Jazz-electronica quartet Supersilent distinguish themselves from other groups in the Norwegian scene by not using sequenced set-ups as the basis for their music. Nor do they rehearse or discuss their music in advance, instead collectively improvising it in the moment. The general approach on this, their sixth album, is darkly moody, slow and hypnotic. It’s difficult to measure the success of such music, which depends on the listener’s receptivity. Those of avant-garde taste may be persuaded.

As they’ve been gigging with The Hives, D4 and The Datsuns, you may have expected The Divine Brown to be receiving awards and chart attention. However, their loud guitars and angry rhythms aren’t as easily packaged. Larry Loud’s singing may be more Sham 69 than Stooges but the band know how to write a three-minute punk anthem. Neither subtle nor original, but on songs like “Superlive 45” TDB sound like a cool, vibrant band.

Imagine you’re combing the racks of your favourite cool record store, one of those sub-High Fidelity dives with a coupla snooty geeks behind the counter and some Sun Ra covers on the wall. You’re flipping through the ’80s Hardcore section, looking for an ancient Millions Of Dead Cops LP, swimming in Raymond Pettibon graphics, when all of a sudden… What’s this? The Finger’s We Are Fuck You/Punk’s Dead Let’s Fuck? Who? What? Musta come from some boondock town in one of the “vowel states”?Ohio or Iowa. The singer’s name is Jim Beahm?a distant cousin, perchance, of Jan Paul Beahm, aka Darby Crash.

Enough already. Suffice to say this was the fantasy scenario in the minds of Jesse Malin and Ryan Adams as they killed time after working on Malin’s justly-praised The Fine Art Of Self Destruction last summer. Or so rumour has it, since both Malin and Adams legally have nowt to do with The Finger.

Presented and packaged anonymously, complete with SST-style design, We Are Fuck You/Punk’s Dead Let’s Fuck is an amusing homage to suburban US hardcore circa 1982, sounding like a hybrid of a hundred bands of the time but nothing like as pulverising as Black Flag in their prime. Most of it’s generic’core. Some of it sounds like late Ramones and some of it sounds like bad Bl

Less self-conscious and more organic than 2001 debut Indian Ink, My Elixir (recorded in a summer barn while MBICR were homeless) eschews the artsy, antsy blasts of sudden guitar squall for a more measured?though no less disturbing?trawl through gothic psychosis. Despite the sex, blades and blood-clotted imagery, the quietly propulsive banks of piano, keyboards and horns are both morbidly beautiful and utterly engrossing, fetching up somewhere between This Mortal Coil, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Movietone, while singer Emily Gray exudes all the clipped English bile of Black Box Recorder’s Sarah Nixey.

It’s odd to think of Placebo as being no longer relevant, as singer Brian Molko’s early after-the-horse-has-bolted bleatings on the subject of androgyny and bisexuality surely saw them start out as the most irrelevant band on the planet. But now there’s doubt in the Placebo camp itself, what with Muse and JJ72 upping the stakes in guitar-based melodrama. Their solution is to recruit electro-guru Jim Abbiss but, though he adds some delicious keyboard snatches and has “Something Rotten” sounding like Portishead produced by Liam Howlett, he can’t salvage much from the band’s often tedious three-chord bustlings or Molko’s lamely repetitious lyrics. Must try harder.

It starts with a shivery vibrato guitar, straight off one of those ’60s New York soul ballads?Betty Harris’ “Cry To Me”, perhaps, or Garnett Mimms & The Enchanters’ “I’ll Take Good Care Of You”. A little while later it peels away into a bruising Neil and Crazy Horse blowout called “Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken Guitar Strings”. Then it shrinks back into “Over Time”, a slow-shuffle four-in-the-morning ballad that could be second cousin to Sweet Old World’s “Little Angel, Little Brother”. (Why, incidentally, wasn’t that heartbreaker on the soundtrack to Ken Lonergan’s sublime movie You Can Count On Me?)

Where else does World Without Tears go? Easier to ask where it doesn’t. Cut more or less live in a ’20s mansion in downtown Los Angeles, it’s the most extraordinary smorgasbord of styles, moods, modes, a far more daring, jolting record than 2001’s Essence. Just when you’re ready to sink into the murky recess of the Lucinda Williams corner booth and drown in a flat beer she pulls another surprise out of the hat and you’re back on your feet hollering again.

