One of the most credible rock theories currently doing the rounds in student JCRs and pubs nationwide goes like this: 2003 equals 1983. The evidence? Intense young men like Interpol are busy mining the drizzly sounds of Factory Records for inspiration, Coldplay are palling around with Ian McCulloch and bands like The Rapture are attempting to recreate the poppers-blasted atmos of New York’s legendary punk-funk melting pot The Paradise Garage. Even psychobilly?formerly the least cool music ever made?is back in the shape of Brighton oddballs The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, with their brothel creepers, twangy guitars and quiffs.

Parisian Marc Nguyen’s (right) first album does much to bolster this hypothesis. Halfway through Again is a track called “Where”, propelled by a half-inched Stephen Morris drum rumble that makes it sound like a New Order outtake. Closer “Colder” even sounds like Cabaret Voltaire. Like Kraftwerk or Ladytron, Nguyen specialises in giving definition to the ghosts in the machine, providing them with a soundtrack constructed from a sleek Eurodisco pulse, minimal techno and echoey dub noises. “Shiny Star” references Philip Glass-type modern classical, “Crazy Love” utilises flickery Morricone spy theme guitars and elsewhere the spirits of Sly & Robbie, Massive Attack and Autechre dance by.

Yet Colder are not as chilly a proposition as you’d expect. Nguyen’s music has a European froideur, but there’s a warmth and humanity to it. He manages to give heart even to the bits of his record that sound like they could be soundtracking a Eurostar advert, weaving in samples of street noise, infotainment babble and party chatter. Like all good electronic music, Colder get the balance between surface and feeling just right.

Brad were always the lesser of honey-voiced Seattle crooner Shawn Smith’s trio of bands, being less rockin’ than Satchel and less audaciously experimental than Pigeonhed. However, since most everything Smith touches verges on heartbreaking genius, such distinctions mean little, and with this third album Brad have produced a minor masterpiece.

Mellow marvels such as “Brothers And Sisters” and “Takin’ It Easy” recall the effortless FM stylings of Abandoned Luncheonette-era Hall & Oates, while “Revolution” and “All Is One” suggest a familiarity with that same duo’s 1974 distorto-soul oddity War Babies. “Never Let Each Other Down” is something else entirely, featuring Smith bathed in richly emotional hues which showcase that gorgeously fragile and dignified voice to devastating effect.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll rejoice that Lewis Taylor isn’t the only artist out there doing this kind of thing.

Even when he was singing about supermodels with perfect skin circa 1984, Lloyd Cole always sounded like a man standing by the door with a notebook. These days he’s happily ensconced in New England, as opposed to Old Blighty, and sings lines like, “Just another bunch of would-be desperadoes/Failing to pace themselves against the grain.” Age hasn’t withered Cole’s cynicism at the music business modus operandi, it’s just given him a more world-weary sense of distance and disbelief.

Significantly, Cole replaced his Commotions with a band called the Negatives?very New York?and adopted a darker persona, one that’s happier to linger in those shadows again. If we put aside the Negatives’ 1999 disc, and a demos and rarities set from 2001 called Etc, this is actually Lloyd’s first solo record in eight years.

Mid-life crises seem to have been dealt with, however, replaced by mid-life wisdom. Much as he loves Lou Reed’s Berlin, echoing its moods several times during songs like “Today I’m Not So Sure”, “Cutting Out” and “My Other Life”, Cole’s too self-analytical to sink into self-pity. A career hypochondriac, he still deals with his malaise by using the aspirin of melody and lyric in the title track.

Refreshingly downbeat, like the criminally unknown Christian Gibbs, Cole has decided to pursue his troubadour folk and country-ish direction here. Guitars are plangent, while lap-steel, muted strings and pianos filter through, and even the songs about faux modern pop, drug abuse and wasted love don’t veer into dreary melancholy.

A cover of Nick Cave’s “People Ain’t No Good” simply fits in rather than standing out, mainly because Music In A Foreign Language doesn’t require a dictionary. It’s a modest proposal from someone who never wanted to be on-message.

With Tricky, David Holmes, Bond man David Arnold and Queens Of The Stone Age’s Mark Lanegan lining up to hail Topley Bird’s coming-out party, the lady’s credentials aren’t in doubt. The mystery gal of trip hop acquits herself admirably, summoning the damaged frazzle of Macy Gray on “Lying” and rejoicing in the flighty funk and sizzling strings of the Holmes-directed “Too Tough To Die”.

