Reviews

Probably the best blues album in the world...ever! Martin Scorsese's seven-part TV series on the blues has had mixed reviews in America. But it's impossible to fault the accompanying five-CD box set, which must qualify as the most comprehensive blues compilation ever released. With 116 tracks chronologically sequenced and expertly annotated, there's hardly a big name in the genre who isn't represented. Nevertheless, the set raises fundamental questions about why anybody should still bother listening to the blues.

Released to acclaim in the US early last year, 26-year-old Ritter's debut earned him support slots with Dylan and the admiration of Joan Baez. Now available in the UK, this is softly rolling roots-folk with the warmth of John Prine and a twist of Richard Buckner. Townes Van Zandt and Nick Drake ("You've Got The Moon"; "Drive Away") are obvious touchstones, too, but ldaho-born Ritter's lugubrious stealth is rooted in his own earth, addressing the paradox between the allure of the road and the pull of tradition.

Psycho-electronica-nothing to do with the other Donna

Enterprising debut from lo-fi New York singer-songwriter

Lavishly annotated four-disc box collates albums 3-6 from Tom Rapp's gently stoned psych-folk collective

First and third LPs from contemporaries of The Association and The 5th Dimension

Fifties classic revived for NFT's James Mason season

Dennis Hopper is Huey Walker, a '60s radical who's been wanted by the Feds for decades. When he's captured in the late '80s, repressed, clean-cut young FBI man Kiefer Sutherland lands the job of escorting him to trial through Reagan-era America, but Hopper turns the tables, and teaches him how to drop out. Your average, idealistic, pan-generational odd-couple road movie, but Hopper, spoofing his Easy Rider persona, is a howl.

NOBODY DID SUAVE like Cary Grant; few would be stupid enough to try. When a whole way of being is personified that definitively, even a George Clooney looks like a stammering schoolboy in comparison. Grant's worst films are worth watching for his expressions of charm and much-tried patience, but here are some of his best, digitally remastered. In Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn causes his "zoology professor"to lose precious dinosaur bones and a pet leopard.

If Scorsese skimps on the British blues in his box set, he compensates with a single spin-off disc focusing solely on Slowhand's contribution to the devil's music. Ten tracks trace Clapton's development through his days with John Mayall to Cream, Blind Faith and Derek And The Dominos. We also get "Rockin' Today" from the famous 1970 London sessions with Howlin' Wolf. There's nothing of more recent vintage, such as his 2001 collaboration with BB King. But it's still an impressive summary of Clapton's credentials as—surely—the greatest white blues man of them all.