Pretty much the whole way through, without pausing for breath, Pray For Me I Don’t Fit In sounds like a carnival band decided to make a covers album of 90s industrial rock classics. I don’t reckon this is an influence they’re especially punting for. However, happily or not, it’s where they land. This is a thrilling mosh, though it can get annoying.

There are moments in The Kid where Smith’s ability to meld the electronic and the organic into a symbiotic web of sound and music is comforting and soothing, the harshness of modern noise and atonality sublimated into something that provides a balming comfort.

This more lithe and economical album in many ways proves that Pond have taken a further step towards genuine maturity, but it does still seem rather thrown together and the result of a scattergun approach to both composition and arrangements.

While each of these tracks runs together almost seamlessly, the record is almost in danger of becoming a background presence. But there is a refreshing honesty to this consistency, prioritising texture and narrative over conventional structure or dancefloor impact. Long invites us to tune in and be moved, or to drop out and continue on as ever.

Old Fears is, then, a notably moodier, less accessible work than Field Music's last album Plumb.

Much like religious experience, the constellations of songs here (and their brethren on the two prior albums) rely on an intensely relatable core, a simple idea or feeling sizzling at the center that anyone can attach to. From there, the instrumentalists ripple out in meditative layers, never covering over or distracting from it, but rather reinforcing.

Sun is the light at the end of one hell of a tunnel, a record brimming with an assurance and playfulness that, if a little dorky in places, is about as cathartic as pop gets.

A good album, but one better suited to a former time.

While the album is often indulgent, this isn't necessarily a downfall.

They might need to be a little more consistent to make that one stick, but if they're up for it, One Day All Of This Won't Matter Anymore is a decent launch pad, proving they've the confidence to mix it up.

The result is a woozily involving mood piece that encompasses everything from the shimmering heat of daytime ('Lifesized Stuffed Animal', where music box chimes rub up against disoriented square wave bass) to the dead of night, caught in the lairy drunken lurch of 'Kitties'.

Restarter, the band's fourth full-length, sees a return to form for Torche that even in its unabashed nods to frontman Steve Brooks's other musical endeavors, retains the pop sensibilities that have continually been the point of distinction between the two.

On the whole, though, these songs are at their best when grounded in low region trickery: rumbles, clipping sounds, droplets, shudders, judders and all manner of absorbed low freak-uency eeriness, as exhilaratingly creepy as anything offered up by trip-hop's most skilled practitioners.

His vocal style might be somewhat polarising when not backed by a dense barrage of noise--and at times This World is a challenging listen--but there is no doubt that broadening his scope has added new strings to his bow; namely the ability to adopt breezier sounds without losing any of his emotional clout.

While it’s a formula they work to, it never sounds formulaic.

The instrumentation, forms, and concepts are familiar: “pure” country, as it were. Lyrically speaking, love, companionship, and family (‘Mama’) represent persistent threads; even more so, though, the passing of time seems to be Parton’s chief concern.

Going, Going... is a little overlong, but it’s also bursting with some tremendous songs and a vitality that belies over 30 years in the game.

An oscillation between control and disorientation continues throughout (the album’s title refers to a numerical vector for oscillation in physics and engineering). Hewing closer to the former is when Phasor is at its strongest, exploring the world of a character seeking connection but far from reach.

Despite the variety of genres and diversity of contributions, Thyrsis of Etna has a distinct sonic flavour. There is attention to balance. Each track has a cocoon-like sound that soothes and sedates a listener. ... Regardless of the names and history, the music has enough to keep one intrigued – or at least entertained.

By showing so much of themselves in all their imperfect glory they clearly don't give two hoots what anyone else thinks. Love and monsters is all well and good, but self-indulgence and punk spirit is the true and unlikely dichotomy at the ever breaking heart of Half Japanese.

It's a sunny, sweet, excitable record, but it doesn't forget a couple of moments of contrast.

Not that The Messenger solely ransacks the past, though: conversely, it's the clunkier, more ham-fisted retro fodder that constitute the main misfires, especially lyrically.... But when he pushes things forward, everything begins to glitter.

Konono No. 1 Meets Batida isn't quite the sustained and magical dialogue it might have been, but it's an intriguing cultural experiment with moments of real alchemy.

At times the album becomes a little difficult to follow, with the momentum failing during the twists and turns of songs such as the slightly ponderous 'Vile Hell'. However Chasny often manages to claw back interest by adding slight colouring to the stark instrumental palette.

