With Semper Femina, Marling is back on more assured ground, largely acoustic, with subtle arrangements and an exquisite use of strings that seem a natural, wholly fitting addition to her ever-expanding palette.

It’s a sound of today with echoes of a gloriously simple past. It makes you wish that Hank Williams was around for a duet.

It may be over a decade since their last album, but when Last Place chugs into life with Why We Won’t, it feels as if Grandaddy haven’t aged a day.

Aas Blanck Mass he’s always presented a rawer sound. While his third full-length looks to take that to an extreme, compared to his recent live shows, it falls just slightly flat.

Rooted in funk grooves and infused with squelchy and crackling electronic textures, their compositions flow in and out of krautrock, afrobeat, art rock and desert rock.

It makes for warm, complex but ultimately rewarding listening--the forboding swell of Songs Of The Marvels, the smartly rollicking The Angry Laughing God--and is the sound of muscles being gently but confidently flexed.

This is clearly a personal project following a specific template, tailored to Alison’s own passions, and is all the better for it.

It might have taken four years to map out, but Tall Ships’ latest voyage is one that very much deserves discovery.

When Julie’s Haircut get it right, they really get it right. ... By contrast, some of the Can-like vocal tracks are slightly less successful, the hushed chant of The Fire Sermon rendering the music repetitive without quite managing to capture the groove it hints at.

Chalice Hymnal is Grails’ kinkiest record to date but that doesn’t mean there ain’t an underlying poignant melancholy to their chameleonic offerings, just like that sadness behind the eyes of the man who’s been carnally distracted from fixing the kitchen appliance.

Dirty Projectors have released their career highlight to date and already one of 2017’s best. Encore surely.

The rebounding sounds that dominate Undying Color have a cumulative effect, and form a kind of aural mist within which the listener can get lost. Charming.

Like Iommi jamming with Bonham, Melvins duo Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover lay down the uncompromising riff-rock they’ve been prolifically perfecting since the 80s. Mars Volta axeman Omar Rodriguez- Lopez is the most muted talent present, resigned as he is to bulldozing basslines, so you’ll find none of his trademark proggy noodling here, which is probably for the best. And Gender Bender? Her fierce vocal dexterity channels the spirits of Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Plant, KatieJane Garside, Donita Sparks and even Russell Mael.

Farrar’s a reluctant figurehead for the down there and downtrodden. There are no gilded towers here, no tyrannies of elitist plutocrats, just the open highway and a ride in an old boneshaker with an engine leaking hopes and dreams.

A piledriver of a set, but it pulls you into his world.

Alex Nieto, the story of a police shooting of an innocent man in San Francisco in 2014 closes the album with a fire that recalls an on-form Neil Young. Described by Prophet as his first protest song, it concludes an often exhilarating album.

The texture of the more desolate songs, like Pegasi, the Americana-tinged Simon Says and the folky gospel of Songs Of Old is where the soul of the album seems to really reside, but when the two sides of Hoop’s talent come together, as on Unsaid, it has a magic all of its own.

If ever a record sounded like a herd of elephants, this is it.

It’s only on standout track, Kangaroo, that you could at any point pigeonhole PVT’s latest sound (in this instance, club banger). The remainder is far too elusive, a fusion of too many elements. Not confused, just produced in confusing times.

Unsurprisingly, Noveller has scored many films in the process of building her voluminous catalogue; out on her own, but playing a subtle role in realigning 21st century music.

While it’s probably a good thing that the rest of record isn’t quite as intense as that [Waiting On My Horrible Warning], the 11 songs that follow remain a deliberately overbearing barrage of droning, snarling and unrelenting noise punk.

Brasher, younger-sounding than the band’s previous records, but with the hard-won wisdom that experrience brings.

These floaty psych-funk grooves are more fun than a barrel of chimps, even if the lyrics fret about global warming, nuclear fusion and other harbingers of doom.

Life Will See You Now won’t disappoint the devoted. Pop pleasures are myriad.

The thing is, by Adams’ standards, too many of the songs sound slightly underwritten.

Ty Segall itself reveals--even more so than Emotional Mugger and Manipulator before it--a willingness to park the DIY or garage rock tag, however momentarily.

The mixing of the waters, swirling around Merritt’s pure, soaring vocals, produces a record that’s elegant and intelligent, only country in the same way that Emmylou’s own later work (think Wrecking Ball) could be said to be.

A somber experience to the very end then, Piano Magic’s message--and sound--remains unsettling for the uninitiated. But there’s always warmth there, and when lounged in for long enough, it puts the chills to bed with some finality.