Take opener, ‘Lighthouse’, all tinkering piano and falsetto vocals. Three minutes in, you’re sure you have it pegged as a soul-searching meditation on all things love-related, think James Vincent McMorrow tinkling ivories on a grand piano; then at three minutes and 11 seconds, something extraordinary happens, and what was a spookily ethereal nether-melody mutates in the blink of an LED into a Morricone-style Mariachi monster, with more dramatic flourishes than a daytime soap opera.

The rest of Adventures… is similarly hard to pin down, morphing from introspective balladry to bombast, from pared-back instrumentation to full-on orchestral wig-out with nary a warning. It’s definitely not an easy album to get to grips with, but time spent in its company will be handsomely rewarded, as tracks like the glorious, symphonic ‘Into Giants’, the melancholy ‘Words In The Fire’ and the Beatles-esque ‘Quiet Crowd’ are certain to be amongst the finest you will hear this year and cement Watson’s reputation as one of the most innovative and interesting writers and performers on either side of the Atlantic. As he sings on the latter, “Would you rather be part of the crowd or just a single sound, waiting to be heard?” In answer, Watson definitely ploughs his own furrow: long may he sow such sublime seeds.

Crazy For You was nothing complex and mind-challenging like the banal idealistic thought of the modern musician. It contained a sensual simplicity in its layman lyrics and an earthly natural wave of vocal-instrumental harmonisation. Though “I’m always crazy when I miss you, I’m always lazy when I miss you” seems sluggish and lethargic, Best Coast’s debut met a subconscious aesthetic. On the contrary, pieces like ‘Last Year’ and ‘How They Want Me To Be’ seem to be dubious and doubtful attempts at cracking at their prior successes. Matching riffs between the bass, lead guitar and Cosentino’s vocals in the former beckon a lack of enticement.

Aimed less towards the commoner, Bruno and Cosentino’s sophomore appears more personal; delving into themes of hindsight, independence, friendship and true intimacy. ‘My Life’ fittingly brushes off drug usage, reminiscence, maternal love, adventure and a passion for an independent life – all glued together by a swanky guitar waltz and layered chants. Though there are few upstart tracks, it does seem that the personally insightful pieces are more significant ones. This concludes that the duo’s lack of direction opens them up to vulnerable positions, whereas their new personal image offers them extra drive and diversity. In a nutshell, this is an album of unease, sugar-coated with optimism.

There’s an element of the kitchen sink approach, usually another indication of a high sense of musical intelligence, but again in the hands of the Leeds quartet there is nothing to fear. Effortless vocal harmonies mix with processed beats of the hip-hop and electronic kind, flowing together rather crashing into each other. Thus the record moves effortlessly from a brooding melancholy to choral acapella to bass heavy pop all in the first three tracks. Then the single ‘Breezeblocks’ turns up and the album explodes into life, perhaps the perfect example of what some wags are terming ‘folk step’. A meaningless, made up name it maybe but it does give a hint of the strange directions that alt-J take their music.

Better still, where others burn brightly then let us down, An Awesome Wave is in it for the duration. Just when you think you’ve got them pegged, another surprise slides into view. Those twists and turns keep coming throughout, especially in the shape of Joe Newman’s stunning vocal performances. Switching from falsetto to a low croon at the drop of a hat, he keeps a human hand on the tiller while all sorts of mechanics come into play around him. That maybe is what is quite so special about alt-J, that at their heart are four individuals in control of their own destiny. Awesome indeed.

The aforementioned ‘Melody Emergency’ suggests that this isn’t as radical move as you might think, combining a tight band sound with a crystal clear vocal. It’s pretty good, as is lead single ‘Perfect World’ – a suggestion that a more pop orientated Gossip isn’t that bad an idea. Yet soon the sense of Brace Pain and Hannah Blilie’s involvement begins to slip away, leaving A Joyful Noise as the Ditto / Higgins show. Neither are truly capable of pulling it off. For an album in a genre that depends on melody and hooks, there’s very little here that sticks in the mind or will have you whistling in the street. What you get is a series of average tunes that fall flat where they should jump for joy and merely send you skimming your record collection for a Girls Aloud album. Given the fuss made of the pairing, it has to be marked down as a failure and far from a glorious one. For Higgins it’s probably best marked down as a lesson learned while he returns to the world he knows best, yet for Gossip themselves it stands as yet another case of diminishing returns. Time, you feel, is running out.

The thing is, for half of I Predict A Graceful Expulsion, she pretty much pulls it off. However contrived the doom soul tag seems, there’s no denying that Spx has the second half in droves. Her voice is amazing, a raw instrument in its own right. First track ‘The Mark’ absolutely smoulders with brooding intensity, all the better for the stripped down delivery. As ‘Heavy Hands’ and ‘Winter Solstice’ add more elements it becomes clear that the record is able to strike a neat balance between the raw and the accessible – this is neither a lo-fi fest a la Willis Earl Beal or the ultra polished soul of so many.

