AtoZ

These Mute reissues of Barry Adamson’s solo material have helped shine a light on an artist who – despite a recent career-best compilation and well-received autobiography – always seems most comfortable lingering in the shadows, whether that’s playing with the Bad Seeds or composing for Hollywood. Adamson’s long been drawn to the dark side, stacking his albums with flawed characters and fatalistic themes, yet his latest ones find him in a broadly celebratory mood as he contemplates the emancipatory power of love on I Will Set You Free, notably with the Elbow-ish “Turnaround” and Scott Walker-scented “If You Love Her”. From its Goblin-esque opener to baroque ballads like “Claw And Wing”, Know Where To Run is a sexier beast that sees Adamson conjuring another imaginary soundtrack for a Tarantino flick starring Nick Cave. While there’s no real need for these reissues – the originals are widely available – there’s never a bad time to be reminded of Adamson’s songbook.

Extras: 5/10. Coloured vinyl LPs.

PIERS MARTIN

Imaginative yet grounded, whimsical yet deeply harrowing, Little Earthquakes was unlike anything else released in 1992, introducing its flame-haired creator as a singularly fanciful songwriter and inventive pianist. “Silent All These Years” opens with a simple theme that sounds like she’s disrupting a child’s recital, and the instrument becomes a full orchestra on “These Precious Things”. The traumas and idiosyncrasies remain compelling on this vinyl edition, while the bonus tracks (all previously released) enlarge the album’s weird world.

Extras: 9/10. Rather than a standard anniversary box, Amos is issuing a “graphic album”: a hardbound coffee-table book featuring comic-book artists and writers visually interpreting her songs. Margaret Atwood frays the edges of “Silent All These Years”, while Neil Gaiman gets cosmically meta on “Tear In Your Hand”. In the hands of Catherynne Valente and Sebastian Piriz, “These Precious Things” becomes a slasher flick where the killer and the final girl are the same person. Altogether, an ingenious rethinking of the reissue format.

 STEPHEN DEUSNER

It’s become a cliche, but the six albums recorded by Luke Haines’s Auteurs, sets the tone: impressionistic narration from down-at-heel characters, untouched by any ’80s economic boom, from the layabout shacked up with a showgirl to the thrift-store junkie and the resentful car valet. , from 1994, develops these ideas, featuring “Lenny Valentino” (the closest they came to a hit) and the elaborately arranged “New French Girlfriend”. The spiky, Steve Albini-produced critical favourite, 1996’s , puts the band firmly outside the Britpop mainstream, while 1999’s (like Haines’s side-project Baader Meinhof, also included here) puts a dark, satirical twist on any burgeoning 1970s nostalgia. , 2003’s contractual obligation LP, can be seen as a bit of a prank – easy-listening versions of tracks from the first four albums, arranged for a symphony orchestra, rounded off by some very scrappy four-track demos.