Transangelic Exodus is a roller-coaster ride. Songs twist, turn, have sudden shifts in tempo, are punctuated by unexpected instrumental interjections, and come to a dead stop after which they resume their unpredictable course. Although Ezra Furman's musical touchstones of late Fifties pop and The Modern Lovers are still apparent, the follow-up to 2015’s Perpetual Motion People comes across as nothing less than a vigorously shaken-and-stirred take on pre-Born in the USA Bruce Springsteen.

Furman says the narrative thread running through the frenzied Transangelic Exodus is his being “in love with an angel, and a government is after us, and we have to leave home because angels are illegal as is harbouring angels. The terms ‘transangelic’ refers to the fact people become angels because they grow wings. They have an operation, and they’re transformed.” He’s also said James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni's Room, a consideration of the tensions between being straight, gay and bi, has been an influence. Anger courses through the album as he sings of encountering a maraschino-red dress in the charity shop Goodwill and a hair-raising drive to Los Angeles during which he and his companion are visited by what seems to be the devil.

Given that Furman is self-declared as gender-fluid it’s not hard to see Transangelic Exodus as a commentary on his home country, the United States. His relationship with the Jewish faith is another topic he is not shy of discussing. He’s also been very clear about his appreciation of Lou Reed as well as his inability to settle in one place. The drawback with being so open is that the music can be left behind. For any potential audience, the man and his music can become disconnected: autonomous entities.

All of which means Transangelic Exodus comes freighted with expectations, chiefly whether as a whole it can deliver this singular artist’s vision in a unified fashion. Unsurprisingly, the resultant album indeed turns out to be a roller-coaster ride through a very particular worldview. Could it be anything else?

• More music reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: watch the video for “Driving Down to LA” from Transangelic Exodus

On paper Django Django seem a perfect band. The four-piece, half Scottish, quarter English, quarter Northern Irish, boast an indie songwriting sensibility, but filtered through a natural pop suss, an engaging sense of psychedelia, a desire to rave it up, and a ripe capacity for harmonisation. Their third album is fat with melody and interest, right from its ballistic opening title track, yet in the end, why is it eminently likeable rather than loveable?

See, I keep trying to have a love affair with Django Django’s music. Their last album, Born Under Saturn (2015), sounds luscious but in the end the only tune I kept returning to is the peerless “First Light”. Their new one, their third, is gorgeous too, imaginatively constructed and may yet grow into something that makes me regret the angle I write from here (the constant bane of anyone assessing new music), but at present it seems admirable, not adorable.

Never mind such negative quibbles, though, and instead revel in what Marble Skies has to offer; the quirky Talking Heads-ish pop of closing slowie “Fountains”, the four-to-the-floor alt-electro-pop bouncers “In Your Beat” and “Real Gone”, the Afro-skittering, tune-rich “Surface to Air”, featuring guest vocalist Rebecca Taylor, the drum tattoo-led “Further”, which sounds like the Beach Boys having a techno-tribal moment.

Indeed, Brian Wilson’s oeuvre is rarely too far away, notably on the piano-led “Sundials” which, crudely assessed, once it gets going, is Wilson jumping in the sack with The Go! Team, albeit not in with the latter band’s penchant for deliberate cacophony. Django Django keep their palette full, Polyfilla-ing every sonic crack, maximising use of the multitrack, never slack in keeping things compelling. So there’s plenty to enjoy here. Yet somehow I was expecting more. What more was I expecting? Bloody music journalists, eh.

• More new music reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: Watch the video for Django Django "In Your Beat"

How much of someone else’s despair is it possible to take? What are the limits on putting a sense of desolation or isolation into a song? Can such naked expression be mediated by a glossy production or crowded instrumental arrangements which distract from the core essence of the song?