Even more jolting than “Bleeding Fingers” is “Atonement”, an industrial blues monster that lurches and grinds like Tom Waits’ “Heartattack And Vine” or (more specifically) Captain Beefheart’s Blue Collar cameo “Hard Workin’ Man”. Ironically Bible-belting it may be, “Get Right With God” it ain’t. It must be the most brutal thing Williams has ever recorded.

“I’m really excited about this record because it’s different from anything I’ve done before,” Lu says in her Lost Highway press release. “Each song has a different flavour and reflects some of my influences. I think it shows a natural progression. Plus, it has some up-tempo stuff on it and I think it was time for me to do that.”

Let’s not overstate this: within the 13 tracks there’s still a generous dollop of diamond-cut country-soul moping. Lovers of Lucinda at her most chiselled and desolate are hardly going to be let down by the wintry Marianne Faithfull lament of “Minneapolis” or the baleful ache of “Ventura” and “Words Fell”. And let’s not forget, either, that Williams has on occasions rocked out with the best of ’em. Part Tammy Wynette, part Chrissie Hynde, part rock-chick Eudora Welty, Lady Lu is the closest thang we have to a distaff Steve Earle?or should that be the other way round?

But World Without Tears nonetheless emerges some way from the backwater bayou that birthed Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and Essence. There’s less small-town blues here, more grappling with the bigger picture of America today. A part of that is down to the inclusion towards the end of the album of a song called, unpromisingly, “American Dream”. Wearily rapped in the persona of a dispossessed Navajo Indian, over a glassy electric-piano-and-rimshot arrangement that’s equal parts Gil Scott-Heron and “Riders On The Storm”, it’s a withering deconstruction of Dubya Nation, a country in which “everything is wrong”, at least for the growing majority of have-nots.

No doubt “American Dream” will cause Williams to be pilloried as anti-patriotic by her warmongering compatriots and Universal will order the track to be dropped. Less a world without tears, methinks, than a country without dissident voices.

There’s rapping, too, on what for me is easily World Without Tears’ most moving track, “Sweet Side”. The song is just two strummed acoustic chords and a smear of Delta slide, but Lucinda’s heartrending address to a damaged lover, seeing the beaten boy in the emotionally crippled man, moved me to tears. “You had the blues ever since you were six/Your tennis shoes and your pick-up sticks…” If Eminem could get vulnerable enough to write one song as powerful as this I might forgive all the megalomaniacal belly-aching about the pressures of his own notoriety.

Another way of pointing up the difference between Essence and World… is to note that there’s less of the easy, greasy sensuality we heard on the earlier album: ain’t no “Are You Down” or “Steal Your Love” here, bub. Williams sounds alternately loveless or pushing her energies outwards: only second track “Righteously” consorts with the carnal, and even that comes with a lip-curl of reproach. (As another mark of the album’s sonic flavour, Doug Pettibone’s guitar breaks here are less ’70s country-rockin’ and more ’80s blues-metal?think Billy Gibbons circa Eliminator, or even, weirdly in places, the Sterling Morrison of Live 1969.)

There’s further reproach on “Those Three Days” (as in, “Did you only need me for…?”)?when Lu wails “And I feel so fucking alone”, it fucking stings. The album’s title (and penultimate) track is like one of those mid-’70s country-soul morality tales so beloved of Ry Cooder, complete with a gospelly, Bobby King/Terry Evans-style chorus. “People Talkin'”, a swipe at gossiping slanderers, kicks off like The Band’s “The Weight” but is the only really so-so offering on the record.

The really good news is that World Without Tears comes just two years after Essence, which in turn followed just three years after the Grammy-grabbing Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. The agonisingly protracted six-year birth of Car Wheels… would seem to be a thing of the past, meaning that we can expect at least a couple more masterpieces before the decade’s end.

