It’s a witty, endlessly creative look at where we are, where music is right now and what’s next; it all makes for essential listening.

Temple Of I & I is the most rounded and enjoyable album of theirs to date.

This is probably their best record in years--so jump on board.

Rarely dipping below engaging, Doris is a welcome return that could all too easily have been dashed off or worse, ended up morbid.

A Common Truth is mountainous and haunting, yet also exhibits a certain vulnerability.

The feeling is one of two planets that happened to get into each other’s orbit, with pleasing results. Hopefully they’ll eclipse again soon.

Nightmare Logic says it all over eight tracks in a damn near perfect 35 minutes.

Employing a Drake-like emotional honesty (though thankfully minus the Canadian’s tendency for self-pity) he recounts unflinching vignettes of Seattle street-life shot through with harrowing biographical details.

An exciting follow up to 2014’s Foundations Of Burden that edges the band’s sound forward while keeping sight of what they do best, Heartless is a glorious open wound that bleeds melody. Right on.

Unbelievably good and groundbreaking, even at a point in heavy metal history when every third band sounds more like Pink Floyd than Pantera.

While Find Me Finding You won’t necessarily offend dyed-in-the-woofer Stereolab aficionados--no apple need ever fall far from such an efflorescent tree--it still successfully stakes out a corner of its own, its abstract yet meticulously formal layers suggesting an aural Mondrian painting.

Holter is a master at conjuring up beguiling atmospherics. Here, backed by her usual live touring accompaniment of drums, viola and double bass she concocts a variety of striking permutations on familiar work.

While the album’s rear end succumbs to repetition, redemption arrives in the wistful Day Glow Fire and a bright-eyed duet with Debbie Harry on Shadows, where romantic doubts are treated as a spur to dream bigger.

If at times Silver Eye is easy to admire yet difficult to love, you are never that far from a tremendous hook or captivating vocal.

The messages of richly-orchestrated missives like Gun Clap Hero deserve to be heard; hopefully their contagious settings will take them to the masses.

The Navigator knows in which direction to head. Hurray indeed.

A sultry take on Burt Bacharach’s The Look Of Love, pitch-perfect version of Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage and an emotive rendering of Ruby Andrews’ soul classic Casanova (Your Playing Days Are Over), are among the highlights on this welcome boon for lovers of high-grade instrumental funk.

On Spirit, Depeche Mode aren’t quite repeating themselves, nor is there real revolution in their sound. But they are nevertheless going forwards, and fans will be happy to join the march.

With the likes of Hollow, all echoing goth riffs, the dance-around-your bedroom exuberance of Resolution, and the caustic Your Genius, it can’t help but win you over.

It works because it’s so astonishingly, genuinely clever.

If the album takes fewer side roads than long-term fans may be used to, it also rewards repeat listening, revealing a little more each time. They may have covertly tucked their idiosyncrasies behind an accessible sound, but their unique vision remains.

Boss Hog still thrill, still hint at a better future. Just one that comes before 2034 you’d hope.

Like the 1999 film Magnolia that earned Mann an Oscar nomination, Mental Illness would make a similarly engrossing mosaic of stories for the big screen.

Finding inspiration in the current climate, Taylor has created a modern blues masterpiece for troubled times.

Like its clumsy title, this release finds itself falling between two stools; stuck in mid-Atlantic, perhaps. It does have its moments, but may fail to win new converts.

Though recording since the 90s, Nichols seems to have found his feet by blending his lifelong country, soul, hip-hop and reggae influences then capturing them on tape with the southern soul intimacy of Tony Joe White.

A lot of the morsels are unremittingly 80s in flavour, which leaves them divided into sassy material that still works, a few oddments, and a significant minority that are almost unpalatable, and which could probably be dated down to the day they were recorded, they’re so of their time.

Deceptively simple, Cocker’s economical narratives sit atop Gonzalez’s evocative ivories, drawing you in with their intimacy, like an old rummy spilling the beans.