This one gets seven bottles. Seven. Harry Howard and Ed Preston have excelled themselves in the most extraordinary way.

Right, I’ll calm down and try and explain. First, both HHNDE records have been natural progressions, with damn fine songs, and plenty to bounce around the room to. Memorable in every sense.

In 2016, it seems that times have changed. Time was when the “third album” was perceived as “difficult’; that a band found it difficult to develop onwards from their initial impetus and squirt to stardom. The Ramones’ third LP was written at the same time as their first, so no problem there. I suspect much the same could be said of the Stranglers, whose live sets in 1977 featured 90 minutes of ugly hits. However, these are exceptions.

Right, when I heard this for the first of what will be hundreds of times, I thought, fuck me, “Grandular Fever” is a career highlight. The thing is… I reckon they can match this over and over without breaking wind. And fuck, Loki Lockwood must be spitting. A record this fucking brilliant and it ain’t out til October (I won't tell you when I initially wrote this).

Every now and then an CD comes along which makes me love the privileged position I sometimes find myself in. And right now… EIGHT BOTTLES. And after several months of addictive listening, it's still eight bottles.

Never paid The Wildhearts much attention so the fact The Main Grains bassist and mainman Danny McCormack played in ‘em didn’t mean much to me. A couple of spins of his new band’s debut EP on CD, however, made me a believer.

The Main Grains formed in Newcastle-0n-Tyne, Northern England, in 2015 and occupy the same punk rock-pop territory as The Wildhearts. They bring a bunch of songs to this EP that are catchier than a heavy cold in what passes for an English summer. 

The bio will tell you the band is McCormack and guitarists JJ Watt (Spill 16/Whiskey Haze) and Ben Marsden (Modern Day Dukes), and drummer Ginna Rhodes (Psychobabylon/Phluid), and that they fuse the sounds of the Ramones, The Wildhearts, Yo-Yo's and Blondie. They call it Northern Punk.

They don’t half mind talking politics north of Hadrian’s Wall, but few Scots manage to mix it with scorching rock and roll like this crew. “Dangerous Minds” is the third Media Whores album since they formed in 2008 and sounds exactly like its title warns.

Pointed and to the point, The Media Whores don’t embrace lyrical subtlety. They attack subjects like fracking (“Frack Off”), cybersex (“Computer Love Affair”), materialism (“Zombies of Mayfair”), crooked cops (“Raking It In”) and all parts in-between with zealous glee. Musically, they run the gamut from hard-edged, new wave pop to punk rock.

This one’s by a bunch of blokes from Burleigh Heads, an idyllic spot in the most southern coastal reaches of sub-tropical Queensland where the weather’s warm, the beer’s cold and the attitude is either laid-back or laid-off and under-employed. 

If Tokyo Beef’s EP doesn’t quite reek of coconut oil on a frying Burleigh Heads sunbather’s back at the height of a summer afternoon, its sound would sit perfectly well in the beer garden of the town’s famous pub after the sun’s gone down. The band doesn't mind flying the flag for its home turf either - the title’s a reference to their postcode.

What a long way this Sydney band has come in a few years – and not just geographically speaking.

The Prehistorics have done the European touring thing a couple of times now, returning home to relative indifference. Main-man Brendan Sequiera was planning to relocate to France but red tape and lukewarm day job prospects have put that plan on the backburner.

What he and his band have delivered with their fourth long-player is an album of world-class, melodic but hard-hitting rock and roll. It will go down a storm offshore and - all things being equal - should make an audience closer to home sit up and listen as well.