While there’s plenty of thrilling rock’n’roll here, his faith also gives us some flat-out gorgeous moments.

Wherever you turn, exuberance and invention are generously served.

Pinballing between modern fright and fervent fight, I Can Feel You... exults in the thrill of self-determined discovery.

Tthis dark horse of a debut isn’t just vastly superior to most of the recycled indie landfill swilling around--it’s one of the most emotionally-charged guitar-based debuts to be unleashed over the past 12 months.

Four Stones is not quite as immediate as his previous collection, but McPhee’s work is remarkably underrated and all well worth hearing.

By its very nature, RTVD is eclectic, and there is an obvious element of hit or miss to contend with. The sequencing isn’t fantastic, and the compilation does lose focus at times. It does however do what it sets out to do; it explores, and gives a good sense of the ways in which African-American music of the late 60s and 70s splintered off in different directions and absorbed outside influences.

At their best, Garrie’s songs are tender, well-observed vignettes of a life well travelled, mostly on dusty French roads with a bar at the end. At their not-so-best, Garrie’s lyrics are more than a touch hokey (the quite frankly awful Boy Soldier) while the jauntier back bar numbers (Bacardi Samuel) are for Francophiles only. The Moon & The Village is destined to again divide punters and purists. One for fans new and old it is.

This is a great place to start--and possibly to end.

What strikes you as the cast of thousands run through the Guthrie repertoire on these three discs is just how singable they were--Woody played fast and loose with his melodies, but his words still score and sear.

All Together Again proves to be a warm and diverse collection of mostly unreleased pieces for a series of commissions over the last 10 years.

There are a few misses here but Unleash The Love is a fun upbeat song that bounces along with the help of a choir, and both Pisces Brother and Cool Head, Warm Heart are strong ballads that sit comfortably in the live set of the touring Beach Boys. ... Disc Two is a head scratcher.

If maturity is on the Bad Boys’ lyrical agenda on the sardonically titled Rot, letting up the pace is not.

It’s a refined downer, enriched by self-lacerating wit (I Only Smoke When I Drink), indie-boy piss-takes (Sleeperbloke), story-song skills (unwanted-pregnancy tale Johnny (Have You Come Lately)) and briefly off-guard touches of synth-pop wistfulness (Big Blue Moon).

Goin’ Platinum, meanwhile, places him in Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio with his house band--comprising guitarist Duane Eddy (yes, that one) plus Memphis Boys Gene Chrisman and Bobby Woods--and the results elevate his work even higher.

Perhaps a little inconsistent, Habibi Funk packs a lot of charisma, and on balance delivers the goods.

Their eighth studio LP, is fearsome stuff. Tracks like The Grind, Lung and A Slow Reaction display perfectly pitched aggression to fine effect but Unsane are at their best when they allow a circular groove to really take hold and lock down for the duration. Not all is quite as compelling--Distance and Avail feel rather leaden, but this remains a fierce listen.

If the trappings are lovably stiff and arthritic, the songs are zeitgeist thunderbolts--especially so when a baying, screaming audience charges the very air with O-face abandon.

The remixes mostly offer lush versions festooned with synths, offering a glimpse of how the album might have sounded had Stevens followed a different path in the studio.

Between its open-skied romanticism and thorny honesty, Stars’ sustained momentum seems assured.

The rave presets of old will appease older fans while the more intricate synth work will satisfy more recent converts. Still, it’s the deeper tunes here that point to an intriguing future.

Ditching everything he’d been working on, Carr launched himself into New Shapes Of Life, his finest work since The Boo Radleys.

The tone is consistently one of hope, if James intended it to act as a balm to soothe any of the problems of the world, he’s certainly succeeded.

With no hint of hype (but a lot of alliteration), The Usual Suspects is perhaps chef Wobble’s most appealing musical smorgasbord to date. It’s rare for one album to evince comparisons to both Lee Perry and Lalo Schifrin in style, or to Lonnie Liston Smith, Eddie Van Halen and Keith Moon with its musicianship.

With hints of minimalism, psych rock, and even Gregorian chant to be found, Reaching For Indigo is rich, dark and incisive; a work of immense beauty.

With its cinematic strings and glacial synth arrangements, Rise is certainly rife with theatricality--but rather than play-acting at the role of singer, Gainsbourg’s patchwork embeds the answers to those questions, and many more, deep within.

It’s difficult to determine why one session of abstract noise is more thrilling and less tedious than when your mate’s “avant-garde project” bash their instruments discordantly for 50 minutes. It’s not just down to the names on display. There’s a difference. Moore and Hayward play the good kind.

It’s a dense, lengthy work (at 71 minutes the longest studio album of her career). Only one song, the ecstatic, pulsating techno of Sue Me, is likely to work on the dancefloor. Yet the errant, raucous confluence of sounds and styles has a homogeneity that works to create a beguiling, and ultimately hugely rewarding whole.

Bajas Fresh is an unapologetically chilled-out album for the horizontal of body and the expanded of mind. See you down the ashram.