Impressive, but she may have been better served with an album that concentrated her talents. An overload of genre hopping and exotic finery swamps whatever attracted all the heavyweight talent to her in the first place.

James Rutledge?aka Pedro?will soon be ubiquitous. Alongside stints with Twisted Nerve’s D.O.T., he’s collaborated with The Pastels and Kevin Shields on the soundtrack for The Last Great Wilderness.

Pedro?a name inspired by the lead character in Alex Cox’s 1992 movie Highway Patrolman?asserts his programming talents with authority. A backbone of hip hop beats and stuttering electro map out rustic guitar pickings, flailing jazz and even sweeping classical flourishes. Rutledge’s dextrous electronic patchwork can be masterful, though his melodic direction needs a sturdier anchoring. A name, however, to be conjured with.

LSK

Garage aficionados may find it hard to dislike a band with a keyboardist called Age Of Danger, and this third album by The Deadly Snakes amply repays the hunch. A rattling sextet from Toronto, the Snakes go for a fuller and more soulful sound than the bony minimalism of their Detroit brethren.

It’s a neat move: Ode To Joy swings from keg-party japes to tongue-in-cheek testifying and variously recalls The Animals, Panther Burns and Rocket From The Crypt without ever sounding too crippled by its antecedents.

Jason Pierce may have been the architect but Spiritualized guitarist Mark Refoy was the labourer who gave 1992’s Laser Guided Melodies its luminous sparkle.

A decade on, Transcendental finds him still floating amid Velvet Underground crescendos and twinkling, richly romantic space rock (“Everything And Anything”). Graphic novel guru Alan Moore also makes a surprising cameo, reciting Edmund Blunden’s poem “Clare’s Ghost”. A far-flung branch on the Spacemen 3/Spiritualized family tree definitely worth investigating.

He’s renowned as one of the kings of the punk rock riff but, even before he joined the Buzzcocks back in 1976, Diggle was a fully-paid-up scooter boy. The evidence is here?12 tracks of Rickenbacker power chords, folky acoustics and choruses that duck-walk down Carnaby Street like a wind-up Paul Weller doll. “Something In Your Mind” alone proves Diggle is a gifted songwriter with passions that can’t be sated within the Buzzcocks’ punk-pop remit, making this an entirely creditable solo diversion.

With a band called The Warlocks and track titles including “Shake The Dope Out”, and “The Dope Feels Good”, it would appear that Phoenix is an album that’s been made under the influence of some pretty effective narcotics.

The follow-up to 2001’s debut Rise And Fall, the seven-strong collective occupy the same sonic territory as The Dandy Warhols’ underrated Come Down. Hazy guitars sprawl lazily over 10 tracks and 64 minutes, accompanied by two heavy drum kits and Bobby Hecksher’s cryptic vocals. While “Hurricane Heart Attack” has the Spacemen 3 angle licked, “Baby Blue” is the surprise highlight, a gorgeous, twinkling pop song reminiscent of Air’s “Sexy Boy”.

Luke steele may be a troubled young man?alcoholism, rescue by newfound religious belief, sibling separation and the recent death of a close friend all figure on his existential CV?but you’d never guess it from his songs. As the lynchpin of Perth four-piece The Sleepy Jackson, the 23-year-old Australian sails as close to psychedelic, sun-struck pop perfection as is possible without actually being Brian Wilson.

The band’s self-titled mini album from earlier this year sets out their stall with its winning blend of battered nu-country and dreamy pop melodicism, but Lovers offers something more enticing still. Here, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin and Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde are each tapped for their essence, which Steele then filters through a heritage far closer to his heart?specifically, the music of The Triffids and The Go-Betweens.

The idea of geography as a creative spur is a dodgy one, but something?the relative isolation of Australia’s west coast, possibly?has enabled Steele to absorb influences without being beholden to them. Consequently, although he cherry picks from unexpected, oddly mixed sources?both Springsteen and Lou Reed on the hammering “Vampire Racecourse”, Lennon/Ono and Bacharach on the soaring “Don’t You Know”?Lovers is much more than pastiche. It’s a sun-dappled, idiosyncratic delight, flooded with warmth and vitality, yet weighted by an undefinable sadness. Even the honky-tonk “Miniskirt” (one of two tracks here pulled from their earlier record), which reads like a simple ode to the joys of minimal dress, sounds a faintly disturbing note?”the pretty ones seem to get fucked up all the time”. The use of massed choirs (for the most part, heavy on the ba-ba-bahs), a plaintive child’s voice (on “Morning Bird”) and ripples of lachrymose pedal-steel guitar complete the feeling of dark clouds that threaten to cross the sun.

