The title track of Van the Man's 40th (!) studio album, the slow jam is a brilliant blues number based on rolling Rhodes keyboards, fat horns, thin cymbal splashes and a vocal with such clarity, concision and quality that it will stop you in your tracks. Yep, that good. The rest? Well, you've seen this movie before: blues, jazz and soul standards delivered with minimum fuss and maximum quality.

While the project makes more sense if you’ve seen the movie, there’s plenty of warmth and intelligence alongside the tits and willies.

It’s true that psychedelia of this type is often frameless by its very nature. Yet, despite the album’s delights, one wonders how tight Neilson’s eccentric work would be if reined in a little.

An enjoyable if low-key listen that consolidates rather than shakes Stables’ current status.

While there is still plenty to love here, Everything Now feels like Arcade Fire's first non-essential album which is a serious matter given their illustrious back-catalogue.

Big Sigh's strength is in not holding back from confronting darker feelings, and revelling in the raw honesty of experiencing them.

There’s not enough adventure to make this truly feel like Pixies; it lacks the sense that the wheels might come off any minute. Lenchantin, for her part, holds her own, especially on All I Think About Now, but her new colleagues need to rediscover the urgency and ambition that defined their best work if they’re ever going to match it.

ASIWYFA haven’t reinvented the wheel with this album, but it’s a worthy addition to an increasingly accomplished body of work.

The palette can feel restrictive, and the lyrical matter predictable. It’s a stepping stone, a moment of reconciliation and recollection from a talent who is just about to surge ahead.

While still evoking a sense of auditory adventure on tracks such as The Deku Tree or instrumental interlude Off World Colony, this more sedate middle section can feel slightly too mid-tempo. Despite this, the duo's sonic voyages make it worthwhile to sink into Bamboo’s realm.

Act One: Music For Inanimate Objects is certainly a good album, but sometimes it feels like the only thing linking all the songs together is their slower tempo.

The result is less a stylistic refresh than a confident reaffirmation of their combined output up until now.

At 20 tracks long, however, it takes some serious listening to get through the whole thing, and a sense of sag in the latter third threatens to overpower on the first few spins. Essentially, this flower could've used a little more judicious pruning.

While Deliverance does have instances of real bracing power, it equally finds itself faltering in its most exposed moments where it really needs to connect.

Between Two Shores is another Glen Hansard album filled with good songs, gorgeous music and gregarious singing. Is that enough? You decide.

The eight-track album features themes on the new age norms of class, gender, race and power that shape the world today. Beyond the sweet melodies and striking instrumentals, New Age Norms 1 is a project with a message.

Too often the feeling remains that the joke isn't funny enough to sustain a whole record, especially one that follows a masterpiece.

Fake Sugar is a real reinvention for Beth Ditto, but it’s not so much of a reinvention that her signature traits are unrecognisable.

In all, after 18 very long years, Damage and Joy is a near-faultless return to form, even if some of these 'new' songs are actually over a decade old.

There are moments where things becomes a little sluggish, though perhaps a stumble here and there can be expected when an album tries to fit so much into a short space. For the most part though, The New Monday is a valiant attempt at distilling Detroit’s musical culture into a single, cohesive record.

Repeat visits are sure to unearth more of the band’s thought process, but there's a lingering sense that less could've been so much more.

Generally, though, this is an album of unobtrusive indie strum-alongs: Doris and The Daggers never quite explodes from the speakers, nor does it set your soul soaring with melodies to be bawled across fields and arenas.

If anything, it’s a shame the album takes this long to really flourish. Indie super-producer John Congleton is welcome on the boards, but he arguably provides a little too much polish, compared to his recent worthy efforts for Priests.

Geowulf have all the potential to be able to put together a decent pop album, with Kendrick’s blissful vocals and Banjanin’s chilled-out melodies, but unfortunately on Great Big Blue, they just fall a bit short.

There’s a pervading darkness over All This I Do for Glory that makes it a tricky listen at points.

Opener Human and later, less successfully, Faith For Doubt, divvy up the greatest hits of a Laurel Canyon-indebted film soundtrack with the driving rhythms of Fleetwood Mac. The latter is The War on Drugs without the transcendence. These, unfortunately, muddle an album filled mostly with quiet, vocal-led tracks that veer from haunting, sparse ballads to something more hopeful.

This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a sentimental and self-aware album that, at times, is emotive and infectiously catchy. At others, it is a little too safe, a little too generic and reserved.

While it is endearing to hear Karen O working with a more patient form of songwriting, the raw energy and emotion of her best work isn’t here.