a one-off. There’s little doubt he left his mark, but his more personal work is perhaps still overlooked in favour of his iconic punk fare. This intriguing set will go some way towards correcting that.

If the thrill of the fight is one answer, The Blue Hour is up to it. Re-energised on all fronts, Suede are in the shape of their lives.

True Meanings is, on the surface, a traditionally introspective singer-songwriter record, but such a reductive description runs the risk of underselling a package that contains some of the most accessible, thought-provoking and downright enjoyable music of his lengthy career. The vibes are resolutely bucolic, embellished just the right amount by a chamber orchestra.

Simon’s song choices weave together to form a narrative on intolerance, the dangers of divisive thinking, impending mortality, the ebb and flow of love, ecological troubles and faith. Where less nimble-minded songwriters might flounder, his literary eye for the minutiae of life stands him in good stead.

Not since Bon Iver’s aforementioned reinvention or even Radiohead’s Kid A have a relatively mainstream band made such an assured volte-face, wilfully pushing their audience away while they revisit, remake and remodel the tension that made them so very precious in the first place. Fierce and beautiful. Low are back.

So, yes, good album, with some obligatory pratfalls, very few longeurs and several quality flashes of the innate melodic gift that, after all, put him precisely where he is. During those best bits, the “he’s 76, after all” qualifier becomes utterly redundant.

They’ve created an album that manages to combine grief, self-loathing and a realisation that life’s better played honest, with a fine-tuned, brutal sound: something like bent sheet metal being hammered straight. Yet it remains listenable, so very listenable.

It took several listens for the potions on Move Through The Dawn to take effect. ... Sometimes, slow burners provide the best flames.

There’s enough going on in the grooves of Smote Reverser to satisfy your psych and/or prog urges for the foreseeable future, let alone in the few months it’ll take Dwyer to follow it up.

A behemoth of a box, The Public Image Is Rotten offers over six hours of PiL brilliance.

It’s both beefier--practically punching you in the face in places--and more nuanced, the vocal harmonies, for instance (in many ways, GNR’s secret weapon--you don’t notice they’re there, until you do), coming into their own. Amping up its already formidable power, the new mix never loses the sense that this was the work of a bunch of scrappy upstarts, while reminding you just how well-constructed Appetite really was. That’s underscored by the bonus material.

Despite the sheer weight of material on offer you’ll struggle to find an inch of fat. With its forward-thinking, deep-searching nature counterbalanced by a natural warmth and populist, groove-heavy approach, it’s another hugely accomplished work by a man whose prolific run of form shows no signs of abating.

Though it’s essentially a finely-crafted guitar pop record, Arthur Buck also finds room for enough angles, quirks and adroitly-employed electronica to keep it interesting and it rarely puts a foot wrong as a result.

In short, it’s another essential compilation of vintage music from the peerless Analog Africa, whose contents should further strengthen Benin’s reputation as one of the African continent’s most important musical centres.

God’s Favourite Customer leaves the over-wrought and possibly over-thought days of Pure Comedy in its slipstream in return for something just that bit purer. True, the fun days of I Love You, Honeybear et al may be gone, but what a sacrifice if this is what we get in return.

It’s bold stuff, but if you were taking any solace that the Trump catastrophe would at least inspire some great art, The Future And The Past serves as Exhibit A.

Babelsberg is ultimately a sorely-needed tonic. Mellow-sounding, but hefting weighty humanitarian concerns on its back, it boasts a you-are-here focus normally only accorded to those who are about to peg it.

The live In Concert/MTV Plugged may lack the obvious, rambunctious energy of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Live/1975-85 and only (subdued) E Street favourites Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Thunder Road feature in the set, but the cheeky obscurity Red Headed Woman and an electric Atlantic City (from Nebraska) still capture Bruce’s magnetism as a performer. ... The remastered LPs sound pristine. ... It makes for a pretty boss bundle.

Lamdin and Fatty have created sympathetic backdrops for the Poets to declaim over: lightly jazz-tinged reggae grooves, dubby production flourishes, spacious arrangements that allow for the Poets’ words to take centre-stage.

Golden Hour is a bedazzled, wide-eyed rush.