The third album from Thomas White under his Fiction Aisle moniker is a match for its delicious, under-heard predecessors. White remains best known for his output with The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes but the prolific Fiction Aisle (three albums since 2016) deserve to gain wider purchase. This time round the mood is more tentatively upbeat than previously, and White’s Pink Floyd-ish tendencies are on the back burner, but, at its core, cosmic easy listening is still the game.

The Fiction Aisle aspire to John Barry’s cinematic orchestrated scope, but tinted with hints of Morrissey’s vocal tics, and a broader electronic palette scoping about underneath. “Memory” even has a touch of late Nineties/early Millennial chill-out about it. However, it’s White’s characterful lyrical pith that sets The Fiction Aisle apart, giving his catchy songwriting extra reach and heft.

The Fiction Aisle prove to be mining original, thoughtful and often lovely territory

Previous outings have broached depression in an occasionally desperate or hedonistic manner but “Ten Years” hints at a newfound peace, or at least looking the issue in the eye (“It’s up to me to find any positivity – do I have the strength?”), while indie-ish opener “Gone Today”, despite its summery vibes, may be about existing in the moment rather than letting the past and future nag at the mind.

Another stand-out track is “Sweetness & Light”, a very straightforward, unembarrassed modern love song that’s also contagious. As the album goes on, White relaxes into it, spreading out, letting the sonic stylings grow ever more blissed, notably on the multi-tracked vocals of “Black River”, which bring to mind sunshine in 1970s LA, and the lusciousness of “Some Things Never Die”, until he eventually ends up drifting off on the final ten-minute “Will I Get Where I’m Going Before I’m Ready?”, with its extended instrumental passages heading into balminess.

Jupiter, Florida is as sunny as its title suggests, but cut through with a realist’s lyrical perspective, albeit a realist with a tendency to dream. Once again, The Fiction Aisle prove to be mining original, thoughtful and often lovely territory with a class that’s a cut above the usual.

• More New Music reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: watch the video for "Gone Today" by The Fiction Aisle

The critic Simon Reynolds characterised Butterfly Child’s debut album Onomatopoeia as the sound of “vitrified everglades in J.G. Ballard’s The Illuminated Man, where some kind of entropy has slowed down time, so that living creatures are literally petrified, encrusted and crystal.”

As a prime example of high-end Gallic art-pop, Triomphe pushes the right buttons. The mid-tempo opening cut “Senga” sets the tone. A motorik rhythm and a shuffling counterpoint are complemented by bubbling bass guitar, insistent single note guitar lines and subtle keyboard stabs. The French-language vocal line is hooky, minor key and delivered in close-miked yet distant voice. It exudes class. Krautrock and Air are in there. A smidge of Stereolab too. As is – with the way the song builds and builds – a suggestion of stadium-rock dynamics.

It’s the same throughout Triomphe, where a sense of reflectiveness and resignation in the melody lines is teamed with finely tuned instrumental arrangements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the descending structure, Mogadon-paced drums and brooding atmosphere of “Trophée” evoke Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson. The opening bars of “Sépares” nod to Lee Hazlewood. Triomphe is a knowing album.

While also thoroughly agreeable, Triomphe – issued in the UK exactly a year after its French release – is overly deliberate and would have benefitted from some surprises. When Algerian-sounding wind instruments arrive on sixth track “La femme du kioske sur l’eau” it’s as if they were plucked from a style sheet rather than providing evidence of spontaneity.

La Féline used to be a trio but now, for the third album under the name, it is the vehicle of Agnès Gayraud alone. A doctor of philosophy and music journalist, she writes for the French newspaper Libération, has a lengthy academic bibliography and has lectured at California's Stanford University.

In 2016 she published an academic paper titled Are There Any Skills Required to Listen to Pop Music? A crux issue for the article was getting to grips with the concept of “structural listening”. Whether or not the album is listened to “structurally” and despite the distracting meticulousness, Triomphe and its terrific highlight “Sépares” mark Gayraud as a pop auteur worth watching.

• More new music reviews on theartsdesk 

Overleaf: Watch the video for “Sépares” from La Féline’s Triomphe