Something is stirring in country music. Fuelled on the one hand by the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou and on the other by the declining sales of the sugar-coated, production-line mainstream acts, a new, tougher breed of independentminded female country singer is now emerging.

Included among their ranks are the likes of Allison Moorer, Kim Richey and Deana Carter, and although none of them are what you’d really call alt.country, they do write their own material and retain an integrity that the likes of Faith Hill, Reba McEntire and the other hollow Nashville divas either lost long ago or never had. Carter’s interesting lyrics are sometimes let down by trite pop arrangements. But it’s an encouraging step in the right direction.

Contemporaries of BRMC, The Warlocks and Beachwood Sparks (with whom they originally traded members), The Tyde seem more informed by ’80s Anglo-suburban pop than anything West Coast. Following on from 2001’s much-lauded debut Once (what else?), the drafting of Velvet Crush’s Ric Menck on drums/percussion adds liberal splashes of sunshine to singer/songwriter Darren Rademaker’s Lloyd Cole-on-Prozac delivery. There’s much to admire in the fretwork of Rademaker and Ben Knight, too, joining the dots between Johnny Marr, Roger McGuinn and Felt’s Maurice Deebank to underpin the hooks with sun-blonde crispness. “Crystal Canyons” breezes along like The Loft’s “Up The Hill And Down The Slope”, while “Shortboard City” grafts ’70s Quo onto The Kursaal Flyers yet remains cool as hell.

Originally the organist in ’80s garage punk legends The Prisoners (whose debut album A Taste Of Pink!, available again on CD with extra tracks, is reviewed on p 123), James Taylor has pursued his obsession with the Hammond organ beyond all reasonable boundaries. Cut virtually live, The Oscillator blasts off with an implausibly dynamic cover of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar”, reaching the stratosphere with a set of distorted R&B funk workouts that explode in shards of ’60s spy themes, psychedelia and free-form jazz.

Pierle’s presumably second-language lyrics of loopy, romantic psychobabble (“I’ve still got this rage like some stomach ball striking penalty in my goal”) don’t bare close inspection, although some metaphors are hard to miss (“after 10 days of rain everything’s soaking… wet”). But it’s her voice?a Bush-like yodel?and arrangements, with co-writer/producer Koen Gisen, which make this stand out. Harmonising lushly with herself on “Once Again”, and cross-breeding Blur’s “Song 2” with Village Green Kinks on “Sing Song Sally”, this is, amid longueurs, pop of great promise.

Their average age may be 23 but The Thrills have old ears. To think that, when vocalist Conor Deasy was in swaddling clothes, his preferred artists, such as Van Dyke Parks and Rick Danko, were the reviled fodder of hoary old hairies who’d wished punk had never happened.

Today, such ageist generational markers no longer matter. So let’s flake out on a lilo to the sweet sound of The Thrills. This is the best childhood summer holiday you ever had, condensed into 45 minutes of delicately arranged, beautifully performed, big, bright, cheery music.

Luckily, beyond the intoxicating yet comforting melodies?an I-Spy book of Americana from the Brian Wilson-ish “Santa Cruz” to “Hollywood Kids” with its Midnight Cowboy-style harmonica snivels?are lyrics of some emotional depth (“Your Love Is Like Las Vegas”?now that’s a song title). When Deasy croaks that “it’s such a shame when old friends fall out” (“Old Friends, New Lovers”) it’s genuinely moving. As are the album’s numerous calls to escape the humdrum entrapments of everyday life, be it a “One Horse Town”, the sentiment of “Just Travelling Through” or the album title itself. So Much For The City indeed.

If The Thrills have a trump card, it’s that they are heartfelt and passionate enough to turn obvious reference points (Bacharach, Spector, Dylan, Young) into something original. The twangy guitar solo on “Deckchairs And Cigarettes” helps?it will have you dripping on the floor like a 99 in the midday heat. In the words of another great Irish quintet, here comes the summer.

The Eurythmics’ 1999 reunion album Peace was an embarrassment, so expectations weren’t high for Lennox’s first collection of solo, self-written material since 1992’s Diva. How wrong we were. And it seems we have to thank pain, suffering and misery for her recovery from writer’s block, as the sinuous melodies and dark emotions on Bare were all inspired by the trauma of a break-up. It may not be Blood On The Tracks, but songs like “Loneliness”, “The Saddest Song” and “The Hurting Time” (which sounds like it sashayed in from a Sade album) are as potent as the titles suggest. Then, on tracks like “1000 Beautiful Things”, Lennox reaches a state of acceptance and hope that, even in the darkest hour, a new dawn awaits. She’s still a class act.

