Every so often a record turns up that has no business existing, and is all the better for it. *Holding On*, the debut album from The Snow Ponies, was recorded over twelve months by one man in the Waikato, who played every instrument himself. That man is Phil Dean. His CV includes thirty-odd years of gigging, a guard's uniform in *Rings of Power*, a thumping from Jason Momoa in *Aquaman 2*, and a head injury that has left him unable to tolerate bright lights and loud noise. This is not the usual route to a good guitar record, and yet here it is.

Molly Warburton has served her apprenticeship in public. Years of gigging around Lancashire and beyond, from Kendal Calling to The Great Escape, plus a national-competition slot on Lucy Spraggan's tour, have given her the kind of stagecraft that cannot be faked. *Eyes Wide Open*, five songs long and released this September, is that education turned into craft. It sounds like a record by someone who has watched a great many faces in a great many rooms and learned what they need to hear.

Pop rock has a habit of mistaking volume for feeling. Eyal Har-Noy's new single, *This Is Me*, goes the other way. It begins quietly, almost shyly, like a man clearing his throat before saying something he has rehearsed in the mirror for years. By the time the chorus arrives, that nervous clearing of the throat has become a declaration, and a room full of strangers could happily sing it back.

Concept albums have a reputation for pomp, for capes and wizards and side-long suites about dragons. Social Treble's debut keeps the ambition and drops the costume. Its hero is a software architect known to his employer as Token AS-1133, and its villain is a customer-service reflex: a wellness system that logs his distress, stamps the time, issues a reference number and sends him back to his task list. Nobody walks down the corridor. The record names this Timestamp Care, and it is the sharpest idea in progressive music for some years.

Nobody asked for another song about wandering. The troubadour with a rucksack and a restless heart is among the oldest figures in popular music, and the road has been worn smooth by a century of boots. Firefly Search Party walk it anyway, and "Sing Me A Song," the second single from their debut album *Prism of Dispositions*, turns out to be a small, glowing, thoroughly disarming thing.

A-ha's "Take On Me" arrived in 1985 wearing a pencil-sketch video and a synthesiser riff bright enough to power a small town. Its chorus is a notorious vocal assault course, which Morten Harket scaled with the nonchalance of a man popping out for milk. Since then it has been covered by everyone from wedding bands to metal outfits, usually with all the subtlety of a dropped tray. So when Susie Cousins announces that she has stripped it of synthesisers and handed it to a string quartet, the sensible reviewer sharpens his pencil and prepares to be unkind.

Flowers have always been the great alibi of the dangerous man. They arrive wrapped in cellophane and ribbon, they are presented in public, and they ask the recipient to be grateful. LTMAA understands this better than most songwriters, and "Violent Bouquets", the second dispatch from her debut solo EP, builds an entire nightmare from the idea.