Of course such is the collage gonzoid splatter-gun style of the Blues Explosion and their huge canon of songs its almost inevitable that they might inadvertently chance on something shiny from their own back catalogue and contort it.

Warm and inviting, produced with precision and a glossy, futurist sheen. Largely written on the road before lockdown, it winds between moods, never settling on a single tone or genre. For the most part, it's joyful stuff. ... A couple of moments don't quite stick.

At under forty minutes, an album of groove-based music in a foreign language doesn't have much time to make an impact, but it certainly does leave you wanting more.

Side one exemplifies 2020 in that it’s not entirely successful. While there are great ideas bursting to get out, it also lurches mechanically and is difficult to love. It often feels laboured, like Kirk is giving himself a migraine trying to reinvent something because you suspect he feels that’s his job. Flip the record over and the outlook changes. Once he submits to the pulsating rhythms and allows himself to be free then there’s a gold rush.

There’s just enough time to get lost in thought before you’re jolted back to the beginning again. Only ‘Long Assemblage’ has any ambitions to break out from the sketches, a five-minute exposition that dares to create anything like a narrative arc, carried along by some intrepid hi-hats. Otherwise it’s soft and languorous and thoughtful, and occasionally a little bit sinister.

It takes a couple of plays for the songs to individually stand out. Simon le Bon’s still remarkably youthful voice remains the most recognisable element but John Taylor’s bass and Nick Rhodes’s ear for keyboard shade come into their own, while Roger Taylor retains his steady presence on drums.

The instrumentation is often so clean and clinical it can almost feel like stock sounds, but coupled with the eerie atonal textures it feels very odd. Like a Bosch painting, where the lines are smooth, colours are clean and saturated, and even figures in darkness shine in the gleam of some unseen light, the arrangements feel alarmingly smooth and uncomfortably well-rendered.

Everything Ever Written is a welcome return for a band that's long been held in high regard.

TFCF is undoubtedly a record for recalibrating Andrew's personal and sonic compass but, rather thrillingly, suggests that despite the realignment, great things lie in the future.

This is still a Grizzly Bear record, but thanks to a spin through the grinder of maturity, it's also now a Grizzly Bear that know when to hold back or let things flow in order to create an LP that connects emotionally. This was the one thing that its impressive but more technically minded predecessors often lacked.

When it's good it's great, and it's never bad; Gruff Rhys' lyrics are mostly thoughtful and tastefully poetic throughout, but Feltrinelli's complex tale perhaps needed to be fleshed out further, with more twists and turns and the peaks more evenly placed.

It's not a perfect record, but then you wouldn't want it to be--the charm is the energy and room to grow here.

At 11 tracks, Turn Blue doesn't quite fall prey to the late-album bloat of Brothers, but it is still one song too long.

Though constantly teetering on a knife's edge--to be expected in such mental syncopated mashups--this is wildly colourful and knowingly absurd music. With a little trust from the listener, though, it works.

Sometimes their simple guitar riffs can feel too plain and familiar, and mingled with the consistently doomy atmosphere, it can at times feel relentless, but equally, they take their hard-wrought innovative DIY aesthetic and refine it.

In Instrumental Tourist, Hecker and Lopatin have struck upon a secret chord, traced sacred geometries, and laid a foundation sturdy enough to build upon. It's sound as structure, structurally sound.

Not a bad album at all. In fact, at points it's really rather wonderful; it's just not quite the wall-to-wall fruity bangers one probably expected, but by no means as skip-heavy as the likes of Random Access Memories.

Rather than concentrating on a single, memorable event, it takes the best bits to offer an idealised representation of the Howlin Rain live experience that's very much the aural equivalent of a Cameron Crowe movie.

While Beauty & Ruin contains some of the most vital music of Mould's solo career, it'd be great to see him properly stretched again as an artist and player. And maybe that requires an even bigger rapprochement with the past.

Cellophane Memories is harder to get a grip on. Chrystabell’s vocals, previously the unambiguous focus of every song, are here layered, cut-up, and reversed, often to the point where they become indecipherable. That’s in part due to the nature of its creation.

It is a peculiar little record, but it hangs together very well, and makes a reasonable case for his ability to wring something worthy out of whatever art form he chooses to tackle.

It’s a boundary-pushing work that, depending on the listener, could be considered either powerfully engrossing or deeply alienating.

Chances are that after the initial thrill has gone, you'll be reaching for Indie Cindy less frequently than Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, more than Trompe Le Monde and about the same as Bossanova and that's not a bad return to the fray by any measure.