It’s easy to romanticise about music from far-off continents, but The Sleepy Jackson’s muse is dreamy and distinctive, their Lovers a star-crossed triumph.

They say youth is wasted on the young. Nobody better tell the Kings Of Leon that because the only thing that’s wasted on their debut album is the sound. The brilliantly titled Youth And Young Manhood is the kind of life-affirming, slack-strung Gibson SG, four-to-the-floor sonic blitz that makes you want to chain-smoke full-strength Chesterfields chased with lids of Hawaiian while swigging a quart of Jim by the neck and taking all the most agreeable housewives in the vicinity to stud.

This Tennessee-based band are the three brothers Caleb, Jared and Nathan Followill plus cousin Matthew (also Followill), two of’em too young to take a drink in their home burgh of Mt Juliet, TN. With Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams fella) at the controls, the Kings hit the ground at full tilt on “Red Morning Light”, throwing out shards of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Creedence, Dylan, Lou Reed and Beau Brummel Sal Valentino via Caleb’s gloriously rich and earthy vocal. They don’t let up until “Holy Roller Novocaine”, wherein some approximation of Stephen King’s Walking Dude takes you to the mountain top.

Evangelical, darkly proselytising but never redneck, the Kings Of Leon (named after their Pentecostal paw) whip and strut their twin rhythm and lead guitars with Stones-like flair on “Happy Alone”?all high-heeled sleaze and Montana number plate, go country casual over “Joe’s Head” and get Econoline road fever on “California Waiting” and the cranked-up “Spiral Staircase”, which shoves all those tattooed jock rock assholes into a dumper truck.

Get your wallet out.

Alongside her tenure with Catherine Irwin in Freakwater, Janet Beveridge Bean is also known as singer/drummer of the equally celebrated Eleventh Dream Day with partner Rick Rizzo. Dragging Wonder Lake pools a collective of like-minds both old and new (pedal-steeler Jon Spiegel; ex-EDD’er and Tortoise/For Carnation’s Doug McCombs; backing vocalist Kelly Hogan) and was recorded by the ubiquitous John McEntire in seven days. Whether peeping out from behind clouds of piano-led jazz smoke (Neil Young’s “Soldier”), skittering like a pooch on linoleum (“Cutters, Dealers, Cheaters”) or leading from the front (ballsy rocker “My Little Brigadoon”), Bean’s voice is never less than emotively suspenseful.

One of the delights of Susheela Raman’s Mercury Prize-shortlisted Salt Rain was its playfulness, as she proclaimed that world music can be fun by joyously sandwiching a Jungle Book tune between ancient Indian devotional songs. She’s done it again on the follow-up.

The title track sounds like the Pink Panther theme tune remade in Bollywood, and her pop credentials are further paraded on a gorgeous version of Joan Armatrading’s “Save Me”. Yet there’s still a plentiful supply of serious musicality and spiritual Indian vibes to satisfy the purists as well. A record to put a smile on your face?of the cosmic variety, of course.

Swamp rock? Forget Credence Clearwater Revival. Nice middle-class boys from California, down to their snakeskin boots. Tony Joe White has been the real deal for more than 30 years, part Cherokee and straight out of the Louisiana bayou. His first album since 1998 finds him smouldering pretty much as he has since “Polk Salad Annie”, and the chooglin’ guitars, steamy Southern beats and lyrics about rattlesnakes are as primordial as the swamp itself.

There are few strains of dance music currently less fashionable than ‘downtempo’, dance aficionados choosing harsher, ’80s-influenced sounds over the warm allure of bedtime beats and breaks. A Special Album is a good indication of where things have gone wrong. The anonymous nature of Erlend “Ralph Myerz” Sellevold’s music is made worse by the fact that the musicians he utilises are obviously talented but sorely let down by the ‘car ad’ nature of their surroundings. Whispered female vocals, jazz organ and moody shuffles abound, but it’s all too tasteful to provoke much more than a shrug.