Matador is a multi-part opus of gothic indie via The Stranglers in smacked-out mode, and Walking Home’s classic early 60s feel is enhanced by a splendid end-of-the-pier Hammond organ swell, before falling into wimoweh silliness.

It doesn’t always work: Lonely At The Top is a minimalist, spoken-word piece set to odd clicking noises that doesn’t really bear repeated listens. For the most part, however, this is a brave, forward-thinking collection that will be required listening for any fans of electronica.

One concern is that the real country stuff takes time to arrive. When it does, on the pedal-steel-powered Just Pleasing You and the Western swinging If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now, The Traveling Kind delivers on its title.

It’s her inability to comfortably fit into those convenient boxes that makes her so great.

Add curveballs such as From The Dead, a plangent alt. country anthem, and it all adds up to the logical follow-up to 1997’s Album Of The Year. It’s like they’ve never been away.

The album manages to transcend genre, but never once feels disjointed. Any mis-steps are quickly developed into something bigger, and no single noise ever outstays its welcome.

She has lost none of her power in the interim.

It’s easy to like but, ultimately, easy to forget too.

The album may not provoke the US Spring the band hopes for but, as an expression of rancour and frustration, it’s a teeth-baring smasher.

This isn’t quite the monumental album it strives to be--a consistent whole being achieved by sacrificing full immersion in any of the styles touched upon--but why stop now when they’re heading down such a promising path?

A few of its 15 songs could have been omitted--not least the seemingly half-finished closer Forever And Always--but there’s certainly more to enjoy than not.

Non-Believers offers up a more fragile, exposed side of the songwriter. While the catchy, jangly hooks that have defined Superchunk for so long are present on these 10 tracks, they feel more tentative, gentle--even slightly unsure of themselves.

Peanut Butter’s 10 songs fizz by in no time at all. A livid onslaught of pop suss.

Such a willingness to experiment is often claimed to be the secret of his longevity, and if that throws up the odd clunker now and again, the other results more than make up for them.

Essentially cinematic in scope and deliciously varied, the main man is somewhat reminiscent of Robert Hunter in that he digs up nuggets from a wealth of sources.

The entire programme is executed with credibility and verve.

Why Make Sense? is a record painted in broad strokes. There are optimistic bangers – that lead single has a scintillating build, taking the listener ever upwards, with Alexis Taylor’s falsetto laced over it; even for Hot Chip, it immediately sounds like a floor-filler. But there are also slow jams.

Though it may take several listens before you realise how comprehensively it’s seeped into your pores. It’s a subtly fetching, minor-chorded, soft-pop sepulchre, conveyed with stealth and tranquilly defocused implication, as opposed to sturm und drang.

Despite the crossroads much of The Waterfall suggests, the band and their leader seem wholly, spiritually aligned--thrillingly so, in fact.

Dr Robert does, admittedly, provocatively parade his influences on the celebratory, Electric Warrior-style The Sound Of Your Laughter and the Jean Genie-esque strut of The Guessing Game. Yet If Not Now, When? still exudes enough contemporary pizzazz to convince on its own terms

Taken at a meditative, reflective pace, it’s a dense, magisterial record, but there’s always space for Fay’s humble, declamatory “alternative gospel” ruminations.

MG fits nicely with some of those minimal wave releases, though, and DM fans will of course be in heaven.

Global is as pastiche-y as the album’s cartoon-styled portrait sleeve, but no less enjoyable for that.

Touchstones are many and include Delia Derbyshire (last year they collaborated with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on an original score to the 70s sci-fi film Le Planete Sauvage) Can, Grace Jones, Moondog, John Carpenter and Grayson Perry’s pop folk art. But, once again, their sound is their own.

Despite his heavy pedigree, the poppier songs are some of the best here, the only blot being an honourable but lacklustre run through 20th Century Boy.

By track 11, Let Love Lead, you feel you’ve jogged along the cliché-rich, emotion-free AOR road for longer than its 43 minutes and 57 seconds.

The band’s signature slow riffs and brutal, unison forces are all present, while it’s between these chord changes that the interplay of feedback, overtones, drones and whistles play, against and with, in and out of the bludgeoning drive of the enormous, portentous menhirs of minor melody.

As expected, these 13 tracks live up to Fairport’s high musicianship, and are greatly helped by their rich variety, the maturity in song choices and the breadth of moods they evoke.