This is a cautious yet dignified return that allows the Reids and their associates to spend even more time together than they’d have expected to create something positive rather than engaging in an orgy of self-destruction.

WHY?’s brand of excess ought to be not abandoned, but embraced.

Their cover of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’ feels superfluous and unnecessary. But that aside, this album sees Sherwood and Pinch take a big evolutionary step in their partnership in terms of keeping their inventiveness and the slabs of bass fresh while managing to ditching much of stodge.

Rarely have a band so perfectly captured the nonchalant thrill of being beautifully stuck in their groove.

Where some calls for more variety amongst the virtuosity here aren’t entirely without merit, the finesse of Dutch Uncles uniquely emboldened pop craft is arguably without comparison at present.

Sleeping Through The War is a slow burning experience but once that fire is lit then there’s no putting it out.

This is no retro throwback, Power Trip have poured their genuine, obsessive love of early thrash, but also Cro-Mags, Prong and Black Flag to create a boiling pot of modern metal mastery.

A physical and spiritual journey unravels in the 37 minutes of the record.

It's the slickest, spaciest project he's released since Honest (which was always underrated), and sits far left of the trap rigor mortis of the self-titled record.

More of the same, then, but a productive kind of dead-end, clichés run hard into the ground.

Some of the tracks in the album are some of the best that Moiré has made to date.

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.

It may be too early for most to declare it a classic, but only a few hours after its launch, it seems fair to describe Gang Signs & Prayer as a towering triumph.

On Drunk, Thundercat aggressively grafts said humour onto his spacy throwback fusion r&b, and the results are mixed.

Dirty Projectors is not quite that good [Primal Scream’s Screamadelica]--few records are--but it certainly drives a stake into the ground as to what guitar bands could deliver in 2017 if they would only open their ears and minds up a little.

Why Love Now may be their second album on Sub Pop, but there has been no cleaning up or pulling punches. Pissed Jeans are as soiled, sordid and scintillating as ever.

It has been worth the wait. It’s not as if music’s timeline moves in anything but circles today, so the delay doesn’t present an issue. This is the music of yesternow.

As well as command of the overall mood, Lipstate always demonstrates a steely command of her influences. But these mini homages don't swamp her sound--quite the reverse.

It’s different, daring, and, fortunately for the trio’s fans, effective.

It’s been widely noted that Levi is the first woman in twenty years to be nominated for Best Score, but that she should win has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with the off-modern freshness of her approach in a field dogged by generic bombast and minimalism-by-numbers.

As it stands, Wake In Fright is a misanthropic social/personal/political blank cheque as bleak in outlook as it is righteously harrowing in sound. It’s 2017, and life’s a chasm. Uniform are staring right in.

Despite the similarities, for the first time, Moon Duo seems less like a side project from Johnson’s other band Wooden Shjips and more like an entity in its own right.

Something political and socially aware, but rather than aid it stands adrift, documenting the prostrate torment that tears through most bereft of power and consumes by the traumatic fallout, all delivered in a sensory wave, something that absorbs and immerses, envelops, is inescapable, yet never lectures.

It’s underwhelming. This is not to say it doesn’t have beautiful moments, it is not to detract from Sisay’s exquisite voice; but overall this feels like one in a long line of emotive “indietronica” records that slots into one of those “chill and alt R&B” Spotify playlists. It’s fine, but it’s kind of forgettable.

Recorded in Budapest with a 40-piece string orchestra in tow, the Iris soundtrack feels far too paint-by-numbers, gathering yearning strings to ebb and flow atop xeroxed prairies of arpeggiating synths. It’s muzak for gritty thrillers, maintaining a thin soup of emotion with enough colour to paint the background without muddying the foreground.

Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche have produced a record which is at once ambitiously progressive, admirably methodical and unassumingly joyous.

Feed The Rats is gloriously over the top, tipping towards the precipice of ridiculousness, yet the sheer brutality of it is what steadies the ship here.

Oczy Mlody re-presents Flaming Lips as a band to be taken seriously once again, despite how much fun they’re clearly having doing it.