Such development continues as the record goes on, with each track adding to the last. It peaks with the beautiful ‘Holland’ and its choral climax, leaving a genuine lump in the throat. With half the record left, you wonder just where she can go from here. The answer, unfortunately, is nowhere. The rest of the album isn’t bad by any means, it’s just that it offers no surprises, no highlights, no show stoppers. The heavy lifting has already been done and the second half simply glides to a hault – fine in itself but a definite disappointment given what has gone before. Maybe Cold Specks ventured forth before she was quite ready. Maybe someone should have laid out the record a little better, spreading the gold more evenly. Or maybe we just got greedy, expecting a classic from an artist still taking her first steps. Whatever the reason, this is a debut that starts with a quiet bang but ends with a graceful whimper.

Opener ‘Tomorrow’ showcases the true breadth of vocalist Malin Dahlströms range along with being one of the standout tracks on the album. There is a distinct Kate Bush flavour to her voice: pirouetting from hushed lament to the dramatic crash of the chorus and its description of a reckless love – “if tomorrow comes, I want to waste my love, on you like a pearl merchant” – it is a statement of intent, and quickly washes away any notion that they are riding on their fellow Swedes success.

The theatrical sheen that she, along with musical partner Gustaf Karlöf creates is more influenced by their history as stage music writers rather than any one artist or style of music in particular. Throughout the album, their influences are elusive: Kate Bushs’ theatrical nature one minute and the pounding synth of 80’s electronica the next.

Up until now their releases have displayed this more energetic side to their style and it is those tracks that shine brightest here. ‘The Drummer’ still sounds as immediate and exciting as it did when they released it in EP form in October; it’s their calling card with regards marking themselves out from the rest of the Swedish groups permeating the music scene at the moment. Likewise with lead single ‘DJ, Ease my Mind’ – it stamps their individual mark on their country’s brand, fitting snugly between The Knife and Lykke Li in its sound.

As a whole, Instinct proves an exciting prospect. Following in the wake of such critically lauded albums as Little Dragon’s Ritual Union and Li’s Wounded Rhymes, its relationship to those artists’ work could have been the albums undoing. It gladly lives up to expectations however and while it’s not drastically different from its contemporaries, it still sounds fresh enough and inventive enough to be taken on its own terms.

For this record it seems like Squarepusher is working from the belly of an intergalactic spaceship, frantically turning dials amidst a smorgasbord of LEDs in a desperate attempt to navigate through the perilous hazards of deep space. The start of the journey is innocuous, leaving the earth’s atmosphere with the playful breaks of ‘4001’. As the vessel moves further into unchartered territories however the mood changes drastically. Things take on a more ominous tone with the likes of ‘Drax 2’ and ‘303 Scopem Hard’, a frenetic acid bass onslaught of a track that’s reminiscent of a hero’s narrow escape. Unbeknownst to perhaps even Squarepusher himself, there definitely seems to be some sort of narrative throughout. Listen to it enough times and you begin to vision vast spatial conquests and epic synth powered laser battles. ‘Dark Steering’, for example, calls to mind an underhanded pod race with some villainous cretin from beyond the stars, while ‘Stadium Ice’ comes across like an interplanetary traveling montage. Whether or not Jenkins meant this or not is a mystery but the whole album is definitely open to interpretation, which is really what makes it great, to an extent anyway.

Ok, so there is a spattering of cheesy keys that seem like they’re lifted straight from a Ministry of Sound best of but they’re partnered with such intelligent drum patterns that they wander into the realm of acceptability after a while. At times it does seem like everything is just a bit too glossy for a Squarepusher record. Take ‘Unreal Square’, it sounds like a tacky renegade dubstep militia group led by a sega megadrive. Until it breaks that is, and then you’re reminded that this is definitely Squarepusher. This ruse it’s pretty much ubiquitous throughout the album, you’re lured into a foreign, somewhat questionable land and left desolate and confused until something familiar happens, then you realise where you are.

For many old school pusher fans this will no doubt seem too clinical and polished. The subsonic hyper-bass stylings of his earlier records are left somewhat in the dust here but they’ve been amply replaced by a gamut of ultra-neon sonic endeavors. This simply marks yet another evolutionary step in the musical behemoth that is Squarepusher.

As its title suggests, In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull is a long, dark and visceral album. From opening track ‘Glitters Like Gold’ a certain tone is established. Loud, spacious and awash with self-loathing, it has all the touchstones of its two producers – Steve Albini (In Utero and too many to mention) and Dave Fridmann (Weezer’s whine-fest Pinkerton). Always indebted to the US, but inescapably English, the Wakefield trio now find themselves in grungier territory than their accents (or perhaps Johnny Marr) would allow. Throughout we hear guitars reach paint stripping levels as the band bash through tales of identity crisis, loss and betrayal. The best of these comes in the form of ‘Come On, Be A No-One’ and ‘Back To The Bolthole’. The former is a larynx-shredding paean to the mis-shapes of outsiderdom, while ‘…Bolthole’ is a twisted epic that even finds room for those two-year-old keyboards.

What’s more impressive is the Cribs also come good on that once suspect ‘studio as instrument’ line. An ambitious closing suite of four melded songs sees them oddly tip their hat to the Beatles Abbey Road (coincidentally the location for much of this recording). For this, they rattle through an all together more optimistic and breezy set of songs that finishes with the self-deprecating ‘Arena Rock Encore with Full Cast’. As much writing an apology for the wait between last record Ignore The Ignorant, a chorus of ‘sorry that it’s taken years, we were victims of our own ideals’ is bellowed out with unbridled bombast. It’s alright, we forgive them.

