Reviews

Casually packaged highlights compilation

Downbeat, Neil Labute-esque tale of male inadequacy

John Malkovich slums it as the evil mastermind plotting to turn Britain into a giant prison camp, while Rowan Atkinson, as the titular rubbish spy, presses all the wrong buttons. Puerile, deeply unfunny and, as an advert for our country, downright treasonable. A crime, if memory serves, still punishable by death.

Recorded during a series of gigs in Japan with his band The Oddballs two weeks before he died of a heroin overdose in April 1991, Who's Been Talking offers a voyeuristic insight into the twilight world of Thunders. Gaunt and deathly pale, the wonder is how he played at all, for he'd been immediately hospitalised on arrival in the country. He summons a chaotic-narcotic energy during a set of more than 20 songs. But there's a ghoulish irony to hearing him sing "Sad Vacation", his Sid Vicious tribute.

In Alexander Payne's wickedly mordant satire, newly-retired Warren Schmidt is forced to acknowledge the sheer empty horror of a wasted life that has left him with a ghastly marriage to someone he no longer recognises as the woman he fell in love with, a neurotic daughter who's about to marry an hilariously useless water bed salesman and a past he can't remember because in all the years now behind him he did little of merit and nothing of note. Dysfunctional families are currently all the rage, but About Schmidt has a dark individuality and coruscating comic edge that makes it uniquely compe

Savage garage from Lift To Experience's friendly neighbours

Apocalyptic comeback from post-punk doom lords featuring Foo Fighter Dave Grohl on drums

The best band in Detroit at the BBC

Compiled singles of Canadian laptop scamp

Brooklyn psych-pop pundits follow-up last year's The Better Button