It’s clear that Watson has studied the classics, but rather than repeat the past, he’s created something modern, fresh, exciting and potentially classic.

A preoccupied and deeply immersed heart-art journal, graced with discreetly nailed-on band performances while simultaneously worrying away at its own edges.

The Prodigal Son is easily one of the most satisfyingly focused, complete records he’s ever made.

Standards Vol IV will get deserved airplay thanks to its electronic take on classic pop (from Bacharach and The Beach Boys to early Harry Nilsson) but hidden in all that sunshine and heartache is a progression from a sound that once so defined them. Standard? Above standard, more like.

Overall, it’s less of a curiosity than it might look on paper; not so much a departure as it is a confidently mapped-out alternative route.

Only on the opening cut do they attempt anything that could be construed as radical, marrying The Two Sisters, a child ballad with roots stretching back to the 16th century, to a Scottish jig, A Fisherman’s Song For Attracting Seals. It works beautifully, as do all of the following eight tracks, delivered with reverence and entirely free of pretension.

The best moments recall Dan Sartain, a man whose moustachioed fashion victim look Pearson seems to have lifted, but whose freewheeling punk rockacountrybilly essence he hasn’t quite distilled.

Veirs has honed her craft over nine studio LPs, and this album reveals her at the height of her powers--a record that verges on pop, in the same way that a Magnetic Fields record might, though “pop” seems too reductive a term for the layers of artistry at work here.

There’s not much more than half-an-hour of original material here, but there’s a quality to the stories in these songs.

Beautiful Thing’s blend of ambition and emotion shows that Taylor could genuinely make whatever he wants--sometimes that’s the trouble and sometimes that’s the difference. Our loss, our gain.

Evil Spirits is their best work in 35 years, so if you last heard them performing Eloise on Top Of The Pops or haven’t purchased one of their albums since Strawberries, then it’s time to give them another hearing.

Yes, it can be a bit daft, but in all the self-importance is some genuinely free, affecting music. If you’re new to Entourage, jump on in. The water’s groovy.

So, while this represents not exactly business as usual, but definitely still in the office, it does mean Dead Meadow have managed to sustain their identity for over two decades now--comfortably their longest, sludgiest achievement to date.

There’s a nervous energy throughout, as if his whole wide world might collapse at any second. Yet, at the heart of the sonic mayhem is his ever-dependable literacy, a knack for a tidy little phrase that rings with truth above the fuzz and feedback of his guitar.

Occasional MOR slumps aside, most of Resistance comes sharpened by the Manics’ innate extremes of intelligence and instinct, populist extroversion and prickly introspection, melody and over-stretched meter.

A very welcome return.

Serious Miles and Coltrane aficionados will already be familiar with these recordings, no doubt, though the incentive to acquire this fresh iteration sanctioned by the Miles Davis estate is the superlative quality of Mark Wilder’s audio restoration, which makes it hands down the best version to own.

Just one minor grumble: more phin next time, please. That thing cuts through a crowd like a backstage pass.

Harking back to Automatic Midnight and Suicide Invoice more than it resembles its immediate predecessor, this is one electrifying comeback. In short, Jericho Sirens absolutely smokes.

10 are less than two minutes and only one is of any substantial length--the last track and best one. This makes it a slightly stop/start stumbling score, one that never really settles and gets going.

It’s an excellent and cohesive appendix, far preferable to the hotchpotch of remixes sometimes appended to successful albums.

Rewardingly, Cinema buries its snout deep into the trough to root out the goods.

The lust for life evident on the streets of Havana is reflected enthrallingly in an album that looks set to take the Daptone ethos to the world at large.

From the very outset, songs scream with insane ambition.

It’s all very polished, if hardly challenging.

Boarding House is schizophrenic in the extreme. Despite being spawned in said room, later work has over-egged the pudding. While certain sections of songs work, they’re quickly thrown back into a maelstrom of hip-hop drums, Oh Sees squawks, fine gospel vocals from The McCrary Sisters and vintage synths.

A winning melange of tinny disco beats, retro-futuristic textures and layers of synth, it’s by far their most cohesive work to date; in its less inspired moments it feels literally (and presumably intentionally) monotonous, but at its best it’s an immersive, absorbing listen.

It’s all fine enough, but doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression.

