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.

The first new album from Joan Armatrading since 1995’s What’s Inside is an admirably unpretentious collection. She may have left behind the bedsitter image long ago, yet her songs continue to deal in the currency of romantic love, only now from the dignified perspective of a mature woman who has no illusions but still has her dreams. Armatrading may be strictly Radio 2 these days, yet in her time she was a role model every bit as groundbreaking as Ms Dynamite today. For that, she commands not only our love and affection but our total respect.

While it can’t be said that Procol Harum are still the melodic force they were in the ’60s and early ’70s, this, their 12th album in 36 years, is never less than honest, dignified and graceful?music of indisputable integrity made with soul and technical assurance. There’s no sign here of any uncommitted running through the changes. This is still a real group in genuinely active condition, which in itself is remarkable. Probably mainly for the band’s many long-term devotees, nonetheless.

Stratford 4 singer/guitarist Chris Streng played in the short-lived Wave with future BRMC members Robert Turner and Peter Hayes before forming the Stratford 4. Like Streng’s former bandmates, the 4 are fascinated by the widescreen worlds one can conjure with an electric guitar. Accordingly, their second album draws heavily on such masters of six-string cinematics as The Church, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Spacemen 3, the latter getting namechecked in nine-minute fuzz-drone epic “Telephone”.

Alegria, Wayne Shorter’s first studio album for eight years, follows last year’s poll-winning Footsteps Live! and, despite the fact that the leader is now 70, shows no sign of slowing down or thinning out. With a basic unit of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, and Brian Blade augmented by larger arrangements and occasionally a switch to Brad Mehldau on piano and Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, this is a fine album, subtle and poetic with plenty of Shorter’s hip flights of abstract fantasy.

Former Swans mainman Michael Gira financed this recording solely through sales of a live CD, and the lack of corporate involvement is plain to hear. Meticulously crafted yet vibrant and visceral, it’s like a claustrophobic noir soundtrack crossed with a jauntily macabre musical. It’s urban and tribal, soulful, sacred and funny, recalling The Bad Seeds and The Residents. A magnificent, hugely welcome return.

Twenty-one-year-old singer/guitarist Guy Blakeslee is Entrance, and his debut would have been labelled acid-folk and lauded as an ‘outsider art’cult item if it were released on a private press label 30 years ago. Blakeslee wails in loopy, unfettered fashion over idiosyncratic acoustic guitar and seems not unfamiliar with Marc Bolan. Entrance also delight in deconstructing Skip James and Bob Dylan, invoking echoes of early-Zep acoustic excursions along the way.

New York power popper Mark Bacino is just as adept as his peers at assimilating The Beatles, Badfinger et al, but studiously avoids the inherent pitfalls of the style, maintaining just the right blend of melodic sweetness and rock toughness

The second album from 22-year-old Sorbara marks the emergence of a major new songwriting talent. Citing Tom Waits as her greatest inspiration, her songs are full of sleazy sex (“pushed into darkness by a relentless pelvis”) and fleshy regrets (“I ought to wipe the slate clean with new sheets and shower”), the soiled sentiments deliciously offset by her angelic voice. Switching between piano and guitar, she strays into Norah Jones territory on the jazzy “Eggs Over Easy”, while Natalie Merchant fans will lap up songs such as “Bonnie & Clyde”. The Cure… grows on you with every play.

Imagine if the Cheeky Girls were as good as retro-kitsch archivists will probably one day pretend they are. 200 km/h In The Wrong Lane is that sort of record. The two lead singles off this fantastic piece of pop product?”Not Gonna Get Us” and “All The Things She Said”?are produced by Trevor Horn. Suffice to say they represent the latter’s finest work since Grace Jones'”Slave To The Rhythm” in 1985. Despairing, frantic and caressing are the twin vocals of latest tabloid shock sensations Lena Katina and Julia Volkova; one soft, the other strident. The whole thing is, quite literally, Dollar meets Propaganda. The stroke of genius comes with the girls’ brilliant, unexpected reworking of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?”, magnifying the original’s despair into a floodlit arena of uncertainty.

Renowned for his live use of computers, live instruments and videos, Nobukazu Takemura provides a gentle but subtle introduction to the sometimes onerous world of avant-techno. Most intriguing here is his use of “speech-synth”, a technology created to enable handicapped people to communicate, similar to that used by Stephen Hawking. It raises and debunks the question of whether this constitutes a human voice or whether a machine can sing. Illustrator Nakaban’s cover art is reminiscent of Paul Klee, the spirit of whose cheerful, bright yet inestimable abstract art is recaptured in these detailed electronic miniatures.

