Pinkunoizu take synth pop, psych folk, surf rock, krautrock and other marginal forms of pop and rock from the last 50 years, and use them for the basis of extremely enjoyable excursions in deep listening.

Through electro beats, samples and soaring choruses, Lynch's voice is consistent, strong and always beautiful.

Aforger has a mysterious, almost uncanny quality to it beyond the more obvious emotional exorcism.

This album is a career highpoint for Sweden’s Skull Defekts.

Only ‘It Will Never Be Simple’ (at 2:32) feels a little like padding. Overall though, this is the pinnacle so far of the current GBV reformation, reaching in parts the high calibre of classic era albums like Alien Lanes and Under The Bushes Under The Stars.

Like a young monster venturing out into the world on its own, Volume Massimo, despite its pretences towards a pop sensibility, is still a beast at its core, but it’s an album that showcases just how much Cortini‘s aesthetic has developed since his early days.

Mint Chip is full of misdirection but never feels contrived. ... Their songs are tightly composed, danceable streams of consciousness.

As the title of the soporific, sunbleached skank that is 'LO HI' suggests, 'Lucifer' is more a subdued warm bath of than a plunge into the psyche.

Under the rule of Worden's powerful vocal these sophisticated compositions provide a gripping, melodramatic exploration of a mindset both childlike and brooding.

Throughout, Strangers is quite simply an understated tour de force by a now experienced composer and performer, able to convey a feeling and lead the way within it in equal measure.

This is a timid stand for a band who've made a career out of courageously embracing their fears.

Largely an enjoyable and ambitious LP.

It takes a while for these disparate facets to show themselves fully, but the resultant experience is a trawl into an underworld totally removed from collective consciousness views of tradition, fate and religiosity. It’s a dark path, but one well worth taking, provided you have something to ease the headache when you come back.

Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO has lofty ambitions of space on one hand, and a great deal of heart and soul to keep it simultaneously grounded on the other.

The Men may not be here to change rock history but at the very least they deserve serious recognition for the fact that they keep doing exactly what they want, and that it continues to be as honest and as shamelessly exhilarating as the best rock music always should be.

Instead of a coherent collection of songs, Animal Joy feels like a series of very clever blueprints that, while admirable in form, are often (despite that title), rather bloodless.

A record that may occasionally get on one's nerves, yet undoubtedly overflows with vitality.

Wand's resultant mixture of the frenetic and the smooth is intoxicating.

Boys And Girls is a somewhat predictable trawl through the back catalogues of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stax Records, Janis Joplin and the recorded output of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios amongst others, but with none of the grit, passion or emotion.

Unfortunately, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance is the net effect of an effort that goes nowhere at all; and this deviation appears furtive, as if they're trying to hide their beloved quirks from an expanded audience.

It's the first great guitar album of the year--stimulating, idiosyncratic, occasionally challenging, but most importantly, jam-packed full of proper tunes.

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.

It sometimes feels as if Sleaford Mods retreat a little too far on The Demise of Planet X – diagnosing collapse with sharp wit but leaving little in direction or galvanising force. In a Britain that could use art to provoke unity as much as amusement, that distance feels not just like an easy route, but a missed opportunity, no matter how enjoyable the chaos remains.

He's in playful mood and the tunes certainly don't suffer as a result.

Despite the apparent lack of new ideas here, the undeniable success of this work lies in Goat's deepening and development of the musical and spiritual themes presented on in World Music.

All in all, Instrumentals 2015 is an admirable piece of work from a man who seems to take direction from few others.

Lady From Shanghai is another excellent addition to the Pere Ubu discography, the sound of a band using comparatively limited means to explore a deceptively broad spectrum of sound, confusing the boundaries between pop and the avant-garde.

Music For Drifters is another fine showcase for the prodigious talents of this Sunderland twosome.