Motorpsycho: Demon Box

With just over two weeks to Christmas, thoughts might be turning to which of the deluge of 2014’s reissues might be suitable as a gift, worth putting on your own wish-list for Santa or even merit buying for yourself. So if help is needed, theartsdesk is happy to provide a one-stop guide to the essential reissues covered so far this year.

In 1971, the British rock group UFO released their second album. Titled One Hour Space Rock, its cover bore the subtitle Flying and, yes, images of UFOs in the form of flying saucers and a bald, naked and pink humanoid with claw-like fingernails. Musically, although the album had its freaky sections and sported the lengthy tracks "Star Storm" and "Flying", what was on offer was mostly day-to-day blues-rock.

Love: Love Songs The Red Crayola: The Parable of the Arable Land

Choosing the cutesy-pie “Fwends” – as The Flaming Lips have before – for the title rather than "friends" instantly suggests this track-by-track revisit to The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band isn’t going to be entirely reverential. It isn’t. And there’s nothing wrong with that. No music is sacred and reinterpretations can indeed be interesting and fun. Occasionally, they can even be revelatory.

The Bevis Frond: Miasma

Goat are the Swedish psychedelic rock band that made themselves known to the world in 2012 with their sublime debut album, World Music. Much critical acclaim was piled upon their gumbo of psychedelia, motorik and afrobeat and most of these influences are present in Commune. However, things in Goatworld have not stood still and now there is even more emphasis on dancing into a frenzy to fuzzy and repetitive grooves, while more straightforward songs, like “Run to your Mama” or “Let it bleed” from their debut, take a backseat.

Tulegur Gangzi describes his music as “Mongolian grunge” and “nomad rock.” Thrashing at an acoustic guitar, the Inner-Mongolian troubadour is singing in the khomei style, the throat-singing which sounds part-gargle, drone and chant – or all three at once. His approach to the guitar is just as remarkable. With his left hand sliding up and down the neck, the open tunings he employs set up a sibilant plangence nodding to the trancey folk-rock of Stormcock Roy Harper.

Five albums down, and it seems that The Pierces are yet to stop dressing up their music in different, albeit recognisable, clothes. If 2011’s You & I was the big pop album that with any justice would have made Allison and Catherine household names, then its follow-up finds them going full Stevie Nicks.

The 13th Floor Elevators: Live Evolution Lost