The supergroup does actually sound like something from the late 60s Swedish “progg” scene complete with flute toots and floaty vocals.

Without straying too far from the patented funk, soul and jazz peppered with enlightened, literate lyrical bars that have marked his previous four albums, A Work Of Heart seems thoroughly of the moment. There are dexterous rapping performances aplenty, often marked by enlightened sexual politics.

Given the source material, There’s A Riot Going On was never going to be the sonic revolution that Sly & The Family Stone-referencing title might suggest, but it is an invitingly disparate sound collage that will seduce fanboys and newbies alike.

Completing a trilogy alongside 2010’s Valleys Of Neptune and 2013’s People, Hell And Angels (both of which went Top 5 in the US), it’s clear there’s still a hunger for Hendrix’s unheard back pages. Both Sides Of The Sky is arguably the most satisfying meal of the three.

The level of consistency remains high throughout a 14-track running order encompassing the belligerence of Evil Never Dies, and the title track, mid-tempo maulers (Lone Wolf) and epic closer Sea Of Red.

It’s in the contrasts between the overtly camp, the most extreme squelch, and the space afforded to the smoother jams that Mr Dynamite really excels. It’s a success because the vocals, possibly the most blatant things here, are not what remain buzzing in your head after repeated listens. More indelible is the mood, the ambience even.

It’s a real coming of age for them as their songs, emerging from woodshedding sessions with producer Richard Swift in a studio in Rodeo, New Mexico, are spontaneous, immediate and really hit home.

His distinctive approach, with its palpable rock and country elements is indebted more to Bill Frisell than Wes Montgomery.

A mature and complex collection.

Thankfully, while pouring out his soul into three or four-minute measures he never loses sight of his attractive Americana-goes-pop sensibilities, most perfectly realised on Over The Midnight and the title track.

Brigid Mae Power’s 2016 debut was a beautiful, dreamy affair. So is The Two Worlds--but so much better.

If her more country rock-slanted work for Mount Moriah could be read as a measure of that distance from her roots, Lionheart closes the gap. By trawling her Appalachian background’s feelings, beliefs, experiences and details, McEntire has reclaimed country music for her own personality.

Depending on whether or not you’ve encountered him before, this is either an infectious comeback or one seriously charming introduction.

Tracey Thorn is a singular talent, and in a career that spans over four decades she’s achieved much. Record though has set a new benchmark.

With its garage production job, loud tinny drum tracks and an overriding sparseness hanging between each instrument, Drift resembles a very promising demo tape for an album yet to come to proper fruition.

To paraphrase just a touch, post-crash, necessity is very much the mother of inventiveness here. But out of that echoing vastness comes a gentle sense of melody that reveals itself, bit by bit, through repeated visits.

They took their sweet time, but that Breeders line-up is back, and has just nonchalantly knocked it out of the park.

Passionate, eccentric and unafraid of speaking out or baring his ever-beleaguered soul, Moby remains a welcome presence in modern times and certainly does himself no harm with this highly personal statement.

The biggest triumphs lie in the quietly assured orchestration of Body To Flame (a matching mole for Jeff Buckley’s Grace) and the title track, which calls to mind Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era Wilco).

Landfall is a humourous, magnetic, and heart-breaking album, and paved with the kind of pathos that could make even TV’s Mr Tumble feel a little flat.

The erstwhile Felt and Denim frontman, the innately enigmatic Lawrence, is doing his best work right here and right now.

American Utopia is not quite as good as we’d all really love it to be. However, its quality of thought, emotional intelligence and sense of fun is remarkable.

Bereft of freestyle ivory plonks, You’re Not Alone captures WK doing what he does best: that utterly distinctive fusion of metal riffs, Springsteen bombast, pristine ABBA hooks and choruses bigger than Hercules’ biceps.

The King Crimson archive is a thing of genuine wonder: it feels as though there isn’t a single picosecond of their career that hasn’t been somehow preserved, and the meticulous largesse with which this archival cache is curated and packaged sets an intimidating benchmark.

In short, if you collect Jansch you won’t regret investing in these for a second. If you’re new to him, you’ll find a musical universe opening before you.

On her follow-up Cornish dominates and the results are smoother round the edges, more considered, heck, even mature.