First there was her appearance on Danger Mouse’s Rome project, alongside Jack White, and now comes her fifth studio album – again produced by Brian Barton. The importance of his contribution is obvious, as Little Broken Hearts sounds utterly gorgeous, if shot through with a melancholic air. That element is unsurprising when you consider Jones’ lyrics, a heart rending account of a crumbling relationship. It’s brutally honest, detailing her partner’s infidelity and the bitterness she feels to the third party.

Those jazz stylings are largely gone, replaced by a Barton backdrop that suits the singer perfectly. It never really shifts into a top gear but the emotion and drama of the lyrics ensure that your attention never wanders. All, you feel, is missing is a truly killer song. That comes in the shape of ‘Miriam’, a spectacularly barbed attack on the other woman – “never been the killing kind but you know I know what you did so don’t put up a fight”. It stops you in your tracks, wondering how that sweet girl of ten years ago could muster such anger. Then you go back to listen to it all again and the answer is clear. Events may have caused her suffering but somewhere along the way Norah Jones has unlocked an artist of serious status. Let’s hope it was worth it.

Opener ‘Once and For All’ is soaring, building track, with Guy Connelly’s vocal prowess coming to the fore, emotional and anthemic. It is unapologetically optimistic, a strong way to start. ‘11th Hour’ after a deceptively slow start, is a battle cry, with a nod to the movie Network. A rallying refrain of “we’ve got to get mad as hell, got to go ring that bell, got to tell the others, tell the others” is underpinned by a persistent drumming and bass guitar.

The theme continues throughout, a riot of shiny guitars, layered vocals, blips and bleeps before ‘Fail Better’ – featuring the Samuel Beckett quote ‘no matter, try again, fail again, fail better’ – providing a fitting close. Ways to Forget is a strong and cohesive debut. Comparisons will be made to Elbow, Coldplay and White Lies but Clock Opera have succeeded in creating their own sound and world – a joyful, colourful, textured one at that.

It’s an album of brighter-than-light melancholy, but mostly expressed in cryptic ways, like on ‘Wishes’ where Victoria wonders whether destiny exists, or ‘Other People’ that seems to talk about living on the road and meeting a lot of people who want to be your friend after a few minutes talk. But these misterious lyrics are part of Bloom‘s charm as it fits perfectly with the amazing production, wrapping your ears and lifting you like a rocket to the skies. One listen of the crying guitar lines building momentum on ‘Wild’, or the surnatural vocal harmonies on the intro of ‘New Year’ makes you feel like a tiny bird watching the ocean from above on a summer morning.

The songs of Bloom are longer and less verse-chorus-verse oriented than what the band used to write but they don’t waste time and they are always going somewhere. The best illustration of this is the six minutes long ending track ‘Irene’, which manages to maintain the tension throughout. It’s like the track just opened its petals, and there couldn’t be a better way to show that Teen Dream was only a bud and Bloom is a full grown rose. Let’s say they are both the same beauty, just at different times. If perfection is always a dangerous word to use in the music review sphere, there’s something close to it here.

As the album and song titles like ‘Born to Cry’ ‘You’re Mine’ and ‘In My Solitude’ suggest, this is a journey through the time-honoured themes of love, loss, and heartache. Apart from this, what strikes you as soon as you set Romancing loose on your speakers, is the raw energy and spirit that drives the album. From the thundering, lightening fast opener ‘Masochist’ to ‘Run’ and ‘Forever Is Only a Moment’ the flamboyant energy never dies.

This flamboyance transposes an effortless, carefree sense of fun and a remarkable danceable quality to his songs, an admirable quality. The hip-swinging ‘New Horrors’, ‘I Don’t Think I’ and ‘Too Soon’ hit the heady heights of Supergrass at the top of their game. It may be a predominantly hyperactive mesh of lively pumped up punk and garage riffs but despite the gritty production, Devin’s soulful blues-tinged vocals inject a touching sense of emotion to proceedings. Originality is obviously not his forte and you will probably feel you have heard these songs before but Romancing offers Devin’s take on a genre and style he loves, doing it justice with an album which sounds passionate, edgy and genuine. A worthy addition to any record collection.

Of course, there’s still some prophetic lyricism to lap up. ‘Thirteen’ contains the bulk of Exile Eye’s ramblings in a sort of arcane ’12 days of Christmas’ style ballad that’s somehow harrowing and silly at the same time. In true Deathship fashion, everything is shrouded in a mysterious film of insinuations and double entendres. Their piracy aesthetic provides the perfect platform for a parade of social commentary on Ireland’s economic situation. The inherent corruptive nature of pirates reflects easily on politicians, not to mention the scathing oceanic imagery that so aptly mirrors the wayward status of Ireland bobbing aimlessly at sea, waiting for rescue. Listen to ‘Standing on the Hill’ and you may hear a lonely woman’s homesick lament or a sharp stab at the political failures that ruined the country, depending on your frame of mind.

