American Utopia is not quite as good as we’d all really love it to be. However, its quality of thought, emotional intelligence and sense of fun is remarkable.

Bereft of freestyle ivory plonks, You’re Not Alone captures WK doing what he does best: that utterly distinctive fusion of metal riffs, Springsteen bombast, pristine ABBA hooks and choruses bigger than Hercules’ biceps.

The King Crimson archive is a thing of genuine wonder: it feels as though there isn’t a single picosecond of their career that hasn’t been somehow preserved, and the meticulous largesse with which this archival cache is curated and packaged sets an intimidating benchmark.

In short, if you collect Jansch you won’t regret investing in these for a second. If you’re new to him, you’ll find a musical universe opening before you.

On her follow-up Cornish dominates and the results are smoother round the edges, more considered, heck, even mature.

Additional keyboards and synths fatten the sound in places without swamping the innate simplicity of the melodies, while guest singer Sarah Jessop brings an ethereal twist to High The Hemlock Grows. Likewise, Janovitz’s daughter Lucy weighs in with a delicious harmony on the reserved cover of Paul Simon’s The Only Living Boy In New York.

Even kids who don’t like rock’n’roll might find this infectious invitation hard to resist.

Not since Space Ritual-era Hawkwind has anyone so successfully combined workboot riffing with the swirling bleeps of the unexplored cosmos. Honestly.

That this is a subtle and seamless love note to music, rather than a case of too many cooks speaks volumes for the man at the helm.

In short, if you collect Jansch you won’t regret investing in these for a second. If you’re new to him, you’ll find a musical universe opening before you.

His band’s music has a stylistic affinity with Glasper’s Black Radio albums, melding jazz, R&B, funk, hip-hop, and neo soul into an unclassifiable hybrid that dissolves musical barriers.

Chris Illingworth’s glistening piano is glacial yet strong and majestic, elegantly floating above the turbulence created by Nick Blacka’s throbbing bass and Rob Turner’s kinetic, febrile drums.

The phenomenal Revolutionary Spirit reveals that while Manchester copped the lion’s share of the critical plaudits during this epochal post-punk period, the quality of Mersey was also second to none.

The result sometimes trips messily over its eagerness, but it’s also a sharp and bright, clever and fresh debut, with good ideas usually on-hand for whenever the intended effect isn’t fully banked.

Comparisons to Cream and early Black Sabbath are not ill-founded, but perhaps a little misleading. The trio’s “rock” aesthetic is made satisfyingly supple by the deft, jazz-borne drumming of Andreas Werliin, and bassist Johan Berthling spins some quite doomy webs, but the overall impression is of something quite apart from these two sets of forebears.

Home-recorded between 1989-90 at Jowe Head’s Stoke Newington flat, Beautiful Despair finds Head and TVPs mainstay Dan Treacy gamely working through a clutch of the latter’s prickly and pallid compositions.

All told, this engaging project shows how a geographical move can inspire a fascinating musical style, and an unexpected one to boot.

The wry, Chris Difford-esque football analogies in the ailing relationship-related ‘Injury Time’ (“they think it’s all over, it is now”) show Astor has retained a keen sense of humour, yet Dead Fred and the mortality-facing titular track are befitting of a record stuffed with songs intended to both “celebrate and grieve”.

Son Lux haven’t quite lost it to trying, but the album does feel like it’s being pulled in two different directions--one far more interesting than the other.

This album bristles with anger, desperation and disbelief. Hopeful resilience is occasionally brought to the fore as well, and guest backing vocalists from acts including The Magnetic Fields are on hand to help Superchunk feel less adrift and alone.

A thoughtful and subtle gem.

Though Messes is a record full of heart, it doesn’t always hit there as powerfully as it could.

As comeback records go, then, Burning Cities isn’t a bad album, but neither is it a particularly great one.

Not since The Smiths or Pulp had an indie band so keenly evoked and vivisected the spectacle of lubricious, learned masculinity at large. On this final hurrah, they sound like the last of a dying breed.

It all adds up to a bold celebration of difference that feels like an album made for these times of divisive unease.

Segall is all over the place across these 19 tracks which are too much to absorb in one sitting, if ever. Most of his carefree pastiches, bonhomie homages and sloppy costume-party shenanigans merely induce a craving for the long-awaited studio comeback of the mighty Ween.

The leaping chorus of Exile Rag’s hysterical country-rock, Jon Spencer-ish juke-joint holler of Belmont (One Trick Pony), the Dylan-indebted Slice & Delta Queen and fell-off-a-barstool theatre of Fake Magic Angel are vivacious vagabond story-songs with vim and character to spare. A colourful cast of wayward angels and thrill-seeking beatniks populates their fringes vividly.

Wherever you listen, Ruins pairs tough truths and tender melodies with tremendous expressive punch, from the piercing self-investigations of the title-track to Hem Of Her Dress, where heartache and rage merge with raucous honesty. Meanwhile, Nothing Has To Be True hews beauty from transformative circumstance.