Ekeren is not a place one associates with the end of the world. It is a quiet, unglamorous district on the northern edge of Antwerp, all suburban hedges and tram lines, and yet from a home studio there comes *The Dark Fungus*, an EP that imagines civilisation dissolving into mycelium and dancing itself to oblivion. It is a preposterous conceit. It is also, against every reasonable expectation, a triumph.

There is a particular kind of hip-hop record that arrives shouting, all chest-thumping and bank statements, and there is another kind that walks in quietly, takes off its hat and asks how your evening's going. "Chrysanthemum Flower" belongs firmly to the second category, and it is all the more disarming for it.

Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in 1937, and the world has never quite let her go. She has been sighted on desert islands, in Japanese custody and, in the more excitable corners of the internet, aboard a flying saucer. One durable rumour even had her as the voice on the wartime airwaves that gave this song its title. Alan Grice, who records as Fierce Friend, has gathered up the whole tangle of searchlights, static and folklore and turned it into a piano ballad that begins politely and ends somewhere near the edge of the map.

Optimism is difficult to do well in pop. Pitched too high, it curdles into the motivational poster. Pitched too low, it sounds like a shrug. Brandon Archer's new single, the title track of his forthcoming album, finds the narrow ledge in between and sets up a comfortable chair on it.

Concept albums have a reputation for grandiosity. They tend to arrive wrapped in gatefold sleeves and self-importance, ready to explain the cosmos to a public that only wanted a decent tune. Massimo Donelli and Paolo Rossi have made something far rarer: a concept album with a beating heart and a conscience, and, best of all, restraint. *Adorati Spiriti* asks large questions in a quiet voice, and it is all the more persuasive for it.

The soft-rock anthem has been abused for decades. It has soundtracked car adverts, talent-show finales and the last ten minutes of countless films about overcoming something. Farswani knows this, and "Born To Fly" is built to survive the comparison. It opens with a lullaby's closeness and ends in a chorus for a stadium of daughters, and the journey between the two is more carefully judged than the genre's usual lurch from hush to thunder.

Most bands announce themselves with a slogan, a scandal or a haircut. The Meir have opted for a Monday. Almost every week, three men gathered in a room on Meirstraat in the Dutch village of Oud Gastel, and out of that unglamorous ritual came a band, a name and now a debut single that sounds as though it has been quietly waiting for its moment.