Some have suggested that the title of Panda Bear’s fifth studio album means this could be the last we hear of Noah Lennox’s musical alter ego. If he is going, he’s certainly not doing it quietly, as this follow up to 2011’s Tomboy takes the intense sophistication of that album, hits delete and replaces it with day-glo drumbreaks and crayon-coloured consonance that dazzle and amaze like a disco ball shooting rainbows.

Various Artists: I'm Just Like You – Sly's Stone Flower 1969–70

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.

A slim 69-year-old man in a rumpled sports jacket looking like a gone-to-seed history lecturer with the colour-clash dress sense of Michael Portillo is gripping a microphone so hard it’s a wonder it hasn’t been crushed. He is barking lyrics in Icelandic so gruffly that this could be any Celtic or Nordic language.

This is Megas – born Magnús Þór Jónsson – the Icelandic poet, singer and cultural icon who has been ploughing this particular and peculiar furrow since the early Seventies and, in 1977, helped kick-start Icelandic punk. In Iceland, he is an enduring presence.

John MacLean has been recording as The Juan MacClean for just over a decade on former LCD Soundsystem main man James Murphy’s label DFA Records. Previously, Murphy was involved in MacLean’s old band Six Finger Satellite. In a Dream makes the link even more explicit as Nancy Whang, singer in the now-defunct LCD Soundsystem and before that an intermittent collaborator, has now joined MacLean full time.

Just in case anyone thought the hype surrounding Gloucestershire-born Spanish/Jamaican singer FKA Twigs was based only on her unique looks, startling styling and slightly silly videos, this album begins with her voice alone. It too is utterly singular, a choirboy-like chant layered over itself like some New Age confection, before the sci-fi whirrs and booms of "Preface" remind us that we're in the currently hyper-fashionable territory of reconfiguring US R&B through the prism of British soundsystem music post-dubstep and grime.

“Tonight, in the Faroe Islands, we’re going to find the greatest dancer.” It’s not an exhortation which often rings out. It could even be a first time The Faroes have been invited to demonstrate their disco prowess. Sister Sledge are on stage and about to launch into their 1979 Chic-produced world-wide smash “He’s the Greatest Dancer”.

Various Artists: Philadelphia International Records – The Collection

At last night’s Eurovision Song Contest, host country Denmark submitted “Cliché Love Song”, a weedy Bruno Mars-a-like designed to ensure they did not win for a second year running. It came ninth. While understandable that Danish national broadcaster DR would try to duck the expense of staging the extravaganza in Copenhagen again in 2015, they could have displayed some imagination by choosing an entrant that was certainly not a winner but had some worth.

Anyone who remembers the critical mauling that The Horrors received on the release of their first album, 2007’s Strange House, might be surprised to learn that seven years later, they have just put out a fourth set of new songs. Not only that, but that it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe Luminous as eagerly awaited by many.