Despite the fact that their approach is still altogether distinct, things are already beginning to sound a bit jaded. This is incredibly niche, perhaps too much so. It will be interesting to see what the next couple of years hold for Melodica Deathship and whether or not they can stay true to this tack while keeping things fresh.

In a 1988 essay, Simon Reynolds spoke of how Dinosaur Jr. (on albums such as You’re Living All Over Me and Bug) were “dissolving rock’s vertebrae, as the riff, powerchord and bassline are almost lost in a blizzard of violently serrated haze…”. As he later concluded, My Bloody Valentine would take this “logic of blissed amorphousness to the next level”, taking in influence from Psychocandy and Daydream Nation along the way. Over a run of records that began with 1988’s You Made Me Realise EP and culminated in their 1991 masterpiece Loveless, the visionary group developed an often-imitated but never-equalled sound: one that combined waves of disorientating textures with ethereal, unintelligible vocals, while simultaneously redefining the possibilities of the guitar as an instrument.

Probably the most eagerly anticipated disc of these three is EPs 1988-1991, a compilation of the four EPs the band released in that time period as well as some enticing rarities, three of which are unreleased. Its jumping-off point is the You Made Me Realise EP, which was actually the band’s sixth (if ‘mini-LP’ Ecstasy is included.) On their earlier material MBV had struggled to forge an identity, their sound veering from schlocky (and shoddy) Birthday Party knock-offs to fey, jangly indie-pop via Mary Chain-esque fuzz. YMMR was a massive step-up: combining the pulverising title track (complete with its vacuum-like anti-solo) with the irresistible power-pop rush of ‘Thorn’ and the grinding eroticism of ‘Slow’, the sound may have been relatively straightforward (compared to what was still to come) but the band’s distinctive aesthetic and ear-bleeding sonic potency was taking shape.

The EPs that preceded Loveless were similarly revelatory: on Glider, the title track’s undulating waves of feedback are both abrasive and hypnotic, while Tremolo interspersed gorgeous ambient passages with the clamorous ‘Honey Power’ and the swooning ‘Swallow’. Of the unreleased tracks, ‘Angel’ (aka ‘Bilinda’s Song’) is the standout, its breezily melodic vocals and driving rhythmic structure making it a close cousin to YMMR’s ‘Drive It All Over Me’. ‘Good For You’ and ‘How Do You Do It’ date from the same circa-Isn’t Anything period, but both are fairly workmanlike fuzz-drenched affairs. Elsewhere, the excellent ‘Instrumental No. 2’ sounds like nothing else in their catalogue – sampling the beat from Public Enemy’s ‘Security of the First World’ (Shields beat Madonna to the punch on that one) and overlaying it with ghostly, wordless quasi-chanting – while ‘Sugar’ is a drowsily sweet, raggedly swaying number.

Album-wise, you’d have thought Isn’t Anything would stand to benefit most from a remaster: the original always seemed a bit blunted by jarring production; its combination of eerie, contorted guitar tones and more frenetic, muscular fare bearing traces of friction. However, the production retains much of its rough feel. The main difference, as Shields has intimated in interviews, is that it’s considerably louder while retaining its dynamic range – the driving ‘(When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream’, for example, has a sharper punch to it, while Colm Ó Cíosóig’s frenetic drum fills (a crucial element) sound slightly crisper and cleaner. It’s nothing radical and it certainly doesn’t change the feel of the album, but it’s still an understandable and worthwhile move, as anyone familiar with iPod volume caps will testify.

A massively influential album in its own right (just ask Slowdive, Ride, et al), Isn’t Anything is more propulsive and song-based than its follow-up – and more recognisably the work of actual humans. On the other hand, more formless tracks like ‘No More Sorry’ and ‘All I Need’ are the feverish nightmare to Loveless’ vivid waking-dream, while lyrical references to violence and suicide increase the sense of disquiet. The best tracks are in the second half: it’s no wild exaggeration to say that ‘You Never Should’ sounds like a jet taking off, or that its middle section sounds like a jet disintegrating; ‘Sueisfine’ is so frantic that it’s on the brink of derailing, while ‘I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It)’ is one of the band’s more underappreciated numbers (the version they did for John Peel is essential).

There are two remasters provided for Loveless, the second being a remaster from the original ½ inch analogue tapes. (NB as explained by this blog-post, the CDs are labelled the wrong way around, while there’s a very noticeable glitch on the newer version’s ‘What You Want’). While the claims made for this analogue version include increased separation and a wider stereo field, the differences are fairly minimal to these ears. (As above, on both discs the volume is considerably louder.)

In any case, you can’t improve perfection. Loveless immerses the listener in waves of sampled feedback and subtly shifting textures; Shields’ ‘glide guitar’ technique creating a disorientating, hazy effect as the tracks seem to shift in and out of focus, yet remain continually mesmeric. The vocals become another (vital) instrument in the mix, their former explicit imagery (‘Sunny Sundae Smile’ wasn’t about ice cream) replaced by androgynous, ambiguous melodies and post-orgasmic cooing. Discordant swarms and weightless ambient tones mix seamlessly, while even the heaviest tracks (‘Only Shallow’, ‘When You Sleep’) sound like they’re blanketed.

