A must for fans, but a little bit of between-song banter and audience reaction wouldn’t have gone amiss.

By and large, the more substantial the lyric the more layered and complex the musical arrangement.

Where the music shimmers with earnest, well-intentioned conviction, it’s often let down by some terrible lyrics that make the album more throwaway than it otherwise might have been.

Four decades on, the enduring tales of ego clashes and drug-fuelled disarray have overshadowed the shows themselves, yet this painstakingly compiled set comes as something of a revelation.

Drenched in all manner of trademark effects and sonic inspiration, this Chrome hasn’t lost its shine.

Disc One harbours new material, and the second some of their gems from the last few years; the quality is generally very high and there is much creativity, leaving the mind racing to catch up.

The depth and breadth of this astonishing career compendium, comprising a colossal 189 tracks, will certainly surprise the uninitiated, but for long-time fans it’s a beautifully realised monument to a versatile musician whose genius is largely unsung.

This new edition adds a second disc of extended 12” mixes, on which his sonic daring truly takes flight.

The results are very pleasing indeed, from the mean faith-bating blues of Face Of God to the howling prairie wisdom of Wind Don’t Have To Hurry, the nononsense declaration of love, Marlene, to the hobo jazz of the title track.

This is a magnificent album, bridging the generation gap and reminding the listener just how vital and pertinent folk music can be.

His tongue may be in his cheek at least some of the time, but parts of this album feel like the worst excesses of rock opera as applied to dance music.

It’s an easy-on-the-ear, hard-on-the-shoe-leather set.

While III is certainly weird, it’s also rather wonderful.

Liam inhabits a range of oddball characters throughout, making it tricky to determine which are closest to his real self, but that hardly seems to matter when the results are as dreamy and diverse as this.

There’s densely polyrhythmic music of texture and tone, frequently pierced with fragments of melody and hymnal chords emerging like shafts of sunlight through the trees, rewarding listeners willing to concentrate with moments of cerebral rapture.

Futurology is a much more polished and decidedly odd record featuring some of the band’s most enjoyably gonzo work since debut Generation Terrorists, as well as their most forwardthinking music to date.

There’s nothing here as radical as Young’s brazen take on God Save The Queen, for his far more engaging 2012 covers set, Americana, and the performances are decidedly tossed-off, even by Young’s capture-the-moment standards.

Where Simpson truly scores is in the ease with which he ponders life’s bigger questions while couching them in familiar country language and sounds.

All in all, a stellar mix of tracks, performed exquisitely and, in light of their split in 2011, now with added poignancy.

Another mix of sloppy slacker-pop, warped, indie jangles and insolent post-punk expressionism, Sunbathing Animal nevertheless feels more assured of itself than its acclaimed predecessor.

Trouble & Love is perhaps her most thoughtprovoking set since 2005’s Mercy Now, full of literate musings and believable characters.

Taken as a whole, the album recalls the literate elegance of 1993’s Kindness Of The World, albeit with more sharply observed snapshots of the nuts and bolts of romantic relationships.

Sure, there’s a mildly preposterous, posturing axe-warrior in there, but it’s tempered, often joyously, with a self-mocking feminine side here, and makes for some of his most carefree but considered music in a very long time.

[Opening track Low Season is] a bizarre blip on an album that fans will lap up.

While you can’t draw a direct line from PT to Anathema, Steven Wilson’s hand is in some of the mixes, but, by standing on the shoulders of giants, bands such as this one have themselves become gargantuan.

Await Barbarians largely sounds like a sketchbook, or even an EP, with Taylor working through ideas.

Another big step for Silberman and required listening for any Americana aficionados.

The radio-friendly gene appears to be lacking entirely from their approach, and as a result the album is among the most immersive listens in some time.