The bombast side of things is immensely powerful from the off. It’s the glue. Indeed, more than any other aspect of this live music, it is the choir – a triumphant icing of richly layered, though regularly in unison, often enormous, high quality backing vocals – that lends this concert both its sepulchral juggernaut energy and its sheer ‘open space’ rolling vastness. .... For me, the quietest moments work least well. Cave’s overwrought melodrama requires the back alley impoverished, addicted, outsider energy of his earlier eras, rather than this comfortable, even imperious, audience conducting showman.

This album, then, is a gleeful surprise, and though it is debatable whether it would make the same sense for a listener coming to Perrett cold, for those who already know what to look for it is as gently persuasive as it is shyly moving.

Ungodly Hour boffs along with sexy aplomb. But this is carefully collated product with its eyes on all the prizes, rather than a space for vivid artistic expression.

The tenacity and productivity of the Melvins is admirable, as is their ability to continue to push music into some of its darkest and most intriguing corners. What would be really interesting, though, is if the Melvins made fewer Melvins records and tried more projects like the one on the second half of A Walk With Love & Death. After 34 years, their output is at times just a little too breathless.

No Lube So Rude is an album of alacritous beats and riotous self-expression with moments, like ‘Watcha Gonna Do About It’, that are oddly redolent of Madonna’s electronic-focused albums from throughout the 10s. In truth, at times it can start to feel a bit one-note. .... Nevertheless, that famous quote so often misattributed to Voltaire stands, as do the words of Peaches herself: “Now more than ever, there are so many forces that just want you to give up and be quiet. If this album can help you resist that, then that’s what it’s for.”

It's a pleasure to hear the trio working in this way, especially given the sonic common ground they share with Fennesz, and it's also the most energised I've heard the latter sound for a while. Nonetheless, the lack of friction between their respective musical aesthetics can't help but make me wonder how King Midas would sound in collaboration with another, less likely, fellow traveller.

[On The Cherry Thing] the point in the middle where the two parties meet turns out to be a particularly sweet spot where jazz, punk, soul and even a hint of pop blend together beautifully in a dream come true.

Love Over Will offers a techno release beyond the noise, one that wrestles with vocal placement and layers chaos into algorithms and filtered metrics strung out in evolving time.

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.

They leave a lot of room for the listener to complete the work. A choose your own adventure where we stay safely this side of the page, sipping our coffee. ... Your mileage may vary but for me the second half of the album contains the better music.

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.

Uncanney Valley is an enjoyable and accomplished record.

Where the warm, bright finish on Fondo made it gleam expansively, occasionally here you wish for a little more space in the mix and in the arrangements, if only to allow us to explore Vieux Fara Touré's beautiful songs more freely.

In the case of Serpent Music, its magpie aesthetic can leave certain areas feeling improperly unearthed. This instinctual approach could have resulted in an uneven work, but works far more often than not.

The constant zipping and zapping of its final five tracks almost cause the album to become bottom heavy, but thankfully the just-right 'So Cold' and the lovely 'Don't You Love Me' keep it from going completely overboard.

The range of sonic ideas, fully realized songs, and prodigious vocal talent on Kaleidoscope Dream arrives as the most pleasant of shocks.

Interestingly, the tracks that fail to scale the same heights as those mentioned above don't take away from the general value of Dystopia, as there is enough underlying merit to be found.

Wolf is Tyler's album through and through, a mostly diverting document of juvenile delinquency that defines him better than any prior musical effort.

Ebbing and flowing between order and chaos, A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse feels like a long ride in an entropic machine, programmed to descend into mire and din. As such, it’s never dull, it’s just you sometimes wish it had a couple more places to go.

He lacks the humour, more explicit angst and emotional confidence of John Grant and lacks Garneau's devotion to melodrama and pop. He is hardly Stephin Merritt. He exists independently as a cultural explorer as well as simply a very fine, very sensitive songwriter.

A Different Ship is another exciting chapter in the story of a band who continue to improve with every release.

On Late Night Endless, Pinch and Sherwood come close, but coming from two of the most influential figures working in these areas today, there's a greater expectation here that isn't always met. When it does, it shines.

On record, it's certainly a jolt, and not just a pile of drum-driven aural overload, but something does get lost in the process.

Interstellar easily contains enough beauty to confirm that Frankie Rose is more than just the buzz-scene she once helped create and should provide lift-off into all manner of new sonic territories.

This is music for interplanetary airports and as much as it soothes, it sonically unsettles. But that said--when the project is taken holistically--the listener also risks being unsettled by the contexts that lie in its peripheries.

Ceremony's misanthropy has never sounded more genuinely punk.

Eggleston cycles through separate fugue-like riffs, filling in transitions with electronic crescendos that lend the piece a cinematic energy.

Even if Have Fun With God occasionally meanders or strips its source material back a little too far, its value lies in the way it extends the course of Dream River (which itself sounds like a continuation of Callahan's 2011 magnum opus, Apocalypse)