On the whole, I Romanticize is both a simple update of Evans’ versatile songwriting abilities, as well as a grand introduction to his music for newcomers.

All the blatantly audible influences become irrelevant, leaving Cigarettes After Sex with a sound of its own, created with scant tools and seemingly minimal effort. Like the best sleight of hand magicians, the trick’s conjured before you, then gone.

Six years on, Crack-Up is deeper, richer and more literate (starting with the title’s F Scott Fitzgerald debt), overflowing with ideas and destabilising tonal shifts. You might call it challenging, but Fleet Foxes were never likely to settle for anchoring comeback gestures of easy reassurance: rather, Crack-Up re-asserts their exalted tug on the heart by testing it at ever-greater distances from known shores.

Inspired by acts as diverse as Crass, Fugazi and Fleetwood Mac, The Guillotine is gritty, greasy and macabre, while lyrically engaging and deliciously tuneful. A word of caution, though; these earworms are liable to turn.

There’s a lot of great, interesting stuff here but the listener will have to indulge him to get to it. If you’re a fan that’s no problem, the more causal listener may need convincing.

Few singer-songwriters in the modern folk firmament are as eloquent and articulate as Oxford-born Gilmore, and The Counterweight can lay claim to being her most perfectly realised album since her 2003 breakthrough Avalanche.

Yet for all the tales of sonic Celtic carnage, Dawson’s sixth solo full-length, and second for Domino offshoot Weird World, is his most accessible to date.

A tendency to record in sequence brings its problems; a slight mid-album sag might have been remedied by tighter editing. But the end-stretch’s up-swerve in character and definition suggests renewed direction.

His latest set sees no let-up on the quality, yet feels a lot more home-made than 2015’s The Boombox Ballads.

Sing It High deserves investigation, and LITA do Tumbleweed more than justice, documenting a time when risks were actually backed, regardless of whether they paid off.

Much of the album’s promise brews in Boyfriend, where backing band The Big Moon’s Radiohead-ish guitar chimes offer suitably insouciant support to Hackman’s take-down of male arrogance. But substance runs thin elsewhere as Hackman seems unsteady in transition, flicking through styles without finding any that thrill in colourless contrast to The Big Moon’s bright vim.

It’s not that it’s a bad record--it is an enjoyable listen and is successful in achieving what it set out to do, namely to evoke the true sound and spirit of the London orbital world that claims bored teenagers, squaddies and suburban rebels as its own.

Rather than a retrogressive exercise, by preserving these stories Hayman reminds us of some of the things our country has to be proud of; take Norton Le Clay’s tale of a Belgian settler (“Come all you refugees and strays, come all you immigrants and waifs”). It’s stirring, important stuff.

Without anything to rein them in, these pieces have a tendency to drift, suggesting that a tighter remit, or more judicious editing, might have had more gravitational pull.

Leftism is dance music history and so deserves the big reissue treatment. Leftfield have addressed the passage of time with an up-to-the-minute roster of remixers for the bonuses. Still, the results are generally pretty disappointing – they all put their own mark on things and leave enough of the original versions in to make the connection, but not many come close to the originals.

Little of the imagination promised by the concept seems to have seeped through into the covers, which are remarkably sedate and faithful for a world supposedly in the grip of two opposing ideological extremes.

After the brutal old school motorik of Lights Flicker (Manning, sax and guitar dogfighting over Zappi’s hypnotic vamp) and Heron reciting over the oceanic swell of Fish, no doubts are left that Faust’s unique creative flame still burns as bright as their social conscience.

He writes songs that could be straight out of Allen Toussaint and Dr John’s repertoire. It’s intentional--both are touchstones for the cult hero, and he uses them well, conjuring his own sound from them.

The mix is a massive improvement on the stereo that we’re used to--there’s so much more presence here from the off. For an album you know to feel somehow fresh, that’s quite an achievement. Purists may balk at some of the perceived liberties Giles Martin has taken (splitting and panning drum parts or backing vocals for starters), but he’s by no means claiming this is the definitive version of the album, and has clearly acted in the interests of the material.

Recorded with Grammy winning producer Matt Ross-Spang and a host of Mississippi sessionerati, Sweet Kind Of Blue is perfectly soulful and understated.

Across nine tracks both men stamp their respective identities on the album, with mutual admiration and respect echoing through every bar. The occasional Kinksian flourish sneaks through the speakers, most notably when Dave sounds uncannily like his elder sibling on King Of Diamonds, but in the main this is a generations-spanning love letter written in familial blood.

Despite this widescreen approach, Resin Pockets never once loses focus--though maybe there’s an argument for some stronger rhythm, to give more drive--but perhaps that’s a casualty of such an ad hoc way of working.

Stewart hasn’t deviated from his love of pop music history. He understands its nooks and crannies as well as its hooks and melodies and handles them with reverent care.

Understandably ruminative in nature, it’s a renewed sense of creative vigour which provides the driving force on a piece of work which stands among the composer’s best.

IV is simply packed to its dank rafters with monstrous riffs, muggy low-mixed vocals and more discordant amp noise than you could shake a deaf stick at.

DAMN. sees the rapper make a 180 degree turn from the sprawling jazz/funk/hip-hop odyssey of TPAB to deliver 14 taut, tough and wise cutting-edge examples of what’s possible in hip-hop today. ... Essential stuff.

The meditatively plodding drums are off-putting if focused on too deliberately, but there is little else to fault here for those who like to zone out into infinity, with the 17-minute long closer being particularly peachy.

Charming, heart baring, polish-free and not buffed beyond recognition. Alive, basically. A pleasure.