What they do well, they do here in spades, and the new experiments come off as more than memorable.

This is no stop-gap, contract filler of a record but rather a perfectionist giving a great album the full workout it deserved.

The musical equivalent of a super-caffeinated espresso laced with Jack Daniels.

Phillips’ melodies are solid and simplistically accessible, never swamping the lyric’s articulate message; protest songs have rarely been so polite in their persuasiveness.

An album precision-pitched between angst and optimism, tension and release.

Her sixth solo set steers her back to what she’s best at: exquisite, tenderly fraught torch-soul songs of compulsion and regret, where the lights are dimmed, the feelings run deep and the hushed elasticity of her voice commands close attention.

Furman’s stories erupt in sunbursts of detail, lived-in and lividly imagined.

Bardo Pond often shine brightest at their most long-form and Volume 8’s closing track is a case in point. The only conceivable criticism that could aimed at And I Will is that it winds down after just 17 short minutes.

It’s still undeniably cinematic and heartfelt, but clearly the work of mature heads reflecting on excesses of their past.

[An] emotionally open and exploratory shapeshift.

The first thing that strikes you is an apposite openness of sound, achieved not just via thoughtful, spacious arrangements and due diligence at the mixing desk, but built into the compositions themselves, from the ground up. ... Is it too early to call 2018’s album of the year?

Purgatory is a formidable equal to the Southern states snapshots Steve Earle took on Copperhead Road, and the largely acoustic melodies and arrangements will have some listeners checking the sleeve to make sure they’re not playing a long lost record by The Band. Yes, the likes of Price and Simpson have returned country to impressive heights, and Childers has the weaponry in his arsenal to take it even higher.

From the heartfelt rhumba of I Don’t Wanna Be Without You and the title track – the perfect showstopper for the Harlem Square Club crowd--to Blisters, a captivating shuffle, and How Long, a going back to church blues, every song’s a winner.

Most of the stuff is catchy, with full-fat choruses on the excellent Dropping The Needle and Get On Your Knees, and while the rest of the album doesn’t push out any envelopes it offers up an energy-packed good time.

Produced by Edwyn Collins, it’s full of immediately infectious tracks that burrow deep into your head before working their way down to your limbs.

Insular, yes, but in being laid bare it speaks with a strong purpose.

Sonically, it boasts richer textures than recent albums, thanks largely to the pair’s expanded touring line-up playing a greater role in the studio; a more fleshed-out sound than the occasionally irritating minimalism of yore. Arguably, the decision to beef up the instrumentation is designed to bring heft to the lyrics’ serious topics, even though the band are, as ever, likely to be preaching to the choir.

While Calexico have been bridging their influences and styles for long enough to be able to take risks, never letting an overriding mission statement cloud an album’s quality, here the foot is ever so slightly let off the gas, and the breathing space allows gems to be uncovered.

A third of the way in, there’s a sequence of up-tempo dreampunk numbers harbouring brattier attitudes and melodies of a more generically slapdash nature, at which point this reviewer’s notebook became overly burdened with ditto marks. The quality picks up later with a couple of shimmering near-ballads. As far as power duos go, that’s not a bad ratio and it certainly beats those impotent hacks known as The Black Stripes or The White Keys or whatever they were called.

Urgent, uncompromising, intelligent--Stick In The Wheel are the bristles on the clean broom the UK folk scene badly needs.

While its beauty may be a bit abstract for some, Mother is intense without being dark or oppressive; timeless, a windswept, life-affirming work that makes more conventional music seem stale and staid by comparison.

Tight drums that bring The Smiths to mind hold the whole thing down, as guitars and bass sparkle, their counterpoint (not to mention reverb applied with a trowel) creating a comic-book cool atmosphere throughout. Throw a few saxes into the mix and you’ve got yourself a vintage-yet-modern rock’n’roll classic.

While many elements of the 10 “love songs” on Mount Qaf are competent, deftly crafted efforts betraying a lifetime of attention paid to such things, any Walkmen magic is rarely present.

If you sometimes miss Tigers’ unruly improv-tumult, the pay-off is an album of poised beauty with its own pocket-universe logic, exemplified by the softly searching communion of synthetic/organic sounds on Marsh Chorus.

The emotional climax of The Little Things That Give You Away is one of several moments that promise more than the album as a whole can deliver.

As anyone cognisant with the likes of Tuff Life Boogie, Putta Block and Butterflies 4 Brains already knows, these discs aren’t without their misfires, but when doubled with their respective A-side partners, the likes of No Bulbs, Wings, Lucifer Over Lancashire and Brix’s majestic LA all lend their weight to the argument that--regardless of their chart positions--The Fall are long overdue recognition as one of the great British singles bands of the past 40 years.

These eight experimental tunes combine the old and the new, but funnel the former through the latter to such an extent there’s very little distinction between them. It’s an approach that’s much more successful on the shorter tracks here.

While there isn’t anything here that leaps out with quite the immediacy of Dunn slam-dunks such as Face The Nation, everything has the assured touch of a master, and will undoubtedly re-establish Dunn among the sea of young pretenders currently working in this zone.