With The Gradual Progression, one definitely gets the sense that Fox is making an unselfconscious attempt to forge forward with music, an unabashed statement for progression. Though it’s not entirely successful, one has to admire this kind of ambition. He’s made an album that’s hard to describe in both generic and theoretical terms.

A fearlessness in operating in obscurity is Black Noise, demonstrated in its abstract nature. ‘Art of Survival’ brings forth a mass of overwhelming sounds before dulling into inaudible speech that is both numbing and ominous, in amongst defiant lyricism. ‘Black Orpheus’ bares mystical unease, dominated by streaky violin chords intriguingly met with rhythmic drum patterns that create fanatical theatre.

Each song has a very different message, although it is the highlife feeling that stays with the listener.

It's to Earl's credit that he's managed to make the music he wants to, even if it's more of a rapper's rap record than one of any major crossover appeal.

It’s no Paris 1919, and it’s no Vintage Violence either. You, as the listener, will be required to do some work. To call Mercy a slog would be dismissive and unduly harsh; challenging would be more appropriate. Given that we are in the presence of the 80-year-old godfather of avant-rock, you know that persistence will be its own reward eventually.

Sticky Wickets dispels any thoughts or concerns that this is merely a novelty act and while not as instant as their debut, repeated listens definitely provide equal rewards.

1000 Days is even more assured, and it often veers into being overproduced and losing that essential 1970s DIY role-playing game spirit.

As If contains more dizzying peaks and valleys than a Zorb ride through Derbyshire (and leaves you twice as exhausted). Possibly the most fun you'll ever have once before throwing in the towel and doing something valuable with your life.

The arrangements are simple, often pretty ... but mostly they serve to support the delivery of some of Finn's most evocative and well observed lyrics.

There is a confidence in their songwriting here that was missing on their debut. More risks are taken – mostly lyrically – and it pays off. The downside to the album is that It’s all subtle shades of the same colour, without much variation. At thirty-two-minutes long this doesn’t grate too much, but the inclusion of a slower ballad or another upbeat instrumental would have been a nice addition.

Gone are the solemnly brooding Knife-like synthscapes and the ethereal soprano. In their place are sickly synths, wobbling queasily around the mix; relentlessly shuddering beats hammering at your skull from the inside; crunching electronic distortion and sinister skittering rhythms.

Way Out Weather's lines and contours are beautifully rendered. But there are times when Gunn's songs don't benefit from the extra exposure, when one misses Time Off's murkier, more forgiving production.

The album also succeeds in capturing a spirit and essence of youth... the spunk, snarl and energy that comes with being one is integral to this record, even if isn't always fully realised.

You can’t fault the album for its lofty ambitions, though at times it feels overly wedded to a sense of gravitas, like the pianos on ‘The Slipstream’, which have all the solemn sentimentality of a Lloyds Bank advert. Closer ‘Safety’ is a much more arresting cut.

The first Shjips album to be recorded in a proper studio, with an engineer, West is Wooden Shjips' fullest exploration of these tensions to date, and sees the band stepping up their game in every aspect.

Some parts of Collections 01 show more expansion than others, and at times it does come across as more a collection of tracks.

Throughout Valentina, and especially on 'End Credits', the Wedding Present's new streamlined and sinewy delivery certainly has something of The Fall to it.

Future This is a coherent, uniform proposition, a proper album, rather than a melange of posturing and botched experimentation, as was the case with A Brief History Of Love.

If the first [issue] had sonic charms which seem extemporary, this one is somewhere between the sublunary murk of the earlier bootlegs, the original band-approved TeePee records version of 2003 and a brighter, modern-sounding studio demo, but it's not glaringly distinct.

Although Souvenirs is a daring record, there is a feeling that the Pale Blue Eyes’ fantastic spacecraft is suspended in the air before the real take-off. Perhaps, they are about to define the direction for the creative journey. Would be great to see them reaching for upper regions of space.

Small wonders are waiting to be uncovered here, though they take considerable searching. While there’s limited novelty these days in live performances, given their ubiquity online, there are a few stunning examples scattered in the tapes. ... Reviewing these recordings may be superfluous. The songs were not designed to be heard but to be worked through and altered so it’s akin to reviewing storyboards or rushes.

On the whole, though, call Transcendental Youth a stumble and wait for the next Mountain Goats release next year.

Ultimately this is by far the most unusual and spiritually minded thing McBean has yet put his name to, and his feet being firmly planted on earth allow the more astral meanderings of Wasif more power through restraint.

