For a man so steeped in the honeyed hickory grit of Gram Parsons, newcomers to Bruntnell could be forgiven for mistaking his English ‘burb origins for Bakersfield, Ca. New Zealand-born, Surrey-raised and westward soul-bound, he finally drew acclaim with 2000’s superb third LP, Normal For Bridgwater. Its follow-up is equally fine, studded with guitars (courtesy of 21-year-old James Walbourne and Son Volt’s Eric Heywood), faint washes of piano, peals of steel and a forlorn, imagistic delivery and way around a melody reminiscent of Joe Pernice. He can spit bile, too (“Tabloid Reporter”), while “Rio Tinto” would be a monster hit in a just world. A Nudie Suit short of perfection.

Damien Jurado threw a curveball on his last release, I Break Chairs, by strapping on an electric guitar and giving us a Springsteen-like album of blue-collar rock. Most Jurado fans will be delighted to know that on his fifth album (his first since leaving Sub Pop) he has returned to the naked-and-acoustic style of earlier albums like Rehearsals For Departure to give us another LP of “lo-fi dirges about caskets, mental instability and miscellaneous misery”, as his songs were once memorably described.

Where Shall You Take Me? is minimalist in every sense, clocking in at under 32 minutes. Yet despite its brevity, Jurado takes us on a journey and leaves us emotionally sated by its intensity. To look at the clock at the end of the cathartic final track and see that the hands have advanced but half an hour is to be convinced that time really has stood still.

“I’m not an evil man,” he whispers on the mesmerising opener, “Amateur Night”, “I just have a habit I can’t kick”. It’s as ominously debauched as anything on the first Velvets album. Like a collection of Appalachian murder ballads, the gentle, finger-picking acoustics lull you into a false sense of security. Then the terror of his menacing tales strikes. “Abilene” is a story of elopement or abduction?or worse. “Window”, on which Rosie Thomas harmonises, stares into the darkness and has a strong affinity with the work of Will Oldham/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. “I Can’t Get Over You” is a tale of such unfathomable sorrow that you fear for his sanity. “Tether”, another deceptively lovely melody, finds him at the end of it, disarmingly rational despite unimagined wounds. The closer, “Bad Dreams”, asks for salvation. But he’s “done so many bad things”, he knows none will be forthcoming.

Not for the faint-hearted, Damien Jurado is a habit which won’t necessarily bring joy to the listener. But once acquired, you will find it hard to kick.

With Skyscraper National Park, the quiet ebb and flow of Paul Hayden Desser’s cracked, sad-slow lullabies proved one of last year’s more insidious treats. On record often hushed to the brink of fade, the Canadian’s downbeat allure is set surprisingly aglow, however, before a pocket of punters. Recorded in his Toronto home town during 2002’s North American tour, this two-CD set amply demonstrates the man’s craft, the inherent strength of apparently fragile blooms added extra ballast by painterly shades of guitar, piano and strings and a deadpan humour playfully poking at the likes of Billy Joel. Includes three newly-minted ditties: “Holster”, “I Don’t Think We Should Ever Meet” and “Woody”.

If there’s a house style at Memphis Industries, it’s a sampling of the sexiest instrumental genres (’60s action TV shows, spy movies, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, soul-funk Hammond breaks, psych-acid middle-eights) remodelled with a patina of hip hop rhythms and cutting-edge technology.

Blue States are pack leaders after their 28 Days Later soundtrack work, but even artists who grate over an arch album’s length (for example, Squire Of Somerton) are sultrily effective in this varied home, which for once reconnects experimental and pop music.

Does the world need an R&B Andrew WK? The queenly Kelly Osbourne and various indie dignitaries evidently think so, given their patronage of Sean Tillman’s farcically hypersexualised alter ego. Actual R&B fans may think otherwise, even if Har Mar Superstar’s drooling electro-funk parodies do betray a latent affection for fellow Minneapolis self-mythologiser, Prince. The thought occurs, though: why waste time on incompetent satire when the best R&B celebrates its own absurdity so effectively?