It was a whole new language, and over 20 years later it still sounds like one. The haunting, droning minimalism of ‘Sometimes’. That magical middle eight on ‘I Only Said’. The blissful glide of ‘Blown A Wish’, or ‘What You Want’’s sublime progression…and that’s not even to mention ‘Soon’, the closing track and single (also included on the Glider EP) that Brian Eno described as setting “a new standard for pop”. This album changed the way I thought about music at an impressionable young age, and remarkably I still get shivers now listening to the same songs that I’ve heard countless times down the years.

Now, about that new material…

As the outcry about the rumoured Smiths reunion displayed, reunions are just never a good idea. Even with a hologram thrown in. Lucky for us, Garbage didn’t exactly break up, they just kinda stepped quietly away from the all-powerful, all-controlling music industry limelight. Now they’re back with an album which aims to be less tepid than what was deemed their swansong, Bleed Like Me, and give us more of the grab-you-by-the-balls, smack you in the face Garbageisms of the first two records. Insert rock journo cliché about a return to form here, please.

With lyrics like “I think you’re sleeping with a friend of mine/I have no proof/But I think that I’m right” Bleed Like Me was the sound of a human being, and a band, unravelling. Not Your Kind of People, on the other hand, is the sound of a band in control. This is Garbage’s first stab at releasing a record on their own imprint, StunVolume, and doing it their own way and that little fact makes all the difference.

Not long into the record, Manson sings “I wanna be your dirty little secret” and everything feels back on track, with the hiatus of the last seven years zapping away like a Sunset Beach-esque bad dream. Sure, it’s no “you learn to love the pain you feel/ like father, like son” but what is? ‘Automatic Systematic Habit’ could be a Version 2.0 reject and ‘Big Bright World’ smacks of atypical Garbage Attitude (trademark pending). Meanwhile, the romantically challenged ‘I Hate Love’ kicks off with a whispering Manson, reminiscent of PJ Harvey’s “big fish little fish” in ‘Down By The Water’. If anything, this record serves as a reminder of how ahead of their time Garbage were but also how in danger they are of being glued to a certain period. Not Your Kind of People isn’t exactly a leap forward for the band but it is far from a backward step into oblivion either. It’s a Garbage album, through and through.

As if the title wasn’t ‘Us vs Them’ enough, tracks like ‘Battle In Me’ and ‘Beloved Freak’ wear Garbage’s eternal position as underdogs on their sleeves and, with that, the aforementioned generation of Angry Young Women (and men) morph back to their 16 year old selves and sigh a sigh of relief. Welcome back Shirl and the gang, we’ve missed you.

First thing to clear up: Jack White won’t return to the abrasive dirty blues-rock sound that made The White Stripes a music brand on its own, those days are definitely over. Blunderbuss is the album of a mature musician, sometimes so studious it sounds like a demonstration, but tremendously produced and arranged so that even when you wished for a “real” solo escape disc (meaning a guy alone with his guitar, pouring his heart out), you can still have a good time.  White’s relation to women is the main topic here: passioned, envious, conflicted, it’s the fuel that makes him go from a romantic pedal-steel covered country ride on ‘Blunderbuss’ to the psychotic teenage outburst rock of ‘Sixteen Saltines’.

On many spots like ‘Weep Themselves to Sleep’ and ‘Hip Poor Boy’ (a follow-up to ‘Rich Kid Blues’ ?), Blunderbuss is a reminder of The Raconteurs’ Consolers For The Lonely, an album where Jack White assumed his story-telling ambition and his country-rock adoration. Now he mastered it, inviting violin, honky-tonk pianos, and cello in most of the songs without sounding retro or old-fashioned at anytime. But the real gem here is single ‘Love Interruption’, a two minutes and a half description of the artist’s twisted and tormented vision of love, going from “I want love to change my friends to enemies, show me how it’s all my fault” to “I won’t let love disrupt, corrupt, or interrupt me”. Blunderbuss is all about those extreme and opposite feelings that music can bring together. Musically, this is not a brand new start for Jack White, it is more of a liberation. That status of rockstar going solo can lead to laziness for many artists but quite frankly, the guy is one of the busiest and focused musicians around today, and this album is a convincing testimony of that.

Kick-off track ‘Bubblegum Bitch’ is definitely the stand-out of the album. Everything comes together in two and a half minutes of pure synth attitude and genuinely pretty vocals. The song titles follow this theme with ‘Primadonna’; wannabe feminist anthems disguised in a Mean Girls-esque dialogue. Admittedly, it doesn’t take itself seriously. Heavily pop culture laden, it contains a tongue-in-cheek superficiality. Pretending towards philosophy for today it reads like a teenage diary, ‘Teen Idle’ bemoaning an uneventful youth, avoiding comparisons to Philip Larkin’s ‘I Remember, I Remember’ by the distracting use of cheerleader backing vocals and repetition of the phrase “Super-super-super-suicidal”.

As fun as this is [and it is fun; strong, mindless teen pop] Electra Heart starts to lose momentum in the second half. Having been led to expect a fully electronic album the last three tracks could have simply been lifted from the reject pile of the previous album. A cursory nod to Portishead-lite backing tracks is provided but, basically, Electra Heart starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.