Additional keyboards and synths fatten the sound in places without swamping the innate simplicity of the melodies, while guest singer Sarah Jessop brings an ethereal twist to High The Hemlock Grows. Likewise, Janovitz’s daughter Lucy weighs in with a delicious harmony on the reserved cover of Paul Simon’s The Only Living Boy In New York.

Even kids who don’t like rock’n’roll might find this infectious invitation hard to resist.

Not since Space Ritual-era Hawkwind has anyone so successfully combined workboot riffing with the swirling bleeps of the unexplored cosmos. Honestly.

That this is a subtle and seamless love note to music, rather than a case of too many cooks speaks volumes for the man at the helm.

In short, if you collect Jansch you won’t regret investing in these for a second. If you’re new to him, you’ll find a musical universe opening before you.

His band’s music has a stylistic affinity with Glasper’s Black Radio albums, melding jazz, R&B, funk, hip-hop, and neo soul into an unclassifiable hybrid that dissolves musical barriers.

Chris Illingworth’s glistening piano is glacial yet strong and majestic, elegantly floating above the turbulence created by Nick Blacka’s throbbing bass and Rob Turner’s kinetic, febrile drums.

The phenomenal Revolutionary Spirit reveals that while Manchester copped the lion’s share of the critical plaudits during this epochal post-punk period, the quality of Mersey was also second to none.

The result sometimes trips messily over its eagerness, but it’s also a sharp and bright, clever and fresh debut, with good ideas usually on-hand for whenever the intended effect isn’t fully banked.

Comparisons to Cream and early Black Sabbath are not ill-founded, but perhaps a little misleading. The trio’s “rock” aesthetic is made satisfyingly supple by the deft, jazz-borne drumming of Andreas Werliin, and bassist Johan Berthling spins some quite doomy webs, but the overall impression is of something quite apart from these two sets of forebears.

Home-recorded between 1989-90 at Jowe Head’s Stoke Newington flat, Beautiful Despair finds Head and TVPs mainstay Dan Treacy gamely working through a clutch of the latter’s prickly and pallid compositions.

All told, this engaging project shows how a geographical move can inspire a fascinating musical style, and an unexpected one to boot.

The wry, Chris Difford-esque football analogies in the ailing relationship-related ‘Injury Time’ (“they think it’s all over, it is now”) show Astor has retained a keen sense of humour, yet Dead Fred and the mortality-facing titular track are befitting of a record stuffed with songs intended to both “celebrate and grieve”.

Son Lux haven’t quite lost it to trying, but the album does feel like it’s being pulled in two different directions--one far more interesting than the other.

This album bristles with anger, desperation and disbelief. Hopeful resilience is occasionally brought to the fore as well, and guest backing vocalists from acts including The Magnetic Fields are on hand to help Superchunk feel less adrift and alone.

A thoughtful and subtle gem.

Though Messes is a record full of heart, it doesn’t always hit there as powerfully as it could.

As comeback records go, then, Burning Cities isn’t a bad album, but neither is it a particularly great one.

Not since The Smiths or Pulp had an indie band so keenly evoked and vivisected the spectacle of lubricious, learned masculinity at large. On this final hurrah, they sound like the last of a dying breed.

It all adds up to a bold celebration of difference that feels like an album made for these times of divisive unease.

Segall is all over the place across these 19 tracks which are too much to absorb in one sitting, if ever. Most of his carefree pastiches, bonhomie homages and sloppy costume-party shenanigans merely induce a craving for the long-awaited studio comeback of the mighty Ween.

The leaping chorus of Exile Rag’s hysterical country-rock, Jon Spencer-ish juke-joint holler of Belmont (One Trick Pony), the Dylan-indebted Slice & Delta Queen and fell-off-a-barstool theatre of Fake Magic Angel are vivacious vagabond story-songs with vim and character to spare. A colourful cast of wayward angels and thrill-seeking beatniks populates their fringes vividly.

Wherever you listen, Ruins pairs tough truths and tender melodies with tremendous expressive punch, from the piercing self-investigations of the title-track to Hem Of Her Dress, where heartache and rage merge with raucous honesty. Meanwhile, Nothing Has To Be True hews beauty from transformative circumstance.