For a good few people in the UK, maybe the last time they came across Andrew WK was in 2001, when he appeared on the front of NME covered in blood and was proclaimed as something akin to the future of rock, thanks to some oddly bombastic, super-dumb party tunes. That career didn’t quite happen, not least because most people who heard Andrew WK spent more time contemplating whether his enthusiasm was genuine or satirical, rather than partying as hard as he demanded. The thing is, though, that in the intervening years WK has interspersed a few more mainstream rock records with distinctly odder projects. I suppose pre-fame connections with Wolf Eyes and the underground noise scene should’ve been a sign. But WK’s trajectory has recently managed to take in part-time membership of Current 93, collaborations with Baby Dee and production work for Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, as well as parallel careers as a successful New York club owner and a motivational speaker. Looking at “55 Cadillac”, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a return to party metal. The cover shots involve WK driving a Cadillac, lying in the boot of a Cadillac and leaning out of the car window looking deranged. Only a subtitle, “SSPI”, gives a clue as to the real nature of the album: it stands for “Spontaneous Solo Piano Improvisations”. And that’s pretty much it: Andrew WK working his way through forceful and very melodic jams on the piano in Baby Dee’s house in Cleveland. It begins with a car engine drowning out the crickets and distant dogs, but generally works at a sprightly, almost jazzy pace; we were immediately reminded of the Takoma pianist George Winston, rather than something austere and avant-garde like, say, Morton Feldman. As a sceptic intrigued by Andrew WK, I have to admit it’s a lovely and propulsive record. As ever, I’m sure it’ll provoke a good few debates about what is serious/irreverent in his work, but what strikes me is that “55 Cadillac” actually makes sense as a link between his mainstream rock records and his more outre projects, in that it highlights the energy and zeal which he brings to everything he does. When he appears to be drumming on the piano during “Night Driver”, it seems to be provoked by a guile-less exhilaration rather than some calculated attempt to gain improv kudos. And when the final “Cadillac” ends with a shrill, rudely unexpected chorus of guitars, WK seems to be making the connections explicit: he doesn’t separate out his musical ventures into the ‘serious’ and the ‘lightweight’, he just does what he does. This time, it sounds awesome.

Apologies for not coming up with the annual skree of indignation when the Mercury shortlist was announced a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I couldn’t be bothered to get worked up about it this year, not least because it would’ve been quite a struggle to come up with a dozen British albums I could genuinely enthuse about that have come out in the last 12 months. I did, though, have a momentary flash of annoyance about the absence of The xx’s album, until I realised that it wasn’t out ‘til mid-August and consequently didn’t qualify for the prize this year. “xx” is the debut album by The xx, whose lower-case affectation actually suits their music rather well. I’ve read quite a lot about this record which fixates on the band’s origins at the Elliot School in Putney, which tends to bracket them with that school’s other notable alumni, Four Tet/Fridge, Hot Chip and Burial, and ignores the fact that The xx are actually a comparatively orthodox, if unusually subtle, indie-rock band. Plenty of press has also made a deal about their R&B influences, which are palpable, but hardly overstated: anyone who comes to “xx” expecting something comparable to the tooled, unearthly soundscapes that Timbaland created for Aaliyah may be disappointed, or at least a little confounded. You can, at a push, see a bunch of these insidious little songs as more organic reconfigurations of that sound. But maybe a better comparison, if just as stretched an idea, might be Mazzy Star covering Portishead. These are 11 songs that are pleasingly hard to separate, that sustain an arid, skeletal, low-lit atmosphere, with a prevailingly creepy vibe that’s barely undermined by it being so evidently contrived. “Intro” sets the tone, an instrumental of spare twangs, mildly looming keyboard ambience and crackling beats. When vocalists Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim turn up on “VCR”, the modus operandi becomes totally clear; spacious minimalism overlaid with affected boy/girl vocals that manage to be simultaneously detached and doleful. Maybe I’m making it sound a bit hipster-gimmicky, but “xx” is much better than that, not just because the atmosphere is so compelling, but thanks to the potency of many of these songs. For all their apparent stripped similarity to each other, the likes of “Crystallised”, “Islands” and especially “Shelter” have been lodged stubbornly in my brain for a good few weeks now. Let’s hope they’re still there with a few other people this time next year.