Since surfacing from the Detroit underground in 1993, Matthew Smith’s outfit have trodden an ever tangential path with infuriating results. Touching all bases from garage rock through prog, psychedelia and beyond requires a deft touch that’s often eluded them but, though this record still finds the ground shaking beneath their feet, it’s probably their most assured to date. At their best when fusing Spacemen 3 feedback and backwards guitar to West Coast smarts (see “Girl You Have Magic Inside You” and “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures”), there’s enough to suggest there’s life out there after all.

Now 63, Charles Walker was a little-known participant in the ’60s Southern soul scene, which he here recreates in an album recently recorded in Nashville. The aim is to revive the gutsy sound of Muscle Shoals as a backdrop for Walker’s deep soul vocals. Cut and mixed in little over a week, it’s a testament to the enduring values of a musical style getting on for 40 years gone by. Lovers of Southern soul take note.

The ragged blues tunes at Shootenanny!s start suggest E is burrowing further into the bleak wilderness of 2001’s Souljacker, the depression and family deaths that have dogged him killing off the pop beauty with which he once coated his songs. “Am I going to be alright? No, I’m not going to be alright,” he announces with finality on “Agony”. But that purgative song, with its worried, quivering guitars, in fact starts a redemptive surge back to musical life, the worst faced and pushed past. Even the apocalyptic LA of “Rock Hard Times” has energy, part of a 21st-century alienated soul album that slips the Eels back into your heart.

Previously, The Bluetones’ silvery guitar pop was sluggish and strained. Luxembourg benefits from a stylistic rethink. Openers “Here It Comes Again” and “Fast Boy” are surprisingly lean and fast-paced nods to Devo and The Ramones. Elsewhere, “Big Problem” sees The Bluetones discover garage riffs with relish, while “You’re No Fun Anymore” is a Wire pastiche to impress Justine Frischmann. Unfortunately, their weaknesses prevail. Quite simply, The Bluetones can’t write songs and, as ever, sound knackered for trying. Not so sluggish, then, but still over-strained.

The buzz on this group is gathering intensity, and no wonder. Following Apocalypse Dudes and Ass Cobra, the finely titled Scandinavian Leather, produced at Polar, Stockholm, is the kind of rock hard sofa you’ll want to crawl all over. Fusing Detroit licks and lashings of souped-up guitar to a framework of gauntlet-chucking songs like “The Blizzard Of Flames” and the sensational “Drenched In Blood”, these Turbo trolls are about as much excitement as you can have short of wearing a rubber thong while bathing in custard. And it’s got a Klaus “Beatles mate” Voormann cover. Ice cool and brilliant.

Though the herd may not acknowledge it, there’s a minority of us who, the minute a billion-dollar special effects epic starts doing dizzying digital fairground tricks, lean to wondering whether we shut the fridge door before coming out. Just as the average male can’t see household dust, even when it’s pointed out, some of us don’t get what the fuss is with this CGI lark. So they made someone fly, by cheating, by touching up the evidence. Whoop-ti-doo. While gawping at Monica Bellucci (now there’s a miracle of nature) keeps us happily in our seats for half an hour, there comes a point where we pine for a story that says something. Anything.

Yet, while the hype for the Matrix sequel is making Geri Halliwell seem reticent, the damn thing remains stylistically impressive, thanks to the time-honoured ploy of simulating futurism by having lots of skinny good-looking people wearing black. The demographic targeted, however, is given away by the soundtrack?Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson (“This Is The New Shit”), Rage Against The Machine. It’s all beautifully designed and presented. After the first disc (also featuring Rob Zombie, Deftones, Oakenfold), there’s a second, which gives you Don Davis’ score. Plus! A bunch of “enhanced content”, like documentaries and trailers for sister projects The Animatrix and Enter The Matrix.

Sorry to come on like a muesli-knitting anarchist, but like Star Wars, the Wachowksi brothers’ brilliantined baby has become such a corporate commercial behemoth that it’s easy to admire, hard to love. The sheen’s dazzling, the soul non-existent. And only the 15-year-old spods?”I hate you for not letting me go to the Korn concert, mummy!”?could consider this music radical or rebellious. Strip away the pretty lights?”wow! cool!”?and the Matrix “phenomenon” is a McWhopper with fries.

Something of a cult, this. In 1972?that year again?the Brits made a dreadful zombie movie wherein frog-worshipping biker boys commit suicide, then return, undead, to burn up motorways and terrorise old ladies like Beryl Reid outside supermarkets. Fog, satanism and skull helmets, on a budget of around nine quid. The soundtrack, however, by Kes man John Cameron, has changed hands for daft money since, and now appears on CD. It mixes wah-wah rock, choral arias and phased backwards drums for no better reason than that Cameron felt like it. “My recollection’s blurred,” he says. “Hell, it was the ’70s.” An eerie, uneasy ride.

