So they’re not reinventing the wheel, but Willie and Merle are comfortable in their own company.

The performances are sterling and there’s a clear intention to deliver rounded albums, not just drifting techno selections.

There are some familiarly sunny pop moments on here, including Hearts Are For Breaking, which trundles along like a Deborah Harry solo single, and the rather nice Take The Silver, a nu-folk single in the making, featuring The Rails and including a brilliant three-part vocal chorus.

While not the cutting-edge of US punk, it’s still a wholly engaging retread.

All 11 tracks are evocative and addictive.

The voice has held up well, the fingers are still nimble and, if you’re a devoted fan, you won’t be disappointed.

It’s an all-killer-no-filler collection that sees the band benefiting from a bedded-in Mick Taylor’s influence and the colossal confidence that being...

There’s something rather standoffish about Tenderness as a whole.

There’s now so little difference between an Oh Sees and a Damaged Bug record as for the two to be interchangeable. That’s certainly no bad thing, but not a new thing either. Perhaps Dwyer’s career is in stasis for once.

It doesn’t feel like completely new territory, but it certainly resonates.

Herbert is right to want more from music and to deliver his messages accessibly, but the lyrics are sometimes (perhaps disingenuously) generic and devoid of sharp edges.

FFS is actually exciting to listen to, which can’t be said that often these days.

The band sorely lacks a frontman of true rock-god proportions to transcend the silliness.

In a way, Simple Songs picks up where Insignificance left us: a smooth, heavily layered and structured approach to the craft (betraying the album title) underpinned with some of the most biting, surreal and often hilarious lyrics indie rock currently offers.

Mbongwana Star concoct an abrasive sound barrage of heavily distorted rumba grooves, here accompanied by post-punk guitar slashings. Channelled through Farrell’s electro blender on the likes of Nganshe, Masobele and the jaw-droppingly brilliant single Malukayi, it becomes a modernised, starkly original strain of dub that suggests fresh tributaries for a rapidly evolving music.

Smith’s voice admittedly sounds ravaged on the cranky Quit iPhone and the otherwise boisterous Stout Man, but at least he’s fully engaged throughout.

With all those components in place, the results could have been properly astonishing, instead of only admirable.

This is a big, mature record.

The problems start with the songwriting. There isn’t a song that would have made it onto Howling Wind or Stick To Me, and it takes until track 10, Fast Crowd, to locate a decent hook.

If this is Rose Windows’ final farewell, it’s damned, and it’s good.

Matador is a multi-part opus of gothic indie via The Stranglers in smacked-out mode, and Walking Home’s classic early 60s feel is enhanced by a splendid end-of-the-pier Hammond organ swell, before falling into wimoweh silliness.

It doesn’t always work: Lonely At The Top is a minimalist, spoken-word piece set to odd clicking noises that doesn’t really bear repeated listens. For the most part, however, this is a brave, forward-thinking collection that will be required listening for any fans of electronica.

One concern is that the real country stuff takes time to arrive. When it does, on the pedal-steel-powered Just Pleasing You and the Western swinging If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now, The Traveling Kind delivers on its title.

It’s her inability to comfortably fit into those convenient boxes that makes her so great.

Add curveballs such as From The Dead, a plangent alt. country anthem, and it all adds up to the logical follow-up to 1997’s Album Of The Year. It’s like they’ve never been away.

The album manages to transcend genre, but never once feels disjointed. Any mis-steps are quickly developed into something bigger, and no single noise ever outstays its welcome.

She has lost none of her power in the interim.

It’s easy to like but, ultimately, easy to forget too.