The Bug

An authentically odd debut, this, given that Susumu Mukai seems to combine two contrasting ideas of retro-modernism:the cavernous but homely production style of Joe Meek, and the chillier, more precise textures of electro. It begins brilliantly with “Make Love Not War”, originally by biker/surf guitarist Davie Allan, that posits how The Cramps might have sounded had they embraced their robotic side. The rest of the album’s pretty good, too. Mukai fuzzes the edges between bleep and twang to novel effect, and even his applications of punk-disco surprise?forlorn and bedsit-bound rather than the usual studied hedonism.

Now picked up by Flying Sparks?the label that discovered Thea Gilmore?Pierce Pettis comes from a rich vein of Nashville-based new-folk troubadours that in the past couple of years has bought us such talents as Jeff Finlin, Josh Rouse and Will Kimborough. With a supporting cast that includes mandolin player Tim O’Brien and fiddler Alison Brown, there’s a strong bluegrass flavour. But it’s Pettis’ songwriting that’s the main attraction. Further evidence that away from the Music Row production line, there are still more great singer-songwriters per bar in Nashville than anywhere else in the world.

This six-foot-two?hence the moniker?hip hop geezer straddles an intriguing divide. On the surface, Sixtoo’s monotone wordplay exudes the pungent whiff of menace and urban paranoia. Think Eminem grappling with the grim landscapes of Method Man or Scaramanga. On the interior, Warp-style electronica and spy-film dramatics cast a left-field shadow. The latter’s rough simplicity accentuates the thug-life scenarios and, on the Boards Of Canada-ish “The Mile End Artbike/Suicide Manual”, creates a nail-biting atmosphere. Sixtoo’s diction isn’t always sharp, but his beats and brooding journeys are.

Morgenstern’s first LP (1998’s Vermona ET 6-1) was remarkable for its hard-soft collision of technoid digitalia with her own uniquely expressive voice. Fjorden (2000) upped the analogue ante with found sounds, static and rafts of sequencers. Nichts Muss retains the slippery stamp of co-producer and fellow Berliner Stefan Betke?aka Pole?in its blips, snapped beats and loops, while Orb/Sun Electric producer Thomas Fehlmann adds a frosting of detached cool to her delivery.

As a slanted slice of motorik dub, it’s clean, lithe, electro-pop precision, funked at the edges with rhythmic Nile Rodgers-y guitar. Even the cheerily-titled “We’re All Gonna Fucking Die” comes with a frisky, neo-Moroder skip.

The US underground’s fascination with our more obscure ’80s indie bands has always been a bizarre treat (for instance, Nirvana’s obsession with The Vaselines). The Aislers Set are similarly smitten, making the kind of heart-lifting bedroom-casualty pop not heard since the girl’n’glockenspiel innocence of C86-era anorak outfits Talulah Gosh and Shop Assistants. Moreover, there’s real poeticised emoting here, and great tunes?even if, as on “Melody Not Malaise”, they’re nicked off The Supremes.

Two years on from debut Ming Star, Jon Brooks (aka KOW) has ditched the Gallic soundtracks, Hammer Horror snippets and childhood TV obsessions to explore his love of French library music and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Having remixed Ladytron and St Etienne in the interim?alongside the appropriation of “Bakerloo” for the Orange mobile ads?the strokes are now broader, less frantic, more soulful. There’s still an air of mischief?check out ode to pet moggy, “123 (Brillo’s Beat)”?but Dot Allison’s guest vocals on Hammond-cool “Sell Me Back My Soul”, the lovely Emma (Delgados) Pollock-fronted “Nuada” and standout “Evelsong” are the ones to stir up the ad men this time.

Although his fans range from R.E.M. to Madonna, it has somehow always been easier to respect than love the music of Vic Chesnutt. But Silver Lake represents something of a breakthrough. Perhaps it’s because the songs have a more expansive feel. Maybe it’s the live vibe of the backing band, who recorded the entire album inside a week. Whatever, his obvious poetic and melodic gifts have seldom sounded so compelling. Echoes of Neil Young, Sparklehorse and Lambchop all spring to mind at different times. But Chesnutt is a total one-off who, on this form, may finally have found a way to connect with a wider audience without compromising his left-field vision.