You Know What It’s Like is a grower, and one that demands repeated listening.

Sequenced like a mixtape, each track slips easily into the next.

Hot Cakes [is] proof if it were needed that there's plenty of life in the old dog yet - and that dog still don't give a f***.

It rewards multiple studious listens in order to piece together Vainio's deceptively rich vocabulary, but could equally serve as the soundtrack to an expressionist horror film. As such, it's a hard album to pin down, but trying to do so is an experience in and of itself.

Beyond Bugbears' supplementary nature, it's a coherent collection of songs, a window to a period closer in time and temperament to our own than we imagine.

Dense, professional, and thoroughly realized, Mirror Traffic will become a lot of people's favorite Malkmus album. He sounds more like Malkmus than ever, and it makes me shiver.

It is, by some distance, Krug's best work as Moonface. It's riveted with some glorious, soaring moments and the taut motorik rhythm is a compulsive mesh for the album.

It is an easier, more focused listen than Ekstasis, but there is nothing here to rival that album's 'Marienbad' for sophisticated songwriting.

Even when the songs falter – the clunky ‘Dove Cameron’, or the over-filtered ‘Dream Scenario’ – they fail interestingly. This isn’t a pristine album. It mutates, glitches, repeats itself.

Occasionally there are pedestrian moments, as on the drifting 'Pill Hill Serenade', where the vitality dims and the sombre tone can feel wearing, so taking it all in is best staggered over several listens.

Gossamer has enough going on musically to shift the focus away from the occasionally mawkish lyrics.

Expectations hits a lot more than it misses. Bebe Rexha is no ordinary singer. She’s a chameleon who can switch vocals, blend with any sound, and find rhythm with any tempo. She is an artist that can make other genres pop.

While at times Flat White Moon struggles to match the awe-striking levels of the album’s opening track, there’s still plenty to enjoy.

After a while, such frantic energy can get exhausting, and fans of Room(s) or Vapor City might feel bewildered by the whole thing, but throughout the morass, Stewart’s keen ear for rhythm and melody shine through, and his exploration of pop and r’n’b finds more common ground with his own aesthetic that might have been expected.

It’s Alright Between Us As It Is is an album of variation. ‘But Isn’t It’ and ‘Shinin’ are weak, but this is a miscalculation in production and uninspired lyric writing, as opposed to anything which puts any lasting worry in our mind about Lindstrøm’s abilities. The work is not his most creative, he’s not redrawing any of the lines of genre which he himself first traced with previous works.

The Argument may not be the best place for novices to acquaint themselves with the work of Grant Hart but for long-term observers it proves to be a welcome return from a singular if erratic talent.

Okay, so it won't be most people's cup of tea, but Gauntlet Hair is a brave and defiantly individual effort.

M:FANS perhaps loses some of those dissonant, euphoric yet deeply melancholic moments that Music For A New Society has to give us; tracks where it seems a self-consuming feat for Cale to bring himself to sing. But the two work in a partnership rather than against each other.

Solid and dependable, Fade is another album in a long line of impressive works that, whilst never setting a cultural agenda, is always returned to for satisfying rewards

There is so much to be enjoyed on 'Evolve Or Be Extinct' though - such fluid virtuosity - that the occasional blip does not cloud the overall picture.

If Mostly No lacks genuine innovation, the album more than compensates with a radiating glow of veneration.

There's strange stuff here even by the none-stranger Black Dice's standards. But again it's more purposeful and propulsive than that appearing on their previous albums.

Labyrinth is strong, but dwarfed by connections to work which have made an indelible mark upon popular culture in a way this album likely won’t. There is still substance to these compositions however: it’s an electronic, neo-gothic record which brims with strangeness and decay.

It's an enjoyable, occasionally frustrating ride, and one that takes a few listens to sink in, even if its just to unburden yourself of your expectations.

Here is a group that doesn't seem to know where it fits; it can't decide whether it wants to rack itself freak-folk, or avant-noise, or post-rock, or even neo-classical. But it also understands that, actually, you don't have to choose.

Lynchian undercoat aside...it's basically just a good old massive pop album, which can be a scary thing in its own right: the air of soulless, monolithic power and the unseen presence of shadowy string-pullers etc.

Have Some Faith in Magic is very pretty and very meaningless.

It's Venetian Snares going back to the root of his influences by means of a longer-established medium. An admirable idea well executed, but as a listener I'm just not ready for a drill & bass revival and as such this album beggars few repeat plays.