Swiss electro-rockers, Young Gods have been around for 40 years, but this in no way should suggest that they’ve gone soft in their old age. These days, vocalist Franz Treichler looks like the psychopathic Bob from David Lynch’s original Twin Peaks TV series and still exudes a certain malevolence – which is more than reflected in their new album Appear Disappear.

When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which I ended up putting on promotional badges: “BASS CULTURE IS FOLK CULTURE”. It referred to the way riffs, refrains, ways of acting were passed down the generations, from reggae to rave to grime and on. But it also quickly took on more meaning, about where soundsystem and club music exist in society.

When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of blistering rock’n’roll. His debut album with the Chrome Hearts, however, gives a bit of both – and it pretty much has Young at the top of his game throughout.

Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first time her playing really leaps out on her new album is during second cut “Carved Form,” where it weaves through the arrangement. A guitar solo arrives just over a minute in: precise yet slippery, it complements the early space-age feel of the Pocket Piano synthesiser she also contributes to the track.

Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on, off on her own thing. The Welsh singer is primarily known for success 10-15 years ago as Marina and the Diamonds, but she’s retained global heft as an album artist, including in the US, where she now lives (she played Coachella this year). Her last album was 2021’s enjoyably unfettered Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. Princess of Power is even more over-the-top, pushing sex-positive girl-power themes further.

In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they sang into their webcams and iPhones, some more successfully than others, doing what they needed to do. The most successful, the one I truly looked forward to, was Mary Chapin Carpenter who, every week, welcomed us into her sun-dappled Virginia farmhouse for a chat and a song.

When Van Morrison last released an album of original songs, during the Covid pandemic, it didn’t go down well. Indeed for many, 2022’s What’s It Gonna Take squats in Morrison’s catalogue like a toad in a fruit salad.

While the Gallagher brothers scrabble around in the dirt for their rich pickings, an altogether more dignified experience is on offer from Sheffield. More is Pulp’s first album for 24 years, which is a sobering fact for those of us who still remember the first time. Thankfully, this isn’t a reprisal of past glories but a vibrant and moving work of some significance. They’ve ripened delightfully and are living proof that age does not diminish creativity or relevance.

Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH is a vibrant, shape-shifting album that proves the Baltimore-based band is fully committed to evolution. Since their formation in 2010, Turnstile have been known for injecting a fresh, genre-blurring energy into hardcore punk. With each release, they’ve pushed further into new territory, and NEVER ENOUGH might be their most fearless leap yet. While still rooted in the intensity that defined their early work, this record expands far beyond those borders, bringing in lush textures, genre-blending arrangements and a bold sense of experimentation.

Little Simz clearly believes in meeting situations head on. Her sixth full-length album kicks off, in every sense of the phrase, with “Thief”: unambiguously a lyrical barrage at her childhood friend and frequent collaborator Inflo, who Simz is currently suing for alleged failure to repay £1.7 million in loans for ambitious recording and performance projects.