As you’d expect, plucking the most successful songs from their respective albums and reconfiguring them has both an impressive cumulative effect and sets them in a new context. But fans will have all of this music already. The real interest comes with what else is in the package.

Showcasing her delicate vocals over a smorgasbord of kosmic soundz, it’s a surprisingly coherent affair.

There’s no denying that he’s operating in a vastly oversubscribed field, but Rosewood Almanac delivers in an economical 34 minutes as vividly and as seductively as any other 21st century confessional singer-songwriter you care to mention.

Greg Dulli’s vocals grow only more aching with age as he transitions from cocky young buck to greying Don Juan. There are jagged riffs and funky organs aplenty; the latter a welcome call-back to last year’s reissue of 1996’s sumptuous Black Love. Yet there’s a fresh emphasis on lush, elegantly experimental arrangements with much snazzy brass and graceful orchestration on show.

Halo is the sound of a mischievous, philosophical soul in full swing. An idiosyncratic joy.

It’s a heartfelt, human and inspired way of celebrating Haggard’s work.

A series of Eloe Omoe’s vein-poppingly furious bass clarinet solos follows before a period containing some of Ra’s most unhinged moog playing. June Tyson is given the responsibility of playing interstellar pied piper before a six-minute stretch of keyboard bleeps and whirrs that sonically alternate between an arcade game racing car, space ship and vacuum cleaner. A tough act to follow and in truth the rest of this collection suffers in comparison.

While the terrific albums they’ve released along the way have continued to describe that lo-fi fuzz and keyboard driven journey, in reaching this album’s sunshine warmth ‘Ripley’ Johnson and Sanae Yamada have elevated their project to a new level.

This Old Dog plays soft and sweet; but its rheumy eyes betray the pain.

If Cardinal established Pinegrove as the punchy, poetic point where alt-country, US alterna-rock, beat-style lyricism and Sufjan Stevens-ish banjo meet, Everything maps a scenic route there.

A collection of great songs, to the point where exorcising the spoken word passages would have created a more sharply focused set.

While his fourth record is still a thing of beauty, it’s a fractal work that splinters off into bursts of grandiose noise and multi-layered, multi-instrumental wonder; you’d describe it as comfortably at the opposite end of the musical spectrum to early songs like Lookout, Lookout and No Tear.

Easy Machines allows Baird’s vocals to shine, a hushed album, possibly the more introspective.

An often flat-out beautiful curio from an inspired mind.

It’s a delightfully trippy treat that improves with each encounter and deserves to build on the success of Loveless--an aching ballad that, to these ears, likely had some genesis in the work of electronic pop pioneers Alphaville.

As ever, it’s all played with impeccably economical style, tight-as-a-drum country shuffles with occasional jazz excursions; the work of a bona fide legend who’s never sounded more alive.

Moore’s followers will glory in the winding passages of guitars scratched, spiked, stroked and droned, now with the added bonus of fuzzy solos from latest axe accomplice James Sedwards.

True, distinction is not at a premium. But if the job for now is to keep mosh-pits lively while adding chasers of personality and long-term promise, the melodiously snarky Pull The Other One and all-together-now anthem Formidable offer crowning evidence of a job well done.

he Last Rider is yet another confident stride along that path, and anyone with a passion for smart and savvy grown-up pop is enthusiastically urged to follow him wherever it leads.

The thing about Mulcahy is that he can try on all of these voices and it never once feels contrived, the sensitivity of his readings means you believe in him. That, along with the quality and variety of songwriting makes Possum a rare gift.

Great vocals are a bit of a given here. The real treat is in discovering just how eclectic Gargoyle has turned out to be.

The lyrical dimension jars a bit painfully with the generally highly serviceable blasts of clanging, paint-stripping, mildly experimental, and somewhat extended rock.

Humanz’s flaw is what gives it its energy: like the scattered flashes of (mis) information flying out from every handheld and household device, the album throws it all at you in one gloriously delirious barrage that has no real anchor. Richly energised and energising, it’s not only infectious for the listener.

All This I Do For Glory is a triumph of ingenuity, a genuinely experimental work that echoes with the multi-faceted cries of the human soul.

It could run the risk of being a bit of a patchwork in its revolving styles and cast of five vocalists, but it works perfectly in being an ensemble creation that taps into a hazy nostalgia vibe.

The sigh of relief provoked by Doom Or Destiny morphs into a mile-wide smile as Pollinator unfurls some of the most resonant music Blondie have recorded during their second phase.

Fujiya & Miyagi is the sound of a band no longer press darlings (see 2006’s Transparent Things), but not old enough for local festivals just yet. And it’s that tension that gives us the band’s most confident LP for ages.

It’s as capricious and confusing as it sounds, yet the overall result is one of surprising cohesion.