Marina and The Diamonds – Primadonna on MUZU.TV.

In between are stories of twisted relations and exile and all painted in a local language, epic and homespun at the same time. Hopkins’ music never says more than it needs to and the harmonies to Creosote’s own voice are sparse yet perfect where they fall. The centrepiece, and one of the greatest songs to appear from last year, is ‘Bats in the Attic’. Lyrically, an embarrassment of riches with mentions of white bread and conservation rules, it’s a story you could follow for years.

The bonus disc, the hook in this re-release, contains an ‘unravelled’ version of the same song, though Hopkins’ work is so delicate that it’s barely noticeable as a different version except perhaps that it’s not quite as good. Some of the other tracks were rightfully left off the original album but act as good b-sides to anyone captured by the first seven tracks (such as ‘Honest Words’). There’s more uptempo tracks too including the curious ‘Missionary’, seemingly about bad casual sex. Highlight on this disk is the train track pulse of ‘Third Swan’, a great example of what these two guys can produce in a different mood.

For anyone not in possession of the original album this is a very worthy purchase, and in fact not even one to hesitate over. In 20 years you’ll pull out Diamond Mine and ‘Bats in the Attic’ will blow you away all over again. For others perhaps a pick ’n’ mix of tracks from the bonus disc would suffice, beginning unquestionably with ‘Third Swan’.

Of all the thousands of words uttered about Death Grips in the past few months – in blogs, music magazines, radio shows, Twitter feeds, podcasts, the New York Times – this YouTube comment from a certain ‘ProlapsedCranium’ nails it. Everyone’s losing the plot trying to describe the Sacramento trio, but we can all agree on one thing – they’re a sort of brutal rap/noise/industrial concoction; hip-hop with no real lineage, more Wolf Eyes than Wu-Tang. Any minute now, someone will assign Death Grips a new label that ends in ’core.

Our pal Mr Cranium’s case of the fear came from watching a video of Death Grips at last year’s Fun Fun Fun Fest in Texas. ‘Scary rhyming man’ is Stefan Burnett (MC Ride), hollering and wailing through ‘Guillotine’, rubbery arms flailing along to snare drum drills and low-end synth bass from his cohorts, drummer Zach Hill and producer Andy Morin (Flatlander). Since it surfaced a year ago, ‘Guillotine’ has been Death Grips’ calling card – the one your mate keeps posting on Facebook, you know, the one with the crazy dude in the car, roaring til the skin’s about to fall off his face. It’s one of the many standouts on Exmilitary, the trio’s 2011 mixtape that set their stall out from day one: caustic broken beats and frazzled electronics served up with a bit of the old in-out and ultraviolence on the side.

Despite a baffling major label deal with Epic in the meantime, The Money Store maintains this primal rage – stealing the baton from Exmilitary and battering you round the head with it as soon as opener ‘Get Got’’s tribal drum hammers in, with all audio channels firmly in the red. They’ve added clanking dub to their palette – channelling The Bug on the rumbling ‘Double Helix’ and ‘System Blower’, while ‘Lost Boys’ is a piss-stained crack den of a track that’s even more nerve-wracking than ‘Skeng’ on London Zoo. And if you’re feeling highly strung avoid the wailing sirens on ‘The Fever (Aye Aye)’ and the swirling sci-fi laser blasts on ‘The Cage’, when Scary Rhyming Man hollers: “what’s wrong with this asshole right next to me?”

Sure it’s a three-headed beast, but Burnett is its festering heart, and he has no off button. Of The Money Store’s 41 minutes, his feral bark is all over about 38 of them, double-tracked, stretched, distorted and hammered into percussive blips. Listening on headphones, your left ear tries to play catch-up with your right, as cryptic lines overlap, stutter, morph into patois or evaporate into electronic fuzz. Lines like “I was born with a ski mask” or “fuck this cage I’ll thrash you later” subvert the camp Odd Future-style horrorcore violence, leaving a dubious ambiguity – is this really just a character?

It’s not all headbutt-the-wall stuff – ‘I’ve Seen Footage’ whomps along like an ’80s Miami bass cut with a skuzzy punk riff welded onto the side; ‘Hacker’ hints at Daft Punk’s ‘Revolution 909’ before changing gears into a bloody-nosed EBM riot that could fist-pump Nitzer Ebb into next week. They also drop a few lifelines in case you’re succumbing to the white noise fury: the looped female pop vocal on ‘Hustle Bones’; the Bollywood intro on ‘Punk Weight’; the occasional snatch of old skool rave samples that puncture a few air holes so you can catch a breath.

These melodic interludes aside, The Money Store is all about the fear and loathing, a ferocious hip-hop game-changer that won’t be fizzling out any time soon. When Burnett the night prowler warns, “I’M IN YOUR AREA”, you better run – Death Grips gonna get ya.

