A musically diverse affair yet still coherently Saint Etienne.

Perhaps his most assured and confident album.

Demen's debut album is worth listening to in its own right, regardless of any nostalgia for the 4AD sound. She takes a studied-sounding array of influences from contemporary ambient and drone, infusing them with a more operatic, vocalised melancholy.

While there is the odd lapse into grisly power-riffing, the overall mood is sedate if haunted. It has the same effect as dormant memories or lingering dreams, seemingly placid and harmless but then suddenly coiling itself around you.

What makes Jane Weaver and Modern Kosmology such a joy is that it comes as sharp and welcome relief to so many of the serious and po-faced purveyors of cynically cosmic vibes. This is music that simultaneously celebrates and explores, that takes pop as its foundation and then builds a multi-layered space on it that welcomes one and all.

The raw and at times, ferocious navigation of the album soars in its earnest delivery and marks a career-defining release for (Sandy) Alex G.

The 24-piece choir which accompanies most of the pieces here are a lightwave beam keeping the listener afloat, yet it's Coltrane's own vocals which resonate the most deeply.

With Play What They Like Colpitts and Man Forever have crafted something truly unique: a spiritual jazz album for agnostics.

It’s wonderful stuff, centred on Ayisoba’s signature instrument, a two-stringed lute-type contraption called a kologo. Obviously limited in its sonic scope, our dude provides rhythm and melody lines alike to hypnotic and strangely groovy effect.

So while the production isn’t as in-your-face as before, the flourishes that characterised those releases are here deployed to subtle effect on an album that’s only too happy to explore a variety of stylistic routes including blues, jazz, deep house and dub elements to make a surprisingly coherent and cohesive statement.

Dark Energy was already a significant left turn for footwork and Black Origami is a leap into the future from that, with probably only ‘1%’ (featuring Holly Herndon) from Black Origami sounding like anything on her first album.

A mélange of harum scarum garage-psych, unabashed homage and carefully-crafted pop reprieve, it finds Black Lips at their most daring, exploratory and downright vital.

It is not even sprawling and directionless but just painstakingly mediocre throughout.

Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind play it straight and with a total conviction from a lineage that includes The Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, The Stooges and all the way back to those primal urges that fuelled that first generation of rock & rollers as much as they did the seekers of hidden knowledge.

Inter Alia is a disappointing return to the saddle, expressed with awkward confidence and bravado by the band seemingly misremembering itself.

IV, doesn't really vary the template. They have nothing to prove; from the onset the record is a guided tour into the myriad depths of aural destruction. ... As always it’s the plodders, the pounders, the punishers that stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Devout is bold, fascinating and sweet, then, with moments of melodic brilliance and sonic mastery. But taken as a whole, the result is slightly unpalatable. As a good father Mr Mitch undoubtedly knows that too many sweets can upset the stomach. And the same logic applies to Devout: you need some some roughage to balance out the sugary treats.

The church's natural reverb provides a chilling reverse-incubation to her trembling vibrato, and at times, her breath too itself is transformed into a fluttering instrument, frantically encompassing all angles of the space.

The album rolls at a constant low boil, the agitation poking and prodding under the skin, not unlike the lingering, uncertain love. The Far Field isn’t explosive in its emotion, nor is it wallowing; it’s just constantly rolling forward, the wheels propelling Future Islands onward to the horizon.

It's so lean and spare sonically that it feels like a dash of cold water to the face after the cacophonous, dense To Pimp A Butterfly; it's so light on its feet that it makes Good Kid, M.A.A.D City feel ponderous in comparison. It does this while also staking its claim to being Kendrick's most philosophically profound album to date.

Keenly political, anti-fascist, and pro-immigrant, British Sea Power mine the past to give us what we need now.

The daring, innovative breadth of his artistic imagination is given full licence in the sense of expansive space each track so effortlessly conjures--no doubt helped by his previous soundtrack work.

Pure Comedy (or, I would say, Tillman in general) doesn’t suffer for its big ideas, it thrives on them; the real problem is the constant circling and underlining and pointing out those big ideas when just letting them sit and mystify in their black hole weightiness would do.

The challenge of making something so immediate and inviting is obviously one everyone involved has taken to with gusto, and as both a musical work and their most daring experiment to date, the record is a resounding success.

In The Same Room gives us more intimately friendly insight into the beguiling world of Julia Holter, seen here as thoughtfully poised and careful not to intimidate the listener, making this breezy recording a good entry point for novices in Holter's catalogue.

Silver/Lead is an exhibition in restraint whose brilliant corners and burrowing phrases reward both the keen ear and repeated listen.

All The Way is particularly strong, however, for both the production of Galás' piano and its melodies--there is an added, foreboding subtlety which comes through with more clarity here.

Pangs is full of warmth and charm, one that is welcoming instead of being difficult.