It would be easy to expect far too much of the Soledad Brothers?named after a cause c

Kudos to Apollo 440 for the title and sleeve here, wry references to Marcel Duchamp which may sail over the heads of some. It’s a juicy electric foray into retro-futurist funk, the cheesy, strobe-lit spirit of which is captured on titles like “Disco Sucks” and “Escape To Beyond The Planet Of The Super Apes”, featuring guest appearances that include a shouty turn from Pete Wylie.

The second disc is more of a laid-back, trippy affair?most enticing of the tracks on offer being “Something’s Got To Give”. Nice, though a few more moments of splashdown wouldn’t go amiss.

Known as Client A and Client B, this female electro-pop duo deliver deadpan anthems in undiluted Northern accents. It’s as if the backing singers in The Human League have locked Phil in a cupboard and taken over the machinery. The title track is the most effective, on which they come on like robotic call girls whose superior services you might regret using. But despite some inventive electronic tinkering, the pose wears a bit thin through repetition.

With members hailing from Ireland, England, New Zealand and Canada, one might expect Vega 4’s first album to be a cross-section of diverse musical heritages. How disappointing to discover that Satellites eschews originality in favour of the kind of universal sentiments and trad-rock guitar schtick that makes corporate indie rock so dreary. That’s not to say Satellites is without merit; “Love Breaks Down” has an irresistibly lighters-in-air vibe. But the sneaky feeling Vega 4 have just written the new soundtrack for smug couples can’t be shaken.

The latest back-to-basics US rock”n” rollers to enchant the UK press, Texan band Jetscreamer recorded this turbulent debut without overdubs, Pro Tools or any such new-fangled technological gubbins. The result is a good ol’ punk-blues racket, though their greasy slide-guitar thrash is nothing new. The Flamin’ Groovies mastered this back in the ’70s, as did The Janitors (remember them?) in the ’80s. And when they opt for crash’n’ burn improvisations, Jetscreamer become nothing more than Sonic Youth by numbers. More Boeing 747 than Concorde, then, but entertaining in its raw power.

This was unexpected. On this album, Sylvian essentially improvises eight songs as he goes along, and is mostly alone, emotionally naked. Throughout, a grievous if unspecified sense of loss is expressed (encapsulated in the 14-minute title track). Astonishingly and brilliantly, three tracks find him working with improv guitar god Derek Bailey, whose gnarled pluckings are given a startling new environment in which to flourish (“The Good Son”). “Late Night Shopping” is a blissful ode to non-existence, while Sylvian’s musings on life, love and death are beautifully resolved by the coda “A Fire In The Forest”, where Christian Fennesz’ electronics encourage Sylvian to reconnect with the world. An extremely moving and potentially radical record.

Making things difficult, or at least obtuse, has been a code of honour to Davey Henderson for longer than is decent to mention. Penetrate the multiple misspellings of “Carnivorous” on the sleeve, ignore the faulty track listing and there’s plenty, as ever, to stimulate among the six remixes of “Pong Fat Six”, originally co-written with The Pop Group’s Gareth Sager.

The estimable Future Pilot AKA and various other Henderson peers dismantle the evidently toxic original in different ways, though steam-powered electro and cosmic jazz remain the vague constants. Best-in-show rosette, though, goes to Bill Wells and Norman Blake, who salvage something skittish, glitchy and implausibly delicate out of the carnage.

Their music’s been all over the soundtracks of the preposterously piss-poor movies Matrix Reloaded and Tomb Raider, but we won’t hold that against them. Now consisting of just Jon Fugler and Mike Bryant, Fluke return with Puppy?four years in the making, and a more muscular take on the band’s customarily linear techno-groove. “Another Kind Of Blues”, with its swoops and vistas, is especially pulsating, while “YKK” is the fragment of a soundtrack to some unmade film distinctly better than those to which Fluke have actually lent their work.

“Bastard child of a randy AM radio and an insatiable eight-track cassette player,” explain The Slaughter Rule directors Andrew and Alex Smith in the sleevenotes, “this soundtrack was conceived on a Montana two-lane blacktop, in the back seat of a faded red ’74 Valiant.” While the US twins scouted for their movie’s soul via road trips to west Texas, Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt founder Jay Farrar’s music acted as constant companion and stoker of imaginations. Commissioning him for the score seemed sensible.

Anyone familiar with Farrar’s elegiac recent release Terroir Blues (reviewed in the last Uncut) will be heartened to know his contributions here tap into the same spirit: mood-setting country-blues instrumentals and sombre meditations. Like Ry Cooder’s work on Paris, Texas, he manages to define terrain both emotional and physical via economical use of notes and accents. In between, there are superb moments from Vic Chesnutt (“Rank Stranger”), Malcolm Holcombe (“Killing The Blues”) and Freakwater (“When I Stop Dreaming”), alongside the more familiar (Ryan Adams’ “To Be Young”) and the obscure (Uncle Tupelo’s 1993 reading of Gram Parsons’ “Blue Eyes”). And while The Pernice Brothers’ closing version of “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?” nearly makes off with the silverware, it’s Farrar’s intricate acoustic picking and occasional smotherings of distortion that lace up the spine.

From the same ’96 sessions that produced Dowd’s startling debut Wrong Side Of Memphis, these four-track recordings are the overspill. You’ll find (slightly) more sanitised versions of some on Pictures From Life’s Other Side (1999) and last year’s The Pawnbroker’s Wife, but these?in JD speak?are “the original bad seeds”. It’s mostly slow-stealth swamp blues, rendered fearsome and moving by his scowling delivery, sounding forever snagged on a barbed wire fence. The additional vocals of (regular staple) Kim Sherwood-Caso add to the wracked creepiness of the title track, while on “Rolling And Tumbling Trilogy” Dowd comes on like the bastard spawn of Aleister Crowley.