There are still things that irritate about Lucinda Williams?the mannered slurring of some of her singing; the cold precision of certain songs; the preciousness about her Southernness, and about her own poetic origins. But World Without Tears indicates that this fiftysomething gal is brave enough to ruffle feathers and rock boats?to get off the Lost Highway and depart the sometimes overly-cosy country of Alt. As such, it’s worth every one o’ them broken strings and bleeding fingers.

Together with brother Charlie in the late ’30s, Monroe’s cross-pollination of traditional Celtic reels and southern American gospel assured him immortality as the founding father of bluegrass. With frenzied tempos, vaulting vocals and classic mandolin-guitar-fiddle-bass-banjo recipe, the Bluegrass Boys were pivotal in dragging hillbilly music into the US mainstream. His three-decade Decca career includes “I’m Blue I’m Lonesome”, “Raw Hide” and moving ode to his mentor “Uncle Pen”, while “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” was the one that prompted young Elvis to jump truck and head for Sun Studios.

Harvey has long merited a proper compilation. The first disc is devoted to his pre-Sensational Alex Harvey Band days in the ’60s and finds him experimenting with everything from blue-eyed soul (a blistering version of “Shout” which knocks Lulu’s for six) and the musical Hair to psychedelia and free jazz. But his art clearly found its ideal home in SAHB, which is the sole focus of the second disc. The brutal theatrical rock of “The Faith Healer” and avant-glam of “Swampsnake” sound amazingly contemporary, and his simultaneously hammy and frightening renditions of Brel’s “Next” and Tom Jones’ “Delilah” can still induce awe.

Time’s passage only adds to the mysterious, awkward, gone beauty of the Associates, one of Britain’s greatest, most frustrating and fragile bands. These session snapshots show that Billy Mackenzie, though their most enduring talent, was dependent on multi-instrumentalist partner Alan Rankine for many early effects.

In 1982, just prior to their split, Mackenzie’s yelping, ululating voice is sliced to slivers over pensive synths on “Australia”, and swirls under the compressed disco thunder of a rethought “Love Hangover”. His first post-Rankine instinct is a voice-indulging Billie Holiday cover, before restoring more regular electronic rhythms. It’s nearly all unearthly, personal and perversely ambitious.

A WORLD BEWITCHED

ARTFUL

“Hey hey hey hey…” And so The Fall suddenly find themselves in the curious position of ad-land giants, thanks to the Vauxhall Corsa ‘Hide and Seek’ jingle featuring the, er, rocking “Touch Sensitive”. A fitting enough motor, of course, since Mark E Smith’s droll visions have always deflated the highfalutin; so we can’t blame him for nicking a few quid where he can. A Past Gone Mad mines a ’90s hinterland, from Extricate via Middle Class Revolt to Smudger’s solo The Post Nearly Man, but the single will sell it.

A World Bewitched is a quick re-release that should open the eyes of those who find The Fall to be an acquired taste, as it offers a jamboree bag of easily accessible collaborations with the Badly Drawn fella, Edwyn Collins and acolytes Elastica. At this rate, Smith might end up a multi-millionaire.

There’s a genuinely transgressive thrill in liking Canadian prog trio Rush. Although critically damned early on due to drummer/lyricist Neil Peart’s appreciation of right-wing allegorist Ayn Rand, their Zep/Yes-inspired techno-rock nevertheless attracted huge audiences of marginalised ’70s teens.

By 1980 their music had evolved into a unique hybrid of Philip Glass synth fanfares, chiming McGuinn riffs and, er, white reggae, with a more mature Peart revealing himself to be an incisive lyricist with an acute and compassionate understanding of his band’s fan base (“Subdivisions”) and a wry attitude towards showbusiness (“Limelight”). All of this would count for nothing if Rush didn’t rock; but check the insane “2112 Overture”, the jazz-pop-reggae fusion of “The Spirit Of Radio” and the oozing Moogspace of “Tom Sawyer” for emphatic proof they do. Embarrassingly great.

SPARKS IN A DARK ROOM

LTM

More post-punk electro pioneers crawl out of obscurity in the form of these Dutch one-time Factory artists. Actually, to term the Minny Pops ‘pioneers’ is to overstate the case, but the cold DAF-like electronic menace of 1982 debut album Sparks In A Dark Room sounds remarkably fresh over 20 years on, bearing favourable comparison with contemporaries such as Simple Minds and Tubeway Army as well as the current crop of analogue pretenders.