The proggy tendencies of current underground hip hop have not gone unnoticed. As if to prove the point, here we have four long tracks in true Yes fashion featuring tempo changes extended instrumental sections and bucolic acoustic guitar loops. But in the place of Jon Anderson’s shrill squeak, we have Paris-based Canadian MC, DJ and producer Buck 65’s soothing, friendly voice in your ear. The album ushers you in with a grandstanding psychedelic intro and proceeds into woozy, bleary-eyed sonics, at times impressively grandiose, at others shuffling and funky or rigidly electro-like, with Buck 65 musing tangentially over “wishes that never came true” and “apparitions of angels”. The four-part structure works well, forcing the listener to engage with the album as a whole or not at all, an admirably stubborn move for a major label hip hop artist, however atypical.

One wonders whether Callahan will ever again do anything as sublime as “Prince Alone In The Studio”, from the still-to-be-capitalised-on baroque chamber Americana of 1995’s Wild Love. The tentative pop entryism evident on albums like 1999’s Knock Knock is largely absent here; instead we have his gruff baritone take us through an increasingly uninteresting outlook on love and life. “Butterflies Drowned In Wine” tries to be avant-garde Dire Straits, but lacks the authentic duende of Jim White. Highlights are the eerie “Our Anniversary” and the quite fabulous, out-of-tempo prayer “Driving”, which, with its freeform drumming and banjo commentary, forges previously unimagined links between The Carter Family and Pharoah Sanders.

With a Grammy nomination in the US, Delbert McClinton’s Room To Breathe finds the Texan veteran rocking harder than ever. More f

Seen as the meeting point between New York’s thriving trashy rock and clashy electro scenes, the reality is that A.R.E. Weapons offer a lot more than a contrived halfway house between fashionable polarities. Far from being the slavish disciples of Alan Vega and Martin Rev their singles might suggest, Weapons Matthew McAuley, Paul Sevigny and Brain have crafted an album of ruthlessly effective 21st-century rock’n’roll, shot through with raw, lo-fi electronics.

With this concise (under 37 minutes!) debut, A.R.E. go further than the mere crossbreeding of Gotham’s current, voguish sounds; they encompass the entire fucked-up lowlife tradition of NYC rock, taking in not only Suicide but Lou Reed (particularly the Street Hassle era), New York Dolls, Ramones and early Beastie Boys.

One thing all these acts have in common (pace Reed) is a last-gang-in-town, misfit mentality. A.R.E.’s outsiderdom may or may not be counterfeit, but when tunes like opening rallying call “Don’t Be Scared” are this grimily uplifting, this downright inventive and inspirational (“Life was meant to be awesome”), authenticity of credentials barely matters.

The album doesn’t just bludgeon. There is an attention to detail, an appreciation of dynamics at work in the knife-edge narco-tension of “Strange Dust” and the eerie Assault On Precinct 13 chill of “Headbanger Face”, while the primitive synthesized drum patterns suggest more than a passing familiarity with hip hop stretching from Run-DMC through The Bomb Squad right up to the Neptunes.

For all their street-fighting posturing, A.R.E. cultivate an inclusive vibe and a generosity of spirit, epitomised by anthemic closer “Hey World”. This song for ‘the kids’is genuinely affecting, pleading for tolerance in the hope we may endure this “fucking miserable solution that we call life”.

Electroclash? This is rock’n’roll, pure and simple.

Celso Fonseca is a Brazilian singer-songwriter who has worked with the likes of Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and Gilberto Gil, as well as appearing on Bebel Gilberto’s worldwide hit Tanto Tempo. Billed as his first international album, Natural is a pleasant affair of light bossa/samba, laidback in style and chilled-out in performance. The problem is that no translation of the lyrics is provided, which makes the “international” claim puzzling Mood music at best, then, for non-Brazilians.