Arguably (though there’s no debate among the voices in this listener’s head) the best album of 2001, Asleep In The Back must have been a tough (and tender) act to follow. Partly because the Lancashire-based band had around 10 years to write, record and re-record that debut, navigating a route through various music biz mazes. Required to deliver a follow-up with unaccustomed haste after gold discs, rave reviews and sold-out US tours, Elbow initially froze. “It was like rolling a boulder up a hill”, Guy Garvey’s said. They took a break, reflected, reconvened. Then they got it so very right.

Produced by Ben Hillier, demoed in a church on the Isle Of Mull then recorded in Liverpool, Cast Of Thousands is as challenging and emotionally turbulent as its predecessor, yet faithful to its foundation feel. It’ll make you cry, laugh and freak in the same parts of your body. It’s human where Radiohead are impenetrable, but complex where Coldplay are banal. Somehow my notes include the phrases Kes, Kafka, Hendrix and WB Yeats. One of us is on something, and lo, their something is honest and good.

“Ribcage” sets the tone(s), matching “Newborn” for ambition. The incredibly twisty melody shouldn’t stay in your brain but does, Garvey warring against clich

The reissue of Cantrell’s 2000 debut is timely following the critical success of last year’s When The Roses Bloom Again, and a major US tour with Elvis Costello. John Peel deemed this his “favourite record of the last 10 years and possibly my life”, while Costello describes her sound as “if Kitty Wells made Rubber Soul”. Nashville-bred, NYC-based Cantrell is steeped in country and bluegrass, but brings a strident grace all her own. Set atop guitars both acoustic and twangy?and soft squeals of steel?her voice is cut-glass pure. Like Wells and the McGarrigle sisters before her, she forgoes the traditional hick-in-throat approach for a sound like crushed ice slowly melting.

Finding themselves in implausible possession of a Billboard Top 30 hit with a “Submarine” remix, Cranes continue their single-minded, 13-year-long quest for those resolutely uncommercial, abstractly beautiful and inexplicably affecting chords, patterns and sighs they do so splendidly.

Recorded in those well-known Italian cities of Rome, Ancona, er, Amsterdam, Vienna, and, um, Portsmouth, Live In Italy begins with chilly suggestion and climaxes in white-hot emoting. Atmospheres which make your hair stand on end and your spine turn to the shape of that snazzy Guggenheim building in Bilb

How quaint. The Raveonettes recall that crepuscular time in the mid-’80s when The Jesus & Mary Chain and their disciples relocated rock’n’ roll classicism and girl-group pop into a shower of feedback. It remains a seductive formula, though one that pales very quickly. For all their grasp of the iconography, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo’s tales of leather gangs and boys called Johnny are sexless. And while Chain Gang Of Love only lasts 33 minutes (not much longer than January’s mini album), it still outstays its welcome.

Stalked by onehelluva shadow, at least LMP’s trying to dodge it her own way. Initially offered a deal in her teens, the ex-Mrs Jacko has waited til 35 to make her debut. The pedigree’s not bad?Eric (Tori Amos) Rosse and Capitol Records president Andrew Slater produce?but too much end product is lame. If power ballads, mid-tempo rawk and Joan Jett/Cher tonsils pull your chain, this is for you. Though she deserves credit for down-playing the King’s Daughter card, there’s little to get excited about here.

Too many young bands come out of their bedrooms before they’re ready. No such accusation can be levelled at Nottingham quartet Finlay. It’s three years since their first single, and since then they’ve been crafting a debut of clever, spiky lo-fi post-rock on which the influence of late period Damon Albarn, early Mogwai, Lou Barlow and Pavement is clear. Yes, Finlay, you can come out now. It sounds like you’re just about ready.

Taking their name from the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, Paul Noonan’s band construct literate love songs that are the polar opposites of stadium rock. They’ve also retained their Celtic personality without paying lip service to the new Irish movement. Noonan’s imagery takes nursery ideas and spins them into adult problems on “Snakes And Snakes” and “Alphabet Soup”. Elsewhere there are developed sensual ideas at play. “West Of Her Spine” and “I’ll See Your Heart And Raise You Mine” match strong melody to a level of intrigue befitting inhabitants of Joyce’s Dublin.

Robert Pollard’s discography runs past 30 albums now, but his prodigious gift for psych-revivalist songwriting continues to flourish. As usual, there’s evidence he may have spent longer on the song titles than the songs themselves?”Of Mites And Men” must have been particularly satisfying. And as with the past few GBV albums, it seems The Who and their sturdy power chords currently take precedence in his pantheon of inspirations. Strange, though, that we yearned for Pollard to treat his songs properly when he tossed them off as lo-fi sketches, but now they arrive as crafted, completed stadium anthems, that faint whiff of underachievement remains.

Long gone are the days when a James Brown album would have funkateers quivering in anticipation. But considering Brown’s recent legal and personal woes, his third collaboration in a row with producer/writer Derrick Monk is an impressively taut mission statement. Monk skilfully retraces JB’s illustrious past (eg. the “King Heroin” riff on “Send Her Back”) without labouring the point. Whether duetting feistily with Tomi Rae or laying down the law on the excellent “Killing Is Out, School Is In”, James is in unrepentant voice. A much better showing from a 70-year-old than we could reasonably expect.