The aim of the project was to produce scuzzy, grotty pop music and blow us down if they haven’t done just that. The combination of lo-fi production, fuzzy guitars and sixties beats will come as no surprise, yet nor will be the quality of the material. Perhaps the key element is the four way vocal approach, ensuring that the record enjoys a subtle change in character throughout and enhances the sense that this is a real outfit as opposed to a side project. As the only female voice involved it’s Bronwyn Murphy-White who stands out, switching from the Liz Phair downbeat delivery of ‘Be My Double’ to a rich croon on ‘Death To All Who Speak Against Me’. This ability to multi task is representative of the EP as a whole, a work that bears the input of different personalities yet hangs together beautifully. So don’t let any of Whip Crack Away’s coming about – the ad hoc nature of its arrival, the free release via Bandcamp, the seeming simplicity of the music – convince that this is something you can let slip by. Skelocrats may just prove to be the best thing this loveable gang has produced to date.

He has now emerged blinking into the sunlight from his dark night of the soul. Out Of The Game is for the people who prefer their Rufus with a sprinkling of sugar. It’s his trip back to the heady, carefree ‘California’ so vividly described on Poses. A tribute to ’70s Laurel Canyon living, it conjures up a West Coast lounge where Fleetwood Mac and Harry Nilsson party at James Taylor’s. The opening title track is a loose, free spirited slice of mischief, all twanging guitars and vamping piano like a cut off from one of his father’s albums but with a chorus that unfurls that voice like a white flag of surrender.

What Mark Ronson seems to have reignited in Wainwright is his pop sensibilities. Before the operas, the diva, the lavish box sets and pervading sense of seriousness there was the lighthearted, wisecracking, crack-taking Rufus, the bon vivant whose devil may care attitude charmed and seduced. This is the album that recalls that Rufus, the one at his most uplifting, the Rufus of ‘Danny Boy’, ‘Shadows’ ‘Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk’.

Tracks like the irrepressible ‘Jericho’ with its buoyancy, blistering backing vocals and caustic wit is an almost older brother to ‘April Fools’ an older not so gullible brother who can now play the best of them at their own game. Even ‘Bitter Tears’ with its snappy almost synth quality and spiky lyrics feels like a refugee from the early Wainwright catalogue that could have easily been slotted into his debut album .This sprightly, up-tempo nature unravels throughout the album, the playful ‘Welcome To The Ball’ and ‘Rashida’ are full of ingenious baroque pop bravado.

As welcoming as this levity is, it’s on tracks where the usual Rufus insular expressions of anxiety, resentment and disappointment have been replaced with solace and empathy that the album truly shines. ‘Barbara’ his touching ode to his faithful publicist is a sparkling, soulful comfort blanket, where his voice envelopes rather than blusters. This tone reaches its apex on the quietly moving ‘Montauk’ an ode to his daughter Viva Katherine that casts Rufus and his partner in the roles of the eccentric Beale sisters of ‘Grey Gardens’ shuffling around arguing in kimonos, hoping she accepts them into her life. It’s Rufus at his most heartbreakingly vulnerable since ‘Dinner at Eight’ but with a lighter more delicate touch.

For all the relaxed, MOR tones Ronson germinates Rufus manages to sneak in one final flourish of emotional intensity on album closer ‘Candles’ a bagpipe-infused funeral march that reveals a son still in mourning but now with a brightly lit future of possibility and optimism ahead.

The answer is that at this stage it’s still too soon to tell, and although the signs are promising, their future is difficult to call. Boys & Girls certainly displays potential, but is not yet the finished article, never mind earth-shattering. Lyrically, they can come across as callow, and for every cute-in-its-simplicity line and heartfelt delivery, there are also tedious exhortations to ‘Hold On’ and ‘Hang Loose’, advice that would embarrass even the crassest problem page response. Musically, for all their chops and tight ensemble playing, they can too often sound like a slightly above average bar band, for example on the clichéd run-through that is ‘I Found You’. ‘You Ain’t Alone’ is a competent stab at Stax soul, but flirts uncomfortably with pastiche. Indeed, weak songwriting is probably the major flaw here. Also, one of the odd things about this album is that it seems to be ‘back-loaded’. The best is saved until last with this record, and it is as late as the closing three tracks, the fabulous wig-out codas of ‘Be Mine’, ‘I Ain’t The Same’ and ‘On Your Way’, that sparks really begin to fly, and it’s possible to see what all the fuss is about.

No-one would argue with the assertation that singer Brittany Howard boasts a good set of pipes, and I suspect that the band are a decent live proposition. They also contain the prospect of considerable cross-generational appeal, the older set digging the flashes of Janis Joplin-style Dionysianism, the young ’uns welcoming something that might fill the void for the post-Amy Winehouse market. Yes, they are the kind of band your parents could like. But while they provide a pleasant reminder of a time when ‘Contemporary Female R’n’B meant Aretha Franklin rather than Rihanna, they still have quite a ways to go before they’ll be inheriting that mantle. In the meantime, I’ll be continuing on the Etta James binge I’ve been on since that great lady’s death last January.