By the late ’80s, Parker was considered a once-fiery comet who had passed off the cultural radar. But 1988’s return-to-form studio album The Mona Lisa’s Sister suggested a reassessment was in order. This live album shows Parker in pugnacious, confident form?if his moment had passed, no one dared tell him. Rumour stalwarts Andrew Bodnar and Brinsley Schwarz add support, and its old favourites?”White Honey”, “Local Girls” and “Howlin’ Wind”?shine while the previously unreleased “Sinkin’ Low” is a very palatable sad-eyed blues gem.

Hailing from the same US stable as My Morning Jacket, Hayden and Mark Kozelek, Lakis’first solo work since splitting with San Francisco’s Half Film is a weather-trodden waltz between the cracks of backwoods country and indie rock. Aided by local band The Inspectors, there’s more than a passing resemblance to Evan Dando’s slacker croon (the radical reworking of Bad Brains’ “Sailin’ On”), but the tunes owe more to the sun-scorched desertscapes of Calexico, the crumpled allure of Elliott Smith and Red House Painters at their most lugubrious.

Wurlitzers, vibes and Lakis’ winning way with pedal-steel create a melancholy magnetism that is hard to ignore.

Former boxer 50 Cent already has a bloody history, having been stabbed in his studio in 2000 and shortly afterwards shot nine times while sitting in a parked car.

There’s no sense of community on this unapologetic throwback to straight-assed songs about guns, girls and drugs which has already sold nearly a million copies in America.

Musically, the standout is the Dr Dre-produced “In Da Club,” which, with its grim, joyless concentration on pleasure echoed by the death knell of its orchestral sample, could be the converse of Nelly’s anthemic “Hot In Herre”.

His macho stance sits oddly with his vocal resemblance to Bill Withers (“Many Men”), though “21 Questions” suggests some vulnerability.

Since his role in Robert Altman’s The Player, Lyle Lovett has been cosy with Hollywood. Now Smile, his first album for three years, collects songs from recent movies. It is essentially Lovett as lounge singer; duetting with star guests (Randy Newman on his Toy Story song “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”) and crooning Sinatra standards (“Summer Wind”). Although Lovett is in good voice, particularly on the gospel song “Pass Me Not”, a covers album is a waste of such a literate songwriting talent. In fact, this probably serves best as a trailer for an album containing original material due in September.

Whitehouse now comprise just William Bennett and Philip Best, but the title track of what may be their finest record is a harrowing 15-minute cut-up of voices talking emotionally about child abuse, rape and murder with discreet accompaniment, assembled in Chicago by outgoing third member Peter Sotos and guest producer Steve Albini. The remaining five tracks are written and produced by Bennett, who rants splenetically and brilliantly over jacked-up 500bpm Suicide/Throbbing Gristle beats against fabricated childhoods (“Why You Never Became A Dancer”) or intones sinister litanies of self-loathing over screaming feedback drones (“Philosophy”). Brutal but deeply moral music.

Discovered by Rollo from Faithless, yet bearing a debut LP that grafts the obnoxious punk of The Libertines onto wailing Hammond organs and spoken-word stories about curiosity shops, Dave Dulake certainly stretches the imagination. Underneath the self-indulgence of “The Welcome Home Prezzie” and “Lady Beckenham”, which are no more than off-kilter skits, Dulake can be a canny songwriter. “School Ambrosia” is an unexpectedly chilling ballad of child abduction, and “Don’t Ask Me, I’m Not Even In The Band” beats The Hives at their own game.

Originally issued on Steve Earle’s US label under the banner of alt.rockers Varnaline (Earle and Twangtrust partner, Ray Kennedy, co-produce, too), Songs In A Northern Key is Parker’s broadest vision to date, touching all bases from space-folk through rustic country to belly-aching rock. Less impressive when cutting loose (“Anything From Now” and “Let It All Come Down” are sub-Sebadoh workouts), its finest moments?”Indian Summer Takedown”, “Blackbird Fields”?are subtly arresting mini-classes in bruised, troubled Americana. One step closer to major league.