It’s rather a backhanded compliment to describe them as the best independent band in the Czech Republic, but The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa have been making an indelible if modest mark outside their homeland since ’93. Then they were an ambient pop concern, but have now moved into decidedly more experimental territory. Slowthinking sets Kateina Winterova’s fetchingly fragile tones against the subtle, glitchy backdrops of Jan Muchow, with double bass, cello, saxes and trombone adding texture. Mostly, the effect is of Bj

Over its 72 expansive minutes, rock’n’roll is not reimagined as some complex alien form. The landscapes it describes are American, laid out under vast blue skies. The emotions it touches are familiarly human: a little awkward and brave, a little poignant and self-deprecating.” To all the people I’ve loved, don’t think poor of me,” pleads Jim James on the final “One In The Same”, and it seems like he’s been here forever.

The reason being, perhaps, that My Morning Jacket’s frequently awesome music fits so easily into the pantheon. Sure, new ways of negotiating music are essential. But when a band come along with such a firm handle on the transformative powers of long hair and electric guitars, it seems churlish to ask for more. It’s hard to remember the last time a band grappled so confidently with the elements of this music, who knew precisely how to balance the sounds of longing and abandon.

It’s tough, too, believing that James and his four accomplices have bettered their second album, 2001’s At Dawn (reissued earlier this year on Wichita). But, It Still Moves ups the ante, giving James’ elegiac songs the kind of muscle his band display live. Only one song here comes in at under five minutes, and a few stray well over seven, sounding as if the band are so lost in the music that they have no idea how to end them.

Unusually, it’s a welcome self-indulgence. As the lovely “Steam Engine” keens away into the twilight, or “Mahgeeta” barrels towards the border, you want My Morning Jacket to keep going indefinitely. Like many of their contemporaries, their model remains Neil Young: “Master Plan” and “Run Thru”, in particular, suggest James may have spent a year or two listening to nothing but “Cortez The Killer” and “Like A Hurricane”. His falsetto doesn’t wobble like some Young disciples, though, having instead a resilience and flexibility that’s just as reminiscent of early rock romantics like Roy Orbison and Gene Pitney. And his band’s ragged virtuosity often touches on territory last owned by Lynyrd Skynyrd or The Allman Brothers.

But It Still Moves is much more than a homage to old ways. It’s a record of passion and richness, with a hoard of memorable songs, that demands to be treated as the equal of its inspirations. An album birthed by the classics, then, that we should probably get used to treating as one.

Ever since the scud mountain boys shot their way into our consciousness like the eponymous missile via their Sub Pop discs (still available as Massachusetts and The Early Year), those with a penchant for the baroque side of power pop have asked: why aren’t more people getting this?

Subsequent releases, either as Joe Pernice or The Pernice Brothers, put weight behind the rhetoric. Albums like, check, Chappaquiddick Skyline, Big Tobacco, Overcome By Happiness and 2001’s heart-stopping The World Won’t End (wake up, Morrissey fans, this one’s for you) lead towards this latest burst of fireworks in the fog.

Joe Pernice and his band are as clever as their university credentials suggest, but their musical road map is gloriously confused. “The Weakest Shade Of Blue” and the immaculate “Water Ban” (“There’s a mark on me, of love songs burning up in effigy”) give the lie to any lazy idea that the Pernice clan are Americana. They’re just as redolent of Stealers Wheel, New Order or Mozzer as anything depending on a pedal-steel guitar. Besides, Pernice’s Anglophile tendency is no perversion.

As the writer and the singer?and what a wrapped-in-velvet voice Joe has?Pernice takes the major credits on “Baby In Two” and the spooky “Blinded By The Stars”. The layered guitars and minimally crisp rhythms are due in part to Peyton Pinkerton’s Fender lead, a sound described as “like racing downhill in a shopping carriage”.

Despite the wit, dark green moods are everywhere. The flickering TV light behind “Judy”, the desperation of “How To Live Alone” and the cinemascopic “Number Two” are all songwriting of the highest calibre; resonant in appeal, packed with lucid imagery and pillow-stuffed with harmony and melody. This one will get you through the summer, until the last swallow leaves town.

Borne of the San Diego coffee shop scene, Mraz has an irrepressibly sunny disposition, even when his heart’s breaking. Throw in featherweight melodies and spurious ethnic splashes and you have a combination of exceptionally limited charm. There are overweening vocals, prosaic settings and a new low for the bleeding heart brigade on “Absolutely Zero”. Gruesome.