As with pretty much every Spiritualized album, SHSL comes with a disturbed and disturbing back story, this time involving Jason Pierce being housebound for a year while undergoing drug treatment for liver disease (probably interferon therapy for Hep C is the educated guess, although the Spaceman remains coy about confirming this diagnosis in interview). Last time round, 2008’s Songs in A & E appeared shortly after JP had the near death experience of winding up in intensive care with double pneumonia and fluid on his lungs. But what Spiritualized album has ever been made under ideal circumstances? As far back as 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space the pattern was set, with keyboard player and lover Kate Radley ditching Jason for The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, thus paving the way for LAGWAFIS to be forever construed as a ‘break up album’. To be fair to Pierce, he has never milked these autobiographical stumbling blocks in a crassly tabloid way, denying any direct correspondence between the life and the work. Still, it must make for a novel experience, to be fuzzy and wasted on legally prescribed drugs for a change.

Pierce has said in interview that this time out he wanted to make a rich man’s album, presumably meaning a Brain Wilson-type Smile extravaganza, with limitless time in the studio, although one would have thought he’d already had a fair bash at that with 2001’s Let It Come Down’s massed banks. However, as studio time is the most expensive part of recording, he solved this problem by setting everything up in his front room and, eh, working from home. Recording helped pass the time during his enforced reclusiveness and to make it even less taxing for himself, he decided to make a ‘pop’ album. But that didn’t work out as planned, as he discovered that that is the hardest thing of all to do, as by trying to keep things simple you are more exposed.

So, what of the results? Well, it’s pop, Jim, but not as we know it. But if you title your album Sweet Heart Sweet Light, the first song is called ‘Hey Jane’ and the last song is called ‘So Long You Pretty Thing’, it’s pretty obvious who you’re channelling. There’s a short intro called ‘Huh?’, replete with lush strings, which leads into the aforementioned ‘Hey Jane’, a nearly nine minute tale of a rock’n’roll heartbreaker, swathed in what sound like synthetic girl harmonies. It gets weird in the middle, in an ‘A Day In The Life’ ish sort of way: its breakdown is a breakdown, before it revs up again for an extended motorik outro. Then there’s the upbeat melody of ‘Little Girl’, undercut somewhat by the decidedly unpoppy opening couplet of ‘Sometimes I wish that I was dead/’Cos only the living can feel the pain’, before a superfuzzed squelchy psychedelic guitar solo kicks in. ‘Get What you Deserve’ continues the trippiness, its wig-out outro feedback squall awash in what sound like synth strings but are probably real ones, which also feature prominently on the following ‘Too Late’, a pleasant ditty that would not be out of place as a Eurovision contender.

‘Headin’ For The Top Now’ doesn’t justify its eight minute plus length, as its two chord groove never gets texturally developed enough: it tries to be ‘White Light/White Heat’ lite, but is not ragged or improvisational enough to make it. After this lapse, things recover swiftly with the predominantly acoustic ‘Freedom’, the politest kind of break up song. ‘I Am What I Am’ starts out riding on a murky, funky riff that would put you in mind of Dr. John’s gumbo swamp rock, so it comes as no surprise when you discover that the Night Tripper himself actually co-wrote and guests on the track, just like he did all those years ago on ‘Cop Shoot Cop’, which casts ‘I Am What I Am’ as a kind of mini-reprise of Ladies and Gentlemen….’s extended closer. It morphs into a call-and-response gospel pastiche which bears more than a passing resemblance to Talking Heads’ ‘Slippery People’ from Speaking In Tongues, and includes one of those ‘backwards guitars solos’, as we used to call them.

The minor key ‘Mary’ is the dark heart of the record, followed by the nursery rhymey hymn to Jesus ‘Life Is A Problem’ (not the old Sister O. M. Terrell song, by the way, despite Jason talking that particular obscure folk blues standard up some time ago). And so the stage is set for the life-affirming finale of ‘So Long You Pretty Thing’, which starts out as a banjo-plucked lullaby invoking that guy Jesus again, on which the Spaceman gets some vocal help from his 11 year old daughter, Poppy, before taking off for the outer reaches of the universe when the orchestra and gospel choir kick in. Is that the sound of a kitchen sink I hear? Well, why not? It’s a Spiritualized album, after all, and one that stands comparison with their best.

‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘The Jacker’, ‘Brunswick Sludge’, ‘Pigs’: every single one of these tracks sets you on the path to headaches and nausea, for there’s nothing to hold on to, no hope of finding a hook, a good song structure, an exciting shift, or even a decent use of your time. The guys from Black Dice surely thought after recording Mr. Impossible their audacity would be enough this time to hide the complacence of the lazy pranks they put together and called an album. But even noise, industrial-music, and experimental pop fans will easily see through.

Let’s talk about contrast: the opener ‘Epic’ is a thunderous math-rock odyssey where folk instruments (trumpets, banjo) try to get their way, anthemic pop track ‘Get Alive’ sounds like a soundtrack for the next Olympic Games with its deeply solemn vocals. Sometimes, songs like the electro tribal ‘OJ’ or the chaotic piano-driven ‘Why I Must’ seem to have so many ideas popping out the melody can’t find any room to breath.

Technicality is something this band can provide any time, and it can be a weakness when songs are left to their own craziness and the melody is striving to be heard. But the ambitious vision of singer songwriter Luke Wyland can lead to some ecstatic moments of grace, whether it’s on an organ ballad (‘Crazy Idol’) or an ambient dreamy soundscape (‘Go Slow’).

Both Lights is what it says, both personalities of AU, a festival of emotions and genres that leaves the listener restless but also intrigued.