Anyone expecting much the same on Drenge’s new album as from their 2013 self-titled debut may have been somewhat misled by lead track “Favourite Son”. Lively and abrasive, with pounding drums, angry guitars and yelled vocals, it certainly wouldn’t sound out of place alongside “I Wanna Break You In Half” and “Gun Crazy”. With the exception of the Ramones-esque “We Can Do What We Want”, however, this is where the adrenaline-fuelled influence of Drenge’s first album largely ends.

The rich, knock-off church organ drone that opens Ivy Tripp disorientates from the off, while at the same time telling you all you need to know. It may have been the simplicity and directness of Katie Crutchfield’s lyrical and composition style that drew me into the world of Waxahatchee – Crutchfield’s solo project, a homage to the creek of the same name near her Alabama hometown – but that world itself was never simple.

Very often, the greatest impact comes without shouting. Subtlety can have a power lingering longer than the two-minute thrill of a yell. So it is with Bridges, the eighth album by Eivør. In the past, the Faroese singer-songwriter has collaborated with Canada’s Bill Bourne, the Danish Radio Big Band and Ireland’s Donal Lunny, and taken turns into country and jazz. Bridges builds on her last album though, 2012’s Room, as further evidence that she is now more focused than ever.

Let’s get one thing straight: Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell is not a folk album. Folk, in this case, is a word used as a comfort blanket in an attempt to summarise the Michigan songwriter’s return to simple, acoustic music after the apocalyptic electronica of 2010’s The Age of Adz or the epic, high-concept Illinois. But folk music is a communal thing, predicated on culture and oral tradition.

The two-and-a-quarter years between the release of Motorama’s last album Calendar and Poverty hitting the shops have done nothing to dim the Russian band’s aural resemblance to the roster of early-Eighties Factory Records. At this remove, it’s hard to ascertain whether records by Section 25, Stockholm Monsters or The Wake were shipped to the southern port city of Rostov-on-Don. It’s more likely Motorama evolved their Northern British leanings  picking up on what they liked via the internet and then doing what came naturally.

Tav Falco & Panther Burns: Hip Flask – An Introduction to Tav Falco & Panther Burns

I first saw Spectres last October at the 10^th birthday celebrations for their label, Sonic Cathedral. That night, they struck me as noisy, spiky and fun. If that sounds like faint praise, it really wasn't meant to be – noisy, spiky fun is in my all-time top three funs. Now, they've gone from bottom of the bill to headline act in less than six months on the back of an album so incendiary it should come wrapped in a fire blanket (well, it beats a tote bag any day) and, oh my… how they have grown. Really, this band’s development needs to be measured in cat years.

While much of Hexadic is a blast, the first album from Six Organs of Admittance since 2012’s Ascent offers much that’s familiar: the snail’s pace heaviosity and shifts between bone-crushing density and desiccated sparseness of Dylan Carlson’s Earth, spaghetti-western guitar interludes (also favoured by Carlson), an approach to malformed riffing and guitar mangling blending Bad Moon Rising-era Sonic Youth, Harry Pussy and early Pussy Galore.

It’s the kind of care-worn venue that’s obviously seen some history. The walls are plastered with handbills for uncompromising bands like Billy Childish’s The Headcoats and America’s God Bullies. Some nosing reveals that it opened in 1983 and Green Day played here in 1993 while paving the way to conquering the world. 1000FRYD – “tusanfrid” if you’re Danish – is low-ceilinged, narrow, tiny and has a stage which would struggle to hold a band with more than five members.

Martin Hannett & Steve Hopkins: The Invisible Girls