Bleach

Aside from its legend as Australia’s answer to Bournemouth, and many excellent kebab joints, Melbourne also spews out classic Oz garage-rock types. Rocket Science hope devotees will dismiss all competition: band leader Roman Tucker and his Vox continental organ burn with the spirit of? Mark and their US ’60s ilk on “Being Followed”and hit some Seeds moments during”Open Air Channel”and “Tomorrow’s Soundtrack For Today’s Swinging Generation”. This is psyche punk with subtleties carved into the desk of the old school classroom. Worth a visit to the booth.

Singer/songwriter George Usher has been on the NY scene since the late ’70s, playing with everyone from Bongos leader Richard Barone to roots rockers Beat Rodeo. With all this activity, he didn’t get around to a proper solo recording career until the mid-’90s. Fire Garden, Usher’s third LP for Parasol, is as close as one can get to a textbook definition of “power pop”. It’s all there?Byrdsian guitar riffs, high vocal harmonies, the works. But Usher gives it all a modern cast, adding punch while maintaining the dewy-eyed, sun-dappled sweetness essential to great pop.

Had this sustained the astonishing power of its opening four songs we’d be looking at five stars. Single “Crazy In Love” is one of the year’s finest, a mischievous, sexy song with the best use of the Go-Go rhythm since “Slave To The Rhythm”. “Naughty Girl” revisits Donna Summer to good effect; “Baby Boy” sees Beyonc

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

High time a documentary paid tribute to the undervalued golden-era Motown house band?The Funk Brothers?who played on more (and better) hits than anyone else. The (surviving) old dudes remain innately fluid. The choice of guest vocalists here, however, as they trot through some of the greats, could’ve been better. Bootsy Collins babbling “Cool Jerk”, fine. Chaka Khan hollering “What’s Going On”, unsubtle but fine. But Ben Harper (twice?), and Joan Osborne (twice)? Once again, I’m afraid, The Funk Brothers are neglected by those who’ve built careers on their work.

Glamour, guts and surrealism. Nino Rota, who died in ’79, won Oscars for his haunting Godfather scores, but his greatest collaborations were with his compatriot Fellini. Films such as La Dolce Vita, 8

Free mini poster! More blockbusting belligerence from Kermit’s overweight and moody second cousin, or at least from the film with the most laughably dodgy CGI in cinematic history. Has nobody the courage to tell Ang Lee to stick to melodramas where drippy women in bonnets pine for Hugh Grant or Sigourney Weaver plays a ’70s swinger? Danny Elfman, colossal hack of multiplex scores, dresses this beast, with Natacha Atlas cameo-ing, while the finale, “Set Me Free”, is performed by Scott Weiland, Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Dave Kushner. We’re guessing Axl Rose was already committed to the next Muppets movie.

Bit’s

Veteran strings arranger Larry Gold (aka Don Cello?he mastered the instrument by the age of eight) has had a career that other artists dream of, from backing the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr in the ’60s to being a member of MFSB, Gamble and Huff’s The Sound Of Philadelphia house band, followed by a stint writing for Sesame Street. Since the mid-’90s, Gold’s undergone a renaissance, founding his own studio to reinvent that classic Philly sound for the likes of Justin Timberlake and J-Lo. This love letter to Philly soul features a host of guest vocalists including fellow veteran Bunny Sigler, and a nod back to Gold’s gold disc, McFadden And Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”, revisited here with a rap by Black Thought. Gorgeous.

Essentially a stopgap import for the US and Japanese market, the bulk of this CD (two smouldering John Peel sessions) nets The VBs wailing and pounding their way through highlights from their 2001 debut Lack Of Communication before a studio audience. Bloody marvellous, as are the cheeky tasters for its imminent sequel, like the hypnotic fuzz-guitar vortex “Vacant As A Ghost” and the epic eight-minute “Jean Genie” soundalike “Take A Heart”.

Two years ago The Coral’s eponymous first album introduced a group teeming with energy and a blaze of musical influences. The album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and roundly trumpeted as the arrival of the “best new band in Britain”.

Possibly premature, but at the very least The Coral’s ornate blend of Russian balalaikas, sea shanties, soul-smoked boogies, psychedelic intrigues and garage-rock blues was a refreshing sign that a band partly inspired by Oasis weren’t wholly bound by dadrock clich

After one great album with The La’s and four albums of diminishing returns with Cast, the solo album is surely John Power’s final card. But a bunch of derivative non-tunes full of flat acoustic guitars and banal clich