You don’t need me to tell you that this particular law enforcer has served up yet another meaty helping of genius. It’s what we expect. So here she is, over-delivering again on her 12^th album. A salve for the soul, Joan Wasser’s delicious voice and masterful songwriting are woefully underexposed and appreciated. But, actually, that’s not a bad thing – let’s keep her secret for now.

Passage Secret – music by Bizet, Debussy, Fauré, Ravel, Aubert Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle (piano duet) (Alpha Classics)

I made a terrible mistake when I first got this LP: I played it on my laptop speakers. That’s not the straight up foolishness you might think, mind – after downloading something for review I’ll often play it quietly in the background while I catch up on admin, because it can be a good way of getting the general shape of an album, an overview as it were, before properly diving into it. But for this album in particular that really didn’t work.

Contrary to popular belief, not all music journalists get off on being snide about the same old easy-to-slate bands. When something like this album arrives in my review schedule, my instinct is to seek the good, to stick two fingers up to my sneering peers. Unfortunately Snow Patrol’s new album is proving a challenge. I am struggling to find the positives.

It has to be hoped that Stuart Staples’ songs for Tindersticks aren’t a reflection of his actual life experiences. No-one really deserves that much rejection.

Once regarded as highly as Kurosawa and Ozu, Japanese director Mikio Naruse’s star has fallen in recent decades, with few of his films readily available in the West. I’d suggest reading Hayley Scanlon’s concise introduction to Naruse’s work on the BFI website as a prelude to watching this restored print of Floating Clouds. Scanlon describes him as "cinema’s greatest pessimist", something that’s hard to disagree with on the basis of this work alone.

Although it takes seconds to discern that Juniore are French, a core inspiration appears to be the echoing surf-pop instrumentals of Californian studio band The Marketts, whose 1963 single "Out of Limits" became their most well-known track. Add in – exemplified by Trois, Deux, Un’s fifth and sixth tracks “Amour fou” and “Grand voyageur” – the languid atmosphere of the early Françoise Hardy and the result is a form of Gallic retro-futurist garage-pop.

This album only has one serious flaw: LL COOL J didn’t open it with “OK you can call it a comeback”. Sorry, cheap joke (if you didn’t know, his classic hit “Mama Said Knock You Out” starts with the lyric “Don’t call it a comeback!” and this, his 14th album, is his first in 11 years).

As a live sensation, Fat Dog have been the talk of the year. The London five-piece offer a dementedly energized night out. Performative concerts, tight as zip-wire but hedonistic and loose round the edges. They’ve developed a solid rep for sending audiences nuts. Consequently, there’s a hungry new fan-base salivating for their debut album, WOOF. Coming in at just over half-an-hour, it captures their battering zing; short, sharp and ballistic.

Sundiver is the daylight chapter that follows Boston Manor’s 2022 introspective concept album Datura. The second half of the story continues with the same poetic, immersive style but offers a brighter and more substantial experience across the 11 tracks.