The Oasis supremo was so impressed by The ‘Burn that he signed them up as a support band before they had released as much as a seven-inch single. Sally O’Mattress is a highly accomplished rock album with some unerring Oasis similarities (just listen to “Steel Kneel”back to back with “Fade In/Out”). However, “Calling All” and “Both Faces”are wonderfully vibrant and first single “Drunken Fool”is the sort of jangly folk-rock that Starsailor would die for. It’s nothing that you haven’t heard before, but no less enjoyable for it.

More prolific in this operatic alter ego than his day job (where, with Peter Kruder, he’s a celebrated DJ, remixer of Madonna and co, and recording artist in a vein between acid jazz, trip hop and light techno), Richard Dorfmeister reunites with childhood friend Rupert Huber for Tosca’s latest. Richly textured sounds and smooth rhythms are impressively assembled for a sort of coldly funky lounge motorik. A second CD dubs up Huber’s classical piano to no purpose.

After an abortive set of demos recorded with Brian Wilson in the early-’90s, March fell in with French producer Bertrand Burgalat and recorded Chrominance Decoder, one of The New Yorker’s Top 10 albums of 1999. Continuing in the same vein, Triggers revels in ’60s and ’70s French and American pop idioms, brought up to date by eclectic production and Tricatel’s explosive house band A.S Dragon. Sung mostly in French, this is fabulously funky Francophile fun.

For an artist so stigmatised by outsiderdom, Johnston’s influence is immense. Down the years, his unbearably poignant, no-fi scrapings have tended the souls of Nirvana, Beck, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, Yo La Tengo, Butthole Surfers and The Pastels, while more recently David Bowie sprung him a Meltdown invitation. And not forgetting a whole bunch of New York anti-folksters, to whom the man is some kind of godfather.

The Californian’s enduring popularity lies in his perilous mental state and creative sensitivity, which manifests itself in primitive musical outpourings of agony and ecstasy. Johnston creates personal, intimate art that is at once liberating and imprisoning. Almost as though he’s missing a skin, a valuable layer of psychic lagging, life has often been too vivid for Johnston, resulting in a string of hospitalisations. Now, though, on medication and in the safe hands of father/manager Bill, the Texas-based 41-year-old is as prolific and happy as he’s ever been.

Fear Yourself is the result of a week spent with producer/arranger/admirer/Sparklehorse lynchpin Mark Linkous, who fleshes out Johnston’s pounding piano sketches with banks of fuzz guitars, crooked walls of strings and spectral synth washes. As with much of his work, Johnston swallows love’s bittersweet pill then fashions a record as redemptive as it is uncompromising. “Syrup Of Tears” somehow transforms despair into a blinding flash of hope over disjointed slaps of piano, while “Mountain Top” (all chugging guitars and saw-toothed fiddle) and “The Power Of Love” curse cupid himself. At its best, Johnston’s flailing rasp is shockingly intimate and immediate, like a download straight from the cortex. A fierce, defiant record.

Ace guitarist Landreth came to our attention two years ago via his superb playing on Shelby Lynne’s Love, Shelby (a great record robbed of credibility by its ludicrous jailbait cover). His own album of southern blues and swamp rock is full of virtuoso playing, and he’s part of a new white blues revival that includes the North Mississippi All-Stars and Doyle Bramhall. But he’s going to need stronger songs to carry it off as a solo artist rather than a talented sideman.

Punk/funk reggae innovator Sherwood squeezed into the loop spinning his take on Tackhead, Bim Sherman and the mighty African Head Charge, so it’s no surprise to hear him retainingy those streamlined influences for his ‘proper’ solo debut on Peter ‘Hippy’ Gabriel’s label. Working in the lineage that gave us Brian Eno, Sly and Robbie and dance floor diwali geezer Lenky, Sherwood constructs a cut-up-and-keep cacophony of what he terms “sci-fi world dancehall”, the latter ingredient ensuring his labours bubble and squeak with conviction. Shmokin.

Scott McCaughey collects illustrious bandmates the way most collect old records. Not content with having Peter Buck and R.E.M. auxiliary member Ken Stringfellow as recruits to the Minus 5 cause, McCaughey expanded the membership at the end of 2001 to include serial collaborators Wilco.

The usual Wilco-related label problems contributed to a delayed release, so that Down With Wilco virtually coincides with the Jeff Tweedy/Jim O’Rourke Loose Fur project. More predictably still, McCaughey is a mellower foil than O’Rourke, so the closest Wilco parallel to this sunshine pop is probably the Summerteeth album, though Tweedy does slip in a few of his newer, tetchy guitar lines beneath the jangle and gurgle, and sings “The Family Gardener”, an obvious highlight.

The Anticon collective, now based in Oakland, have become a ubiquitous presence in underground hip hop circles thanks to their novel fusions of liberal politics, surrealism, navel-gazing and leftfield production. For newcomers, this second album by founder member Sole is a good entry point. Save a neat cameo from a demo-toting God, Selling Live Water avoids the self-conscious whimsy of some Anticon projects, since Sole is vicious more than introspective, referencing Ice-T and Noam Chomsky as well as Watership Down. A worthy. West Coast counterpart to El-P’s superb Fantastic Damage.

Having ditched their sweetness, The Cardigans hit pay dirt but lost their effervescent magic in the process. This, their fifth album, is even more blow-dried than 1998’s Gran Turismo. “Communication” and “Feathers And Down”, for instance, are as anodyne as The Corrs. Nina Persson writes exquisitely lovelorn lyrics, and “You’re The Storm” has a yearning majesty, but this is the sound of dashboard-tapping, local radio MOR. It’ll probably be huge.

Hot on the heels of The Avalanches and The Vines, the latest hot tip from Down Under arrives on a wave of media hype?and for once it’s not undeserved. The Sleepy Jackson is the year’s first great summer pop album. “Good Dancers” and “Sunkids” rival the gorgeous shimmering tunes of The Delgados, and “Caffeine In The Morning Sun” is pure Beatles, a simple but effortlessly cool melody. Only the drone-rock of “Let Your Love Be Love” misfires in this context. It’s as sketchy as mini albums usually are, but the band have undeniable promise.

Their minimalist boy/girl blues-rock makes for an easy comparison with The White Stripes (and, rather conveniently, both bands recorded their new albums at east London’s Toe-Rag studios), but The Kills (singing guitarists Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart) plough a darker, more corrosive furrow. The London-based duo’s liking for repetitive Royal Trux-style riffage forms the core of their debut but they frequently explore more sparse territories. “Kissy Kissy” assumes an eerie country twang while “Black Rooster” spirals into a bluesey swagger, but it’s Mosshart’s sexily drawled spoken-word segments that keep this brisk debut the right side of bare-boned.

Kristin Hersh

Masquerading as a fiftysomething ex-janitor from Capitol Records cobbling together an album from his prodigious record collection, this is actually E cobbling together a hip hop album of sorts, rife with post-modern flippancy. Hammond organs, stiff rhythms and samples from obscure, cheesy old ’60s phonographs instructing you How To Hypnotise Yourself, you know the sort of thing.

This album has its moments, but frankly, unless you’re a jaded goatee-bearded record store clerk attuned to a particularly American wavelength of irony, you’re unlikely to get much from this.

When the debut album by Philadelphian punk-metal trio Burning Brides was first released on a modest indie (File 13) two years ago, it was proclaimed a lo-fi classic. Co-produced by indie troubadour Brian McTear (of Bitter, Bitter Weeks fame), the album had enough mainstream rock appeal to score them a deal with V2. Now that Fall Of The Plastic Empire has been remastered by Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, Sonic Youth), the metallic leanings of singer/guitarist Dimitri Coats have been fused with the pop-inspired basslines in such a way to ensure Burning Brides become more than just peripheral players in the neo-garage rock scene.

You can never pigeon-hole Ben Harper but Diamonds On The Inside is his most eclectic collection yet. “With My Own Two Hands” is roots reggae. The title track sounds like The Band. There are pop ballads, acoustic blues, New Orleans-flavoured R&B, acoustic folk tunes, Lenny Kravitz-style rockers and, on “Picture Of Jesus” (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo), he’s got that old-time religion. The diversity takes your breath away. But where in the past he has often impressed rather than engaged us, here there’s an emotional warmth that makes it by some distance the best record he’s ever made.