Following a short-lived dalliance with Virgin (left in the cold when new A&R moguls kicked in) and now back on their own label, Goldrush continue to make great music, this seven-track EP more a halfway house between live edge and meticulous studio output. Though Robin Bennett’s tremulous delivery remains a crowning glory, the guitars have a ferocity previously only hinted at (see Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann’s remix of “Let You Down” and tour favourite “Counting Song”), with the searing “Intro” suggesting an imminent romp through “I’m Waiting For The Man”.

Alongside membership of Wisdom Of Harry and Ellis Island Sound, multi-instrumentalist David Sheppard’s tenure with State River Widening?with Keiron Phelan and Jon Steele?allows free rein to pursue his languorous blurring of acoustic and analogue, the post-rock sound uncoiling gently, the improv feel gleaned from John Fahey.

Broadening the palette from 2000’s eponymous DIY debut, Early Music’s lush pastoralism and warm tones immediately set them apart from the likes of Pullman and chillier Chicago-ites, steering a course somewhere between Gastr del Sol and The Sea And Cake’s new opulence.

The distinct whiff of an indie phenomenon here, as The Hidden Cameras combine the delicacy of Belle & Sebastian with the massed salutations of The Polyphonic Spree. Essentially the domain of singer/guitarist Joel Gibb, the Cameras number somewhere around a dozen, and sound like it. Typical songs swell from winsome strums to cathedral-sized love-ins whose jauntiness some may find cloying. Fortunately, Gibb’s mixture of gay and Christian imagery is potent, and his vision of music as a grand communal experience is backed up by some memorable tunes.

Mull historical society’s debut loss landed in late 2001 with a bracing freshness British pop had almost forgotten. Mull native Colin MacIntyre, the Society in all but name, sang brightly of islands, severing links, losers, and the recent loss of his father, and gathered tens of thousands to his odd, isolated cause in 2002.

Us initially seems more of the same?as with all strong sensations, the first time’s impact can’t be repeated. But closer inspection reveals clear, happy developments, both musical and emotional. Self-produced again, psychedelic codas and the like soon slot into a unique sonic world with ’70s glam and singer-songwriters buried in its foundations, but with enough eccentrically stroked harps, synthesized organs and ringing chimes to still sound like nothing but MHS themselves.

What really matters, though, after Loss’ celebration of strength in exile and isolation, is MacIntyre’s vulnerable, desperate search for connection this time. “I don’t know how to belong/I don’t know where to begin”, he sings on deceptively triumphal opener “The Final Arrears”, while “Am I Wrong?” and “5 More Minutes” are about regaining lost love, saying he can change, that he saved her life once, that he’ll find the right words in a minute.

Us’ home stretch is an almost unbroken description of a quest for salvation in someone’s arms, and the pain that failure brings, impotently demanding that “somebody else must be with me” while claiming “Asylum”.

“Us” closes the journey equivocally (“I was us when you were you”). But the sense of being closer to others by still risking reaching for them at all is the small, hard triumph MacIntyre ends the Society’s minutes with this time. Poppily uplifting, Us is an album with drowning depths.

Full marks to the man for trying. Robin, always the most inquisitive of the brothers, has ventured here into contemporary R&B. And it so nearly works. Hearing that trademark quaver negotiate the beat minefields of tracks like “Wait Forever” and “No Doubt”?in the latter he even intends to “get my freak on”?what’s striking is how similar he sounds to Craig David. “Don’t Rush” is the obligatory Vocoder track. One of his oldies, “Another Lonely Night In New York”, is updated and Orbison’s “Love Hurts” recast In The Modern Style. Sadly, though, the songs don’t match the ambition. Pity.

An audio companion to Moore’s most brilliant current comic Promethea, incanted in a doleful Midlands voice that whispers and barks over Perkins’synth beats, it weaves the universe’s story into events around the London hall where it was first performed in 1999. Oliver Cromwell’s excavated cadaver, grief-stricken Victorian horror writer Arthur Machen and Moore’s ’80s creation John Constantine meet in Holborn’s alleys in a vision of humanity clutching its potential through precarious imaginative leaps. A sly and inspiring introduction to the mind of a British underground great.

Barnes left Austin and the Livers for a new Seattle start four years back, but this record’s still rooted in Texas. His voice weaves in and out of the banjo rhythms on the title track, accepting hard times in subtly twisted back-porch phrases, then a track later you’re dancing, cares dissolved. T. Rex’s “Broken Hearted Blues” becomes stately chamber pop, and instruments from pop’s dawn, sentiment from poverty and open-hearted artistry combine in a small near-classic.

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.