John Fahey’s reputation rests on his’60s recordings, elaborate explorations of acoustic folk/blues that erased distinctions between roots music and the avant garde. By the ’90s, however, Fahey had become disgruntled with his legacy. He switched to electric guitar, dabbled in industrial murk and seemed studiously indelicate. Red Cross, finished just before his death in 2001, marks a surprising reconciliation with his old style. Fahey’s playing remains hesitant, but for contemplative rather than alienating ends, as he turns uptown standards by Irving Berlin and the Gershwins into spectral, rustic laments. A bewitching last testament.

Perhaps because he lacks the proper bad-boy image, Tim Easton has yet to be recognised as the rightful heir to the roots-rock throne occupied by Ryan Adams. Easton’s introspective troubadour-ing and alt.country mystique speaks to the same demographic, but his lyricism is more oblique, shying away from big statements in favour of small surprises. Two of the best songs here are by Burn Barrel’s JP Olsen, whose compositional presence says as much about Easton’s respect for his roots as it does about Olsen’s top-notch writing.

They may hail from Illinois, but this quartet containing two brothers and their sister owes allegiance to every strain of Britpop from The Stone Roses to early Radiohead. Atmosphere is everything, as provided by waves of echoing guitars and shimmering vistas of keyboard. Sixties influences are filtered through a late-’80s shoegazing sensibility, eliminating overtly derivative elements. The male-female vocal blend floats ethereally atop their grand art-pop tableaux, but things never get too airy for the occasional grungey power chord.

Both Jim Krewson and Jennie Benford were raised in tradition-steeped communities (in Pennsylvania and Vermont respectively), rebelling into punk before reconnecting with roots years later. Their third album smudges the boundaries of bluegrass and old-time (fixin’ a party between Scruggs-style, three-finger banjo and orthodox clawhammer) to strike a picture of high’n’ lonesome authenticity. Aided by the Pinetops’ propulsively rhythmic playing, the marriage of Benford’s clear mountain preen and Krewson’s hickory yelp is life-enhancing. This music resonates stronger today than at any time since its Newport revival heyday.

Hailing from the same US stable as The Mendoza Line, the Austin, Texas quartet Shearwater embrace a drowsier strain of melancholy on their second LP?all shuffling shades of piano, picked guitar and stings. Producer Brian (Daniel Johnston) Beattie filters just enough light to ward off any impending claustrophobia, while the contrast between ardent ornithology student Jonathan Meiburg’s falsetto and Okkervil River moonlighter Will Robinson Sheff’s upbeat crackle adds a subtle duality. Initially intended as a tongue-in-cheek paean to failure, they’ve scored big in the soundtrack-to-rainy-Sundays stakes. Damn it.

Double disc of remixes from Miles’ last album, featuring big names like The Future Sound Of London and Si Begg working alongside two lucky unknowns?Kuzu and Fissure?who beat another 738 wannabes in a competition to remix Miles’ work.

An animated kiddies’ thing which, to my untrained eye, looks scarily like Rugrats, this is set in the African wilderness. And has elephants in it. So you don’t need to trouble your inner genius to work out that Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour and Paul Simon will feature. “Father And Daughter” is the latter’s first song for a film in 15 years, and he can still turn a lyric and craft a tune like an unlikely deft demi-god. He can even mumble “trust your intuition, it’s just like goin’fishin'” and sound wry. It’s no “Mrs Robinson” but it’s warm as a puma’s gums. The Pretenders and P Diddy stand up smartly, too.

New Yorker Carter Burwell scored Velvet Goldmine, which would be a coincidence (see above) if I didn’t diligently plan these things ahead. He’s also done most of the Coens’ movies and, as he beautified Being John Malkovich, lands the return gig on the new Jonze-Kaufman headfuck. His new-school, indie sensibilities show from the dark opening title piece (remixed by Fatboy Slim), and he relishes working with titles like “The Slough Pit Of Creation” and “The Unexpressed Expressed” (who wouldn’t?). The Turtles’ “Happy Together” closes, but that may be a rare example of Americans embracing that ‘irony’ thing. Confessions of a dangerous mind that glower with greatness.

Like everyone else, if I crave the society of other adults, I’ll have to pretend this is abhorrent. (Really, it’s just so-so). Yet, if the Beeb had had the balls to spotlight the rebels in the camp instead of pushing the show into a karaoke niche none of the kids fancied, it could’ve been more grotesquely compelling than Big Brother’s Jade in her porcine pomp. Ainslie, for one, had it in him to be an irritating iconoclast of some pluck, and even the toothsome David was drunkenly bitching like a trouper till he twigged he was actually going to win the thing and played safe. A chance for a postmodern Network was fudged. Oh, here they all sing Beatles and Motown songs, of course.

“Part of me loves to fail,” notes Robert Forster during his eighth album co-fronting The Go-Betweens. The tension between starlust and negligible sales was always one of the most poignant aspects of this marvellous band: Since their reunion in 2000, however, Forster and Grant McLennan have seemed more realistic, even though that year’s The Friends Of Rachel Worth enjoyed wider acclaim than most of its predecessors.

Bright Yellow Bright Orange (loyalists will observe the trademark double ‘I’ in the title) is more reflective still. Forster and McLennan each contribute five songs, but it’s the latter’s elegiac tone which dominates, his knack of using romantic language without resorting to clich

Grudgingly admitting that his new album might be slightly “alt.country”, John Doe adds that it’s “more Elliott Smith than Gram Parsons”. Suffice to say that it’s a collection of mostly slow-moving, often acoustic-based songs underpinned with a lingering aura of melancholy. Doe’s voice is warm yet weary, frequently framed by acoustic guitar and plinking piano, sometimes battling it out with fuzzy guitars and clattering drums, and intermittently thickened by harmonies from guest stars including Jakob Dylan, Juliana Hatfield and Aimee Mann. If Doe intended to create an interlocked set of pieces that sustained a mood of pensive reverie, he succeeded, though there’s a marked shortage of ear-grabbing, individual songs.

The Sgt Pepper-style cover suggests a counterpart to OutKast’s Stankonia, but Common’s emphasis is more on social and historical awareness. Tracks like “Aquarius” and “Star’69 (PS With Love)” recall the utopian psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection?though the lyrics are firmly rooted in reality?but the fabric stretches from the wonderfully seductive “Come Close” duet with Mary J Blige to the brilliantly askew deployment of Stereolab in “New Wave”. “Jimi Was A Rock Star”, featuring Erykah Badu, is a fabulous freeform mantra and one of the best Hendrix tributes extant.

To be filed alongside the Roots’ recent Phrenology.

Long before The Hives were peddling their Stooges-infused rock, The Hellacopters were turning out hedonistic heavy metal on a series of obscure albums for the Ruin label. Then, in 2000, they signed to Mercury, delivered the exhilarating High Visibility, and suddenly Noel Gallagher was at their gigs.

By The Grace Of God continues to mix Beggars Banquet-era Stones with the breathless energy of the Ramones, only with a more polished, if slightly repetitive, sound. There are infectious choruses aplenty, especially on the anthemic title track and “The Exorcist”. Those Mercury big bucks have been put to good effect.

In 1992, Billy Corgan and guitarist Matt Sweeney decided to form a band, once Corgan had completed his prog-grunge masterplan with Smashing Pumpkins.

Ten years later their plot has come to fruition. With the four-piece Zwan, Corgan is aided and abetted not just by the aforementioned Sweeney (ex-Chavez and Skunk) but also by drummer and longtime musical foil Jimmy Chamberlin, as well as guitarist/bassist David Pajo, formerly of Tortoise and the highly regarded Slint.

The results sound as if Corgan has plundered a few moves from Dave Grohl, since the songs keep one boot in heavy metal but mostly get straight to the point while piling on the hooks and harmonies.

Corgan’s macabre whine of a voice will never be pretty, but songs like “El Sol”, the scintillating “Ride A Black Heart” or the country-ish “Come With Me” are blisteringly effective. For Pumpkins-fanciers, the title track proves that symph-rock never died.

Much like one of the Ole’ Time Religion preachers sometimes alluded to in his lyrics, those who worship at the Church of Nick Cave know exactly what they are letting themselves in for.

His last, 2001’s No More Shall We Part, seemed musically and thematically the quintessential definition of his art: tear-soaked ballads of a grown man’s heartache and many a meticulously arranged God-fearin’ dirge. Nocturama sees Cave purposefully attempt to add new flavour to an old recipe. Written and recorded with relative haste, this is his conscious attempt to inject a sense of urgency probably not heard on a Bad Seeds album since 1994’s Let Love In.

For an album borne of such restlessness, it rarely drops its guard of poised confidence. The anaemic “Rock Of Gibraltar”?rