Since witnessing an exasperated and bored Mould lift eyes to the sky and sneer at a ruck of floor-slamming H

One of the great triple-pronged US guitar bands, Pavement were always slightly more old-school nuts than the one-dimensional grunge gang they rose beside. Partially bedevilled by their refusal to offer a coherent blueprint, and the tendency for various band members to go AWOL or bonkers on stage, Pavement eventually mutated into Stephen Malkmus and his sundry stubborn visions.

This second solo album still sounds like a wilful jukebox stocked on the disparate taste of someone attempting vinyl hari-kari. The first track, “Water And A Seat”, deviates between English folk-rock, prog-like jerks

Danny Slack’s Yorkie bar boys probably wish they came from New York, since their influences are more Big Apple blossom than white rose. With warm winds blowing through the title, these Halcyon heroes tip the cap to soft West Coast pop and burn an incense stick for Arthur Lee on the standout “We’re All Dying And We Want Our Freedom”. It’s a case of chiming guitars, harmony and harmonica elsewhere, and while the production is embryonic, good ideas and hum-worthy tunes still surface.

A promising beginning.

By first album Dixie Fried (1972), Dickinson’s legendary status as Sun Records/Atlantic sessioneer was assured. Having cut sides with Aretha, Sam & Dave and the Stones, subsequent years producing Big Star, Ry Cooder and The Replacements only compounded the mystique. Six years in the making, Free Beer Tomorrow finds the grizzled old ‘gator re-immersing himself in cajun swamp, fringed with honking sax and barrelhouse piano. There are echoes of Dr John in the N’awleans funk of Eddie Hinton’s “Well Of Love”, but Dickinson?as befits his Mississippi residency?is a Southern soul bluesman at heart. Spicier than hot wings in Tabasco.

A vital blues-rock album in 2003? An odds-against prospect until you read the fine print and realise that this Texan singer-drummer-songwriter has worked not only with Stevie Ray Vaughan (Fitchburg Street’s strongest reference point) but with Texas blues legends like Lightnin’ Hopkins. On Bramhall’s first record since 1994, he goes back to his roots, covering blues and R&B classics by Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, etc. His soulful, rough-hewn voice and no-nonsense approach make this time-tested format glow with warmth and vibrancy.

The disbanding of New York avant-rappers Anti-Pop Consortium was one of the less publicised but sadder splits of 2002. Now sporting a fetching pink mohawk, Beans is the first member to re-emerge, with an album that’s curiously both reassuring and disappointing. On the plus side, the Anti-Pop project of drawing parallels between hip hop and electronica continues. Beans’ pointed use of old-school electro here only emphasises the links. But his idiosyncratic rhyming style?sing-song, hyper-kinetic, hectoring?can grate without the leavening presence of other rappers.

Like Neil Young, James Taylor and Jackson Browne before him, this San Diego native conjures up a melancholic America still littered with battered Chevys and dotted with dirt roads, pawn shops and hissing summer lawns. Frame frames a collection of beautifully crafted alt.country tunes exploring the nuances of love lost and love found via the unlikely detours of heroin abuse and urban violence. Available from www.peterbolland.com

This is the second of a projected series of four recorded live at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2001 (Montreal Diary A was issued last year). The program here consists of duets by two Italian musicians: veteran trumpeter Enrico Rava and the up-and-coming pianist Stefano Bollani. The mood is informal and convivial, Rava providing a lyricism and thoughtfulness that’s complemented by Bollani’s trademark whimsicality and edge-of-anarchic surrealism. Another worthy issue from the French jazz outfit Label Bleu.

DA Pennebaker, that eminent celluloid chronicler of live rock (Don’t Look Back, Down From The Mountain), filmed the farewell Ziggy show (July 3, 1973, Hammersmith Odeon), and now Tony Visconti’s remixed the soundtrack for a 30th anniversary double CD special edition (the film’s out on DVD, too). Bowie’s between-song banter is included for the first time, most notably the big bold brouhaha of the bye-bye speech. And “The Width Of A Circle” is present in all its noisy, unedited, 16-minute glory. Although the sound’s still erratic in parts, The Spiders prove they were every bit as kick-ass a rock’n’roll band as the nostalgic claim: they were always just messy enough.

“The technology wasn’t there then”, Visconti told Uncut earlier this year. “Pennebaker did his best but the sound on the film wasn’t up to scratch. So in ’81, David and I put some money into it and tidied it up. Nobody could hear themselves on stage in ’73; Mick Ronson was as loud as anything, and private in-ear monitors were still a fantasy. So David re-sang the backing vocals, sweetened them up, added some percussion. He never replaced his own lead vocal; it was impeccable.”

It opens with a portentous blast of Beethoven’s Ninth before cracking into a light-footed “Hang On To Yourself”. Then it sizzles electrically through high-spots from Bowie’s first golden age, as well as Brel’s “My Death”, “White Light/White Heat”, a brief medley of “All The Young Dudes/Oh! You Pretty Things” and blasts of Rossini and Elgar juxtaposed with much raucous riffing and the greatest of white voices. “Time” is sublime, and the “Rock’n’Roll Suicide” finale is as showbizzily dramatic as the genre ever got: you half expect Brian De Palma and Paul Williams to burst out of the wings. Handbags, gladrags and the tears of a pierrot. Fantastic.

The soundtrack from Eminem’s gamble-that-paid-off movie has done so well that second helpings have arrived. No verbals from the man himself here, but an irresistible set of just-left-of-familiar hip hop. Among the most inventive work-outs are OutKast’s “Player’s Ball” and Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”. Accompanying the movie’s ‘romantic’ interlude?a wordless hump against a factory wall?is “You’re All I Need” from Method Man and Mary J Blige. How the makers of From Here To Eternity must regret not opting for something as sweet and tender for that grubby beach scene.

Sometimes you just have to hand it to the mainstream. Chicago is a riot as a big glossy movie (although I can’t vouch for the West End production starring some bloke from Eastenders). Kander and Ebb’s songs are a sassy splash of satire, much more scathing and cynical than you might’ve inferred. Queen Latifah edges in among the Tinseltown divas, and numbers like “Razzle Dazzle” and “We Both Reached For The Gun” rasp with wit and pizzazz. Punctuating the swagger is John C Reilly’s rendition of “Mr Cellophane”, a song so cleverly despairing it could’ve been adapted from the works of Philip Larkin. Alarmingly good.

The fastest-growing TV show in the US, wherein tales of a young Superman are accompanied by a radio-soft blend of American rock, from Remy Zero’s theme to Ryan Adams’ “Nuclear”. Von Ray’s “Inside Out” is the spit of Nickelback, and the new single. Best thing here by a mile is The Flaming Lips’ “Fight Test”, the opening track of what’s been described in these pages as the greatest album since Best Of Jesus Christ Volume One. It’s lovely, but owes an extraordinary debt to the Cat Stevens song “Father To Son”. People have pointed this out before, but only very quietly. Mind you, Cat, to the best of our knowledge, never had pandas on stage with him.

This isn’t quite what you’d expect from Muggs, not even after his 1999 collaboration with Tricky. He has gone for the full trip hop/psych-rock concept album?a major hazard given such previous near-misses as UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction?but it’s not at all bad. One Amy Trujillo provides most of the vocals in a Goldfrapp stylee over avant-rock music like “Dead Flowers”, while there are cameos from the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli (“Fat City”) and House Of Pain man Everlast (“Gone For Good”). The Julee Cruise homage that is the closing “Far Away” also works. It should at least keep you going until you can get hold of the new Massive Attack album.

After years composing cosmic space rock using drum machines, synthesizers and Vocoders, Jimi Tenor has decided to go back to his roots and make a seriously funky jazz album with real instrumentation and live recordings.

It’s an ambitious move that could easily have backfired on him, but the fusion of ’60s free jazz, ’70s psych and ’80s soul has resulted in his most satisfying and fully-realised album to date. Tracks like “Trumpcard” and “Nuclear Fusion” emphasise Sun Ra’s influence, while “Stargazing” and “Spending Time” expose Tenor’s romantic side.

The idea of fabricating a new psychedelia has long been an ambition of many electronic artists. Too often, though, the likes of Death In Vegas and The Chemical Brothers have stumbled in their attempts: thwarted by limited talent; anxious to import worn rock’n’roll iconography rather than capitalise on the oceanic possibilities of the music that inspired them.

Up In Flames is a little different. In 2001, Dan Snaith was discovered in Toronto, studying maths and making engrossing, humane electronica in the vein of his friend Kieran (Four Tet) Hebden. Two years on, Snaith has relocated to London, played a lot of hip hop records in the middle of his live sets and completed an astonishing second album. Up In Flames takes the most levitating alt.rock of the last decade or so as its springboard, meriting comparison with My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, Stereolab and (though he’d never heard them) the early work of Mercury Rev.

Instead of creating digital facsimiles, however, Snaith grasps the opportunities these richly imaginative bands offer and comes up with a genuinely awe-inspiring mix of live, sampled and processed Technicolor sound. “Every Time She Turns Round It’s Her Birthday” mimics the relentless crescendos of Spiritualized’s “Angel Sigh” but goes further, punctuating the horn voluntaries with euphoric multi-tracked gasps and a great wall of motorik breakbeats. After five-and-a-half minutes, a saxophone solo reminiscent of Pharoah Sanders blows in to up the cosmic ante even further. In comparison, the likes of The Chemical Brothers’ “Private Psychedelic Reel” shrivel into insignificance.

It’s one of those albums where the audacity is often as breathtaking as the ideas. In a rare moment of understatement, “Crayons” ostensibly updates The Jesus & Mary Chain’s “Never Understand” by replacing feedback with a toy xylophone. Elsewhere, though, Snaith triumphs by going overboard whenever possible. The result is both adventurous and accessible, a record in love with the obliterating power of sound.

One-time support for acts ranging from BB King to Kelly Joe Phelps, veteran of endless busted record deals, and inhabitant of Paterson, NJ, the broken steel town that inspired Ginsberg, Kurtz is an uncompromising force on this aptly-titled record. Her voice sometimes belts out so strongly it bruises the songs, but can also be bluesily intimate over torch song strings or grating industrial guitars, as she tells stories of chastened hopes, on the road and in Paterson’s dead end.

Mark Selby has penned tunes for artists more commercial than he (Dixie Chicks, Wynonna Judd, etc), but his own work tends more towards gritty roots rock

Soul Of Man And Phantom Beats

21ST CENTURY BREAKS

Yet another band to emerge from the fertile Louisville, Kentucky scene, Shipping News take their name from Annie Proulx’s masterful book. It’s hard to believe that the origins of Shipping News lie in hardcore. Since their earliest incarnation, they’ve undergone a radical makeover. Three-Four is full of hypnotic lo-fi atmospherics, dark and sludgy electronica and post-folk strumming?three distinct musical moods reflecting the fact that the album was originally three EPs, recorded individually by the three band members. Oddly absorbing and surprisingly cohesive.