Blaxploitation movies were suddenly so hot in 1972 that it was deemed a smart idea to bash out?as the title may have tipped you off?a black vampire chiller. It wasn’t. It was horrible, in unintended ways. But Gene Page came up with a very appetising soundtrack, which you could happily stick on between Isaac Hayes’ Shaft and Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man without anyone noticing too drastic a drop in class. Ghetto chic oozes from every groove, and The Hues Corporation (prior to their one-off disco hit “Rock The Boat”) sound magical on the sob-fest “What The World Knows” and the racier “I’m Gonna Catch You”. Every note, er, counts. Bloodthirsty.

When we speak of Anton Karas’ score to Carol Reed’s 1949 classic of dodgy penicillin and cuckoo clocks, we speak of the zither. Most of us couldn’t describe a zither if the lives of the Swiss nation depended on it, but the Harry Lime theme is nonchalance personified. Karas?the chap with the zither?was discovered by Reed playing in a Viennese tavern and had no experience, but proved to be an inspired choice. The Prague Philharmonic and Gertrud Huber pluck out the pieces here, and the dialogue excerpts include Orson Welles’ rumbling ruminations on art, death and “what fools we are”. Glamour in shadows.

Millions of right-thinking people despise Mike Oldfield’s epochal debut, often without even hearing it. Looming over the ’70s like a prog-folk-hippie-guitar colossus, Tubular Bells may have presented punks with a Saddam-sized target for their disdain, but it also outsold every instrumental rock album in history, helped pioneer the beat-free ambient genre and established Richard Branson’s Virgin empire. A grimly impressive pop culture landmark, all told.

Re-recorded and remastered for this 30th birthday remake, Oldfield’s cinematic suite of multi-tracked guitars and ambitious instrumentation now radiates a perky, fulsome studio glow. John Cleese replaces the late Viv Stanshall for the headmasterly roll call of “Finale”, but otherwise every cod-Celtic chord cluster and virtuosic glissando has been replicated in digi-pristine surround sound. And despite moments which conjure up the traumatic image of a million Jeremy Clarksons hammering out wankblaster air guitar solos, the truth is many of these 17 tracks are highly listenable uber-muzak in a timeless, gently progressive vein.

Of course, the qualities which aroused animosity first time around have not been erased by technology?indeed, its smug air of technique over passion has merely been amplified, alongside its brittle veneer of Olde English whimsy and cold methodical journey through some kind of “Teach Yourself Guitar” catalogue: “Blues”, “Thrash”, “Latin”, “Jazz” etc.

But the passing years and whims of fashion have contextualised Oldfield’s opus more kindly. The spectral trance-scape of “Introduction”, (later featured in The Exorcist) almost sounds like mid-period New Order now. The flamenco flurries and pastoral asides stake a claim as ear-kissing ancestors of Balearic chill-out, while the starbursts of lustrous, Italianate mandolin are sublime, for all their Cornetto-advert corniness.

Face it, punk rock lost the argument. After a nuclear war, only cockroaches and Tubular Bells will survive. Resistance is useless.

Fair play to Moly, whose debut album could be convincingly marketed as “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Mogwai”. All the handy signifiers of epic post-rock are in place: neat sequences of drift and crescendo; hazy threats for song titles; distant chatter beneath the oceanic guitars, etc. Moly, though, are faced with a critical problem. Mogwai’s infinitely superior Happy Songs For Happy People (see p97) is released on the same day, which leaves Your Life Is In Danger looking all too hollow and predictable. Strange that post-rock, a music predicated on ideas of progress and transcendence, should have become so formulaic.

When Dominic Appleton sang on 4AD’s This Mortal Coil projects, his regal voice was arguably the most admired of that era. His band, Breathless, never nabbed a commercial niche, but still sound as if they eat Everest for brunch. Appleton’s lovely, lisping tones are just one of the elements in a timeless, trembling landscape which echoes Pink Floyd and Caspar David Friedrich. Now working with Victor Van Vugt (PJ Harvey, Beth Orton), their moodiness is moving and authentic, and the 15-minute centrepiece is some kind of great gig under a burning sky. Fill your lungs.

In these dark times, everybody’s trying to keep our spirits up by telling us that the world is still a beautiful place. Well, it bloody well isn’t. Nevertheless, full marks to Holly Lerski for trying her charming best. Having reverted to her real name after two fine albums as Angelou, she’s come up with a record of gorgeous, jangling, sunshine melodies on which she even manages to sound cheerful while singing titles such as “Everyone’s Lonely” and “In The Dark”. For would-be ostriches everywhere.