Nirvana: In Utero

Various Artists: Classroom Projects

Eddie Noack: Psycho – The K-Ark and Allstar Recordings 1962–69

In a world of reality television show winners and interchangeable flash-in-the-pan singer-songwriter critical darlings, Frank Turner stands apart as the real deal. Over the past 18 months, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that Turner had appeared as if from nowhere and his name was suddenly everywhere.

In the late Eighties one of the most sonically unhinged bands of all time came together in East London. Terminal Cheesecake caused few commercial waves but gathered a devoted coterie of fans for their unholy racket at pummelling concerts.

Public Image Ltd: Public Image – First Issue

This is not an easy record to get a handle on. When I first got it, I bounced through a couple of tracks idly, and it felt like it was coming from the messy genre fusions of the mid-90s – somewhere between trip-hop, indie-dance, rap-rock and mildly crusty festival-dub. There are growling guitars, indie-rock basslines, anthemic reggae horns, and frontman Joshua Idehen's voice, which lies somewhere between rapper, poet, singer and orator, all making it sound like a livelier take on Tricky, or maybe Roots Manuva fronting a rock band.

It could be Katie Crutchfield's voice: in the moment, its ragged timbre packs the punch of a cross-my-heart whispered secret. It could be the songwriting itself: stories half-told in two minute bursts, frank and funny and even contradictory the more you listen to the album as a whole. Or it could be some combination of the two that makes Cerulean Salt feel like an undiscovered treasure, a 33-minute mystery between you and your headphones.

Having witnessed Neil Young’s shambolic O2 concert on Monday – Young treating the occasional venture into his back catalogue with listless contempt whilst serving up multiple banalities from his recent albums – I considered skipping seeing more veteran American rockers.

There’s a slight unease I feel about Savages which only grows with every listen to the band’s heavily-hyped debut album. Perhaps I’m too old to experience my music as just one facet of a conceptual art project, where it comes as part of a package that’s as much provocative manifestos about the emptiness of modern living and interviews packed with loaded statements about sex and violence.