42 minutes of rewarding new music for those who still believe.

“I’ve got nothing left to say but that’s alright,” he sings in Sunday Morning Feeling, but the 13 intense, joyous tracks here suggest otherwise.

2017 could be the perfect time for Alabama 3 to bust out of their long-surviving cult status. This is the LP to do it.

In short, this compact collection is all quite interesting, and the Rashad Becker mastering makes it sound appropriately big, but it’s essentially one for the black turtleneck crowd, and sports soberly black artwork in order to ram the point home.

Hook-laden choruses and seismic riffs don’t feature heavily in the Fufanu sound--and nor should they. Like The Rapture before them, their sound is one of influences absorbed subtly.

This isn’t folk-rock, it’s folk-rock’n’roll.

Hardwired is a slightly less gripping version of the same, as is Moth Into Flame. There’s some sweet doom in the form of Dream No More, an obvious Sabbath homage, and a nod to their late mentor Lemmy with Murder One. In between, we’re treated to a lot of mid-tempo plodding.

She was a frontwoman, but with a sound that was markedly different to anything that had come before. Tourist In This Town sees a continuation of this exploration, with album opener Broad Daylight shifting from a cappella into an alt.rock crescendo with underlying electronics.

In the best possible way, their songs feel like being trapped for over a quarter of an hour within the mind of the person whose bathroom is the filthiest you’ve ever seen, but if you want a better picture you should attend one of their gigs gigs gigs gigs gigs gigs gigs.

Strike A Match runs the risk of becoming a little too chaotic as Aggs and Rodgers throw everything in at once; their flair for reflective lyricism sadly becomes a little lost in the crowd.

The real magic on 50 doesn’t come from the coterie of younger tyros, but the great buck himself. The frailty of the 75-year-old’s voice (he’ll be 76 when this album comes out) can render homespun parables as biblical portents, in much the same way that Rick Rubin reinvented Johnny Cash as a latter-day Nostradamus.

Half Japanese albums are like the proverbial buses, and this is their third album in as many years, after nothing for the previous decade-plus. Jad Fair’s art-punk outsider unit return with an album that reflects their early days while taking the Half Japanese story into a new chapter.

Despite a couple of bland sections--St Martha’s in particular--The Starless Room is worthy of many repeat, and extended, visits.

Long-term fans will be delighted, the uninitiated might just find themselves falling for his grouchy charms.

In its tales of life in mountain towns, of love declared and not returned, of hard decisions made, it has an honesty and a sense of wildness and isolation. It’s all quite beautiful.

We’re in science fiction territory here; the dystopian synths that glide over the track’s foundations are bleak, yet comforting in their filmic familiarity. The album has its share of pacy moments, too.

Some tracks fare better than others, and it would certainly be a stronger album without the insistent disco party beats of SSD or Elle Ne T’Aime Pas.

From the beatless flicker of opening track The Journey, through the 808 kick drum weave of Fall Into Water to the radioactive skeletons of Oracle and the bottomless Paradise, Hunn treats tracks like living sculptures, adding microscopic brush strokes and his trademark deep space strings.

Baldi certainly has a knack for crafting a chorus but once he finds the structure, he tends to hold on to it for a little too long, meaning that the charming hooks on Life Without Sound can often become idle repetition.

Not Even Happiness is intent on taking us back to the garden and in these cynical times, perhaps there’s a vacuum across the ocean for artists that are warmer, purer, less needy than the careerist indie-rock that has gone before. Long may this Morning Dove not Tweet.

It’s a master-stroke on a landmark record of staggering intelligence, depth and musicality.

What’s also not documented here are The Doors’ performances of Light My Fire and The End, from a second set. Sadly, Peña’s second reel remains buried in a box somewhere, robbing us of fascinating early glimpses of two songs which would grow to gargantuan proportions in the years to come. It’s doubtless as much a frustration for the band as it will be for fans.

Much of what stems from his bands’ 15th standalone album never really gets past that “nothing of a track” phase. In fact, often the mood music Coyne and the gang have striven to make – as much about beats and textures as it is melody--is frustrating.

Hang can delight and frustrate in equal measure, but it is an indulgent album that tempts the listener into just one more, wafer-thin listen.

The overall feel is accomplished and often catchy, but it’s not as intriguingly esoteric as some material in this vein.

At once nostalgic and forward thinking, mournful and celebratory, it’s a multihued album with a sharp intelligence. In what will be their final work--the band have announced they won’t continue without Phife--Tribe have retaken their throne as hip-hop’s greatest band.

I See You may represent a sonic shift towards the light, but The Xx are still singing dark songs concerned with introspection, heartache and regret. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Good.

Try the delectably thick-eared Shadow by The Lurkers, the uneasy Violence Grows by Fatal Microbes (with Honey Bane’s vocal a clarion warning from history), the insouciant Kicks In Style by The Users and, impregnable in its perfection, New Rose by The Damned --the opening salvo, the vital spark.