The exquisite nature of this slices of dappled pop genius is a joy to behold.

One of the great successes of If All I Was is that it has the same levity as the anthems of the civil rights era.

Companion Rises is the sound of rattling shackles and tension not resolved but placated. The narrator rooted on earth by their surroundings still has a poetic awareness of the ethereal and the far-flung. Companion Rises is Ben Chasny’s valiant attempt to cast himself skyward.

Both Iyer and Smith perform exquisitely throughout (and yes, Manfred Eicher's clear production captures them perfectly), but also apply their notes, chords, solo flourishes and textures with intellectual aplomb and emotional potency. This is music from the heart performed by the brain.

All in all, there is freshness and intrigue for those that need it--and for those that don't, a reliable consistency with their 90s incarnation.

No era sólida travels to cavernous spaces, occupying an ethereal landscape that is deep inside an unknowable earth. Its final title track crystallises with Dalt singing in Spanish, moving out of her made-up language, the dissolution finally coming into sharp focus.

You'd think that a tried and tested method of the same old thing would have a shelf life that its novelty would wear off. But when the buzzsaw, ear-piercing keyboards and thumps of the drum machine hit your eardrums, all rationale is rendered futile.

Changes In Air is subtle, almost ornate, but Coverdale whittles minute variations and intricate textures to discretely demand our attention. Encouraging us to actively notice rather than passively absorb.

The past, present and future collide in a sublime celebration of technology, history and humanity, in all its flawed and triumphant glory, filtered through one man's attempts to understand and explain his small but significant place in the interconnected, universal whole.

Dolphine’s songs are mystical, yes--but by no means are they not also tough, topical and profound.

The Switch confirms Body/Head as the best post-Sonic Youth project by a country mile, but to merely classify them as an afterthought of that group does them a great disservice.

Raymond tells timeless tales through her free-spirited performances. If, sometimes, it feels as if seventeen separate melodies are somehow being flung from six strings and two sets of five fingers at once, then know that all of nature, its blooming flowers, its swooping birds, appear in our ears because of her innate command of an explosive musical articulation.

Too strident to be remotely ambient, and too thoroughly liquid to be pure post punk, Sleepless is the kind of album you simply fall for, in a way that you embrace something that sounds familiar but almost aggressively fresh and vibrant; and like seductive but unnerving classics by Pink Floyd, PiL, Roedelius, Riley or Eno, it wraps you in fur but never quite allows you to relax.

This is pop music, pure and simple: smarter, stranger than your average fare, no doubt, but don't confuse its oddness for inscrutable obtuseness.

Moving at a satisfyingly glacial pace, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is an album that reveals its rewards over multiple listens.

This record is both symphony for sufferers of that condition and a treasure map to the Orkney Islands, whether walking their beaches, or stopped in a traffic jam on the M25.

Each track is a varying assemblage of satisfying discordance. The layering of sounds one atop the other creates a latter-day Latourian compost heap of experience. ... The quiet confidence of Jenkins’ brevity and his refreshing lightness of touch makes for a sharp, welcome intervention that balances the broad and gestural with close attention to the fine print.

These are cranky, abstracted journeys through texture, noise and rhythm with howling, gibbering singer Dara Kiely as our unreliable spirit guide. At their best, Girl Band manage to locate a sweet spot between chaos and precision, poise and frenzy, hysteria and logic.

There is a presence conjured up by Trupa Trupa’s music. And it seems to have made itself more manifest on B Flat A.

A mature record, in the best possible sense, Machineries of Joy reins in the whimsicality and tendency towards wackiness, while still retaining a smart sense of humour alongside the philosophical pondering and strident rock shapes.

They’re not just a crack musical unit--Kyle Seely and Matt Palmer, especially, have developed into a guitar duo to rival prime Thin Lizzy--the quintet feel like a great band-as-gang for our times. Morally upstanding without being dour or didactic, in control of their own image and destiny and capable of tuning to the key of life.

Shout Out! To Freedom.... is a joy to listen to, packed as it is with warm tones, a boat-load of guest-stars, and an eclectic sound which dips between dub, rap, and house.

Wuthering Heights the album is an independent work of art. .... With a voiceover from Cale that sounds a bit like a corny narrative piped out in a theme park ride or immersive experience, the song ["House"] builds into a majestic, doomy dirge. But the rest of Wuthering Heights is a pop album, if a gothic one. ‘Dying For You’ and ‘My Reminder’ are immediate hits, while ‘Always Everywhere’ and ‘Chains of Love’ carry the swooping melodrama of a 1980s power ballad.

The haunting nature of these stripped-down demo versions is reinforced by the spectral presence of the singer, whose persona has inevitably undergone mythologisation akin to other prematurely deceased artists.

What's changed here is that the Weavers are now more than just writers of music; they are now enablers of specific atmospheres, able to handhold a listener through incredibly dense forest in very low light.

Under and alongside the invective, Key Markets has some newly complex and skilful beats.

Rub is an album of well-sheened extremes.

This LP's strength is as a document of change rather than a retrospective.