This is exactly the album Gallagher should be making to remind people how good he can be.

The voice charms at every turn, brimming with personality on what might just be the party album of the year.

Those who fondly remember Goldfrapp’s early noughties primal glitterball electro-pop peak will thrill at Alison Goldfrapp’s debut solo effort.

Here he’s just one of the gang, trading songs and in-jokes with singer-songwriter Jeff Blackburn, Moby Grape bassist Bob Mosley and drummer Johnny Craviotto, his wiry lead guitar slicing through the good-ole-boys’ country-rock.

A 12-minute version of the album’s title track is more séance than song. ... Elsewhere, the audience’s enthusiastic response to the first few bars of Helpless is rewarded with a despairing deconstruction of the CSNY favourite, Nils Lofgren’s funereal accordion aiding the communal catharsis taking place onstage.

It’s typical of Merchant’s trademark lyrical articulacy, her passion and poetic vocabulary illustrating how she remains powerfully evocative writer over a 40-year career peppered with high watermarks.

The result is an album of scope and dynamism, sometimes hushed but tooled for outreach on the urgent Dandelion and baleful Neptune, where a choir lifts Tonra’s sunken vocal.

There’s a new sense of confidence in the vocals, the clarity of the melodies, and production flourishes. Lyrically, too, there’s a shift – the troubled soul-searching has (mostly) given way to a sense of joy and acceptance at his place in the world. There are songs here that do not so much start as saunter into earshot, in no rush to reveal themselves and all the more seductive for it.

At 70 minutes, False Lankum is definitely a demanding listen, but an extraordinary one.

Not everything works. The aforementioned Always You leaves little impression and the clunky Caroline’s Monkey, which shoehorns in every hackneyed junkie reference you can think of (“holes in her skin”, “ice in her veins”, monkeys on backs, etc, etc), is just about rescued from oblivion thanks, again, to its auditory nod to Kraftwerk’s locomotive-fixated sixth studio album. But otherwise, Memento Mori is brimming and sometimes soaring with immediate pop songs.

Van Morrison’s voice is in fine a form as ever. The important thing is that while he – and the rest of the crew – head down a well-travelled road, they certainly don’t sit in the middle of it.

Brothers & Sisters may also be the last recorded work of Mason’s friend and recurrent collaborator Martin Duffy – a fine way for him to finish, on an album full of intelligence and love.

Inhaler avoid difficult second album problems by sounding more like they’re on a confident fourth record.

If it is a mess, it’s a glorious one.

It’s an album of unlikely collaborations. Day One features the operatic talents of Dina Ipavic, while Are You Alive, sung by Lily Wolter of Penelope Isles, floats into moodier, more analog territory. Best of all are The New Abnormal (Golden Girls’ Kinetic turned inside out) and the anti-gammon state of the nation rant of Dirty Rats.

End-times prophecies have always been a part of Gorillaz’s world view, but here Damon Albarn’s lyrics allude to personal burnout. There’s something poignant about hearing Stevie Nicks’ weathered voice twin itself to Albarn’s while singing about reaching a place “when you can’t help yourself anymore and the madness come”.

Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) serves the showman well, making this era sing, one of The Bootleg Series’ most intriguing investigations so far into Bob Dylan’s working practices and mindset.

Their unpredictability and magnetic power remain undimmed by the years.

That Bad Reputation deep cut – as well as five better-known extras including a spine-tingling Still In Love With You not heard before – reminds us we are in what was, for so long, uncharted territory. ... Live and definitive!

Cale remains the star of the show, however, still crafting richly textured songs that don’t always go where you might expect them to, and refusing to pander to expectations.

This is a thoughtful, and thought-provoking, set of songs from a writer whose responses to the world around him illustrate an ever-deepening maturity, which is intriguing to chart across his four solo releases to date.

Cacti might show Maries in survival mode, but revealing vulnerability has seen her songwriting soften and come into its own.

Whether you prefer him pensive or primal, his 20th solo album brings that big time.

The scattergun concept inevitably results in a broad range of styles and not all of them are entirely successful. ... Still, the above are minor quibbles, as the bulk of the album is a gorgeous concoction of disparate inspirations finding hitherto elusive homes. The guests get their works in progress nailed by an esteemed craftsman, while Rundgren himself, a man with a partial history of self-sufficiency bordering on the behaviour of a control freak, sounds reinvigorated by allowing others into his world.

A take on the Star-Spangled Banner provides a waymarker here, but its playful cadence offers little warning of the unholy commotion to come.

A cappella mixes of studio material have been a hallmark of every major Beach Boys box set, and those on Sail On Sailor deliver as expected. ... Further studio outtakes underscore the group’s range and versatility.

And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is a rich, nuanced and brilliant reflection of a world in turmoil.

Those lyrics [from previously unreleased demo, Tired Of My Life], slightly tweaked, would also make the final It’s No Game; that they date to this period of self-doubt and self-discovery and ended up bookending one of the greatest decade-long streaks in music is revelatory. Demos of Hunky Dory standouts have fewer surprises: written during a spate of fevered creativity in Haddon Hall, his boho Beckenham pile, everything is all but there, a few lyrical improvements aside.