Wally van Middendorp’s lugubrious baritone is an acquired taste but works well on the foreboding, battleship-grey funk of “Crack” and “Vital”.

The tracks gathered together on accompanying rarities compilation Secret Stories are less electronic and less essential, indicating a band struggling to escape the influence of Joy Division. Go straight for Sparks In A Dark Room instead.

After a freak MTV hit with “Popular” from their 1996 debut, Elektra refused to release Nada Surf’s second album on the grounds that it failed to include a follow-up single. Belatedly made available on Heavenly, which last year released the band’s third album, Let Go, the stupidity of that decision is now revealed. An album of genre-hopping alt.rock full of firecracker melodies and heart-stopping hooks, it’s not quite a lost classic, but it presses most of the right buttons and demands to be heard.

And to think Elektra was once the most respected, artist-friendly label in the world.

Released to chime with the inauguration of The Clash into the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame in the USA, The Essential Clash is not a quick cash-in designed to milk the inevitable sentiment caused by the death of Joe Strummer. Cynics, though, might point out that it’s not the first such collection?ever since the Story Of… volumes, Clash compilations have been readily available. Still, in dedicating this two-CD, 41-strong bunch of essential songs to the memory of their erstwhile leader, Messrs Simonon, Headon and Jones will tap into more than American nostalgia.

Strummer’s own visions for the group, honed in his own prototype punk-era 101’ers and cured in the fertile breeding ground of the so-called pub rock movement, predated The Sex Pistols and ensured that The Clash were far more than the spit-and-polish DIY outfit Mick and Paul had in mind. The far-sighted clarion calls of “White Riot”, “1977”, “London’s Burning” and “Career Opportunities” were wrapped in socialist principles and hit the rhythmic vein of the era while continuing to sound inspirational, and even acidly amusing in the case of “Julie’s Been Working For The Drug Squad”.

The more measured punk metal of the badly received Give ‘Em Enough Rope suggested that Strummer’s rages and moods were about to be cauterised, whereas The Clash were always likely to experiment with levels of sophistication, largely due to their love for, and knowledge of, reggae styles (“Hate And War”, and their canny version of Junior Murvin’s “Police & Thieves”), Stateside garage grooves (“I Fought The Law”) and a far more worldly view which took them from Broadway to Casbah without losing sight of Britain’s strange mix of supermarket torpor and multicultural high energy.

Funkier than their compadres, The Clash bore the brunt of the punk backlash but will have some sort of last laugh here. The Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame may be a hoary concept but they deserve to be there, scowling in the doorway before blowing the place up.

Thirty years after its original release, the carrot being dangled before the faithful to celebrate yet another anniversary of this icon of the rock era is a version in a format called 5.1, although it’s hard to imagine how another sonic clean-up will help the toked-up trudge of Nick Mason’s drumming. But it’s worth raising a cheer, for while it probably wasn’t their finest hour artistically, this latest reissue does offer the chance to challenge the idea that Dark Side Of The Moon is a monument to turgidity and misguided ambition.

Dark Side Of The Moon was the first rock record to assume an extra-musical life of its own, acquired by millions almost as a lifestyle choice. Even the States fell at the band’s feet?never entirely at home with UK prog, the comparative simplicity of this music made art-rock for the mass market a reality.

It’s perhaps the enigmatic nature of the beast that is its enduring marvel; that one can listen to it and not have the faintest idea why it leaves you uplifted, a particularly incongruous reaction given its dyspeptic content. “How did they do that?” you ask and, of course, there’s no answer. There are no grand gestures, no coups de th

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LA singer-songwriter Jackson Browne has made 11 albums in his 37-year career, starting with Saturate Before Using, a late debut cut in 1972. His style typifies the south California ethic?wholesome, country-tinged, reflective, and haunted by melancholy. This set of reissues comes from the beginning of his discography, omitting second and fourth LPs For Everyman and The Pretender. The discs are remastered but nothing has been added to the packaging and there are no song credits, let alone sleevenotes.