Between 1978 and 1980 the original four members of the Joe Jackson band recorded three albums ranking among the finest of the new wave era. Subsequently, Jackson dabbled in everything from swing to classical, never quite recapturing the fire of those early records.

For the 25th anniversary of Look Sharp!’s recording, Jackson looked up his three old cohorts and worked up a batch of new songs in the old guitar-bass-drums format. A tour and this record are the result, and it’s a pleasure to see musical journeyman Jackson back on his old patch once again.

While fellow New Yorkers Interpol wrestle similar sonic demons with grace and profundity, Calla’s third album favours artifice over aptitude, every dark, meandering art-rock dirge bulging with superfluous effects and studiously ambiguous lyrics. Only “Pete The Killer” impresses, largely because its bittersweet, Sundays-style guitars see the trio temporarily eschew their glum self-importance for the sweet chime of pomp-free art-pop.

Ultimately, Calla lack the melodic muscle and conviction sufficient to suggest they’re anything more than the emperor’s new worry beads.

The persistent pursuit of an explosive climax and the dancefloor epiphany can be exhausting. But beneath their knowing camp and tongue-in-cheek theatrics, Junior Senior have a wealth of references to pull it off. With the surf guitar riffs of “C’mon” through B52’s-style freak-outs, Kid Creole And The Coconuts craziness, Stones raunch, Sweet-ish bubblegum and as many elements of garage punk as garage house, their hedonistic sex-dance anthems go down a treat. Fancy “a good time, all the time”? You could do a lot worse.

New York’s premier abstract hip hop label goes west to enlist Murs of California’s Living Legends crew, whose angsty lyrics and pained delivery makes for a taxing hour’s listening. Some moments of sheer brilliance (“Gods Work”) help lighten the gloom.

The skimpy biog for New York-based McCombs reveals diverse allegiances with Will Oldham, the Anti-Folk movement led by The Moldy Peaches, and art-metallers Oxes. Of these, the Oldham connection is most revealing, if only because both have clearly studied the odd Dylan record. McCombs isn’t quite that predictable, though, since his singer-songwriter routine often fuses with pleasingly lethargic psychedelia, especially on “Opium Flower”. He also has a nice trick of being at once plaintive and undemonstrative, so that this debut mini album resembles Galaxie 500 as much as all the usual alt.folk touchstones.

This is a very odd album. Lyrics chronicling masturbation and murder with music that is a freaky hybrid of The Cure’s goth whimsy and Fugazi’s serrated aggression. While slightly bombastic and overwrought, Tim Kasher’s tremulous narratives steer this largely compelling album into the territory of fellow-Nebraskan Conor Oberst aka Bright Eyes. Incredibly, prog-rock scales are united with fairground organs (“Butcher Song”), but Grette Cohn’s scraping cello is revelatory and their kinetic force sees them through.

Wrongly lumped in with the electroclash brigade last year, Fat Truckers utilise quasi-Glitter Band beats with whirring synths and snarling Mark E Smith-style vocal barks. Old singles “Teenage Daughter” and the astonishing krautrock meets rockabilly surge of “Superbike” retain their blazing intensity. And “Roxy’s”, presumably named after the Sheffield night-spot owned by the infamous Barry Noble, is a marvel of tumbling arcade game analogues and pristine Kraftwerk syncopation. Unfortunately, the ideas do eventually run dry. “Anorexic Robot” and the A&R-baiting “I Love You Son” are slovenly punk-synth dirges. Still, with Add N To [X]’s future in doubt, they could fill a micro-gap in the market.

Dunger, a Swedish ex-footballer, crept onto the radar a couple of years ago when he toured with an admiring Mercury Rev and released the heady Soul Rush, an unusually fruitful grapple with the legacies of Van Morrison and Tim Buckley. Those influences are still apparent in Dunger’s throaty and supple vocals. On his excellent third album, however, the music is stripped back to a kind of easy-going, rumbustious folk blues, fitting given the notable participation of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Maybe this time Sweden’s current rock’n’roll cachet will bring Dunger (whose debut featured Soundtrack Of Our Lives) closer to the acclaim he deserves.