Blu-ray: The Oblong Box

Vincent Price and Christopher Lee in 'Witchfinder General''s phantom follow-up

The Oblong Box is a phantom 1969 follow-up to Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, sharing star Vincent Price and much cast and crew, after the brilliant young British director’s OD forced his dismissal days before shooting. It also began replacement Gordon Hessler and co-writer Christopher Wicking’s own Price-starring horror sequence, notably the bizarre, Mod anti-fascist Scream and Scream Again (1970), placing this obscure film at a packed cult crossroads.

Album: Tomorrow X Together - The Star Chapter: Sanctuary

From heavenly pop to reggaeton heat, TXT's musical universe knows no bounds

South Korean quintet TXT's latest mini-album delivers six meticulously crafted tracks that showcase the group's evolving artistry through everything from dreamy pop to reggaeton to classic R&B.

With its stripped back arrangement – some ethereal guitar chords here, an unforgettably chirpy three-note descending synth riff there, plus vocal lines that flow and blend mellifluously – album opener “Heaven” delivers the mini-album's first and perhaps most memorable earworm.

Album: Garfunkel & Garfunkel: Father and Son

Art for Art's sake

A father and son union – the first joint collaboration by Garfunkel père et fils. Art Junior it seems has already released two solo albums, Wie Du and Evergreen, Simon & Garfunkel covers, both of which charted in Germany, from where the Garfunkel antecedents hail.

Album: Primal Scream - Come Ahead

The Scream finally knock out the album we’ve been hoping for

In many ways, Primal Scream have had a strikingly similar career path to the Rolling Stones – despite them forming some 20 years after Mick and Keith’s odyssey began and it not throwing up quite the same level of financial rewards. That said, while drugs and death may have haunted both bands, they never seemed to sap Primal Scream’s creatively in quite the same way as it did the Stones.

Album: Alley Cat - The Widow Project

★★★★ ALLEY CAT - THE WIDOW PROJECT Quiver in the shadows with dubstep auteur

Enter a haunted factory and quiver in the shadows with a dubstep auteur

If the names Pinch, Vex’d, Burial, Digital Mystikz, The Bug mean anything to you, stop reading now and buy or stream this album. Seriously, go. Go get it. That honestly is all you need to know: if you like the imperial phase when British dubstep was first establishing lasting artistic careers and extending its tendrils into the wider musical world – completely separately from its branching into a fizzy, EDM / rave form in big arenas – then you will love this record.

Album: Møster! - Springs

★★★ MOSTER! - SPRINGS Norwegian supergroup merges jazz with rock’s outer edges

Norwegian supergroup merges jazz with rock’s outer edges

Springs begins cooking with “Spaced Out Invaders - Part I Quirks,” its fourth track. A spindly, rotating guitar figure interweaves with clattering percussion and pulsating electric bass. Around three minutes in, a sax – which, until this point, has kept in the background – begins whipping up a maelstrom. Overall, the effect conjured is that of a space rock-inclined exotica, Martin Denny had he been an early Seventies freak.

Album: Chuck Prophet - Wake the Dead

★★★★ CHUCK PROPHET - WAKE THE DEAD Rock'n'roll master dances past the graveyard

Rock'n'roll master dances past the graveyard with cumbia rhythms and quizzically cocked eyebrow

Chuck Prophet speaks the old language of rock’n’roll as if it’s bright and new. His long gone band Green On Red were R.E.M.’s Eighties peers, and as rock’s cultural tide has receded, his loyalty to its spirit of liberty, askance at authority and place with those clinging to or embracing the bottom rung has become a natural act of faith.

Album: Willie Nelson - Last Leaf on the Tree

★★★★★ WILLIE NELSON - LAST LEAF ON THE TREE A late-career classic

The 91-year-old’s 153rd album is more than a farewell to arms – it’s a late-career classic

Well, seems like only yesterday when I reviewed Willie Nelson’s last album, Borderline, an excellent set from the man’s ninth decade, and now here comes Last Leaf on the Tree, a consummate set that’s at a higher level.

Album: The Cure - Songs of a Lost World

Sadness and finality have rarely felt so life-affirming

Could melancholia be an elixir of creative youth? Or is it that sad people were never really that youthful, so age suits them? Certainly it seems that there was something in the water for so many of the foundational 80s indie bands who dealt in sadness, pain and existential angst that makes longevity suit them: The Jesus & Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr., Throwing Muses, Ride, Slowdive just for starters have all somehow ambled into the 2020s on the creative form of their lives.

Album: Peter Perrett - The Cleansing

★★★★ PETER PERRETT - THE CLEANSING Depth, humour and bucket loads of cool

Depth, humour and bucket loads of cool from the former Only One

That Peter Perrett is still alive after the decades of bad habits that he inflicted on himself must be something of a surprise to those who’ve followed his career since the mid-70s. First there was England’s Glory, then the truly exquisite Only Ones and more recently an intermittent solo career – all of which have produced searing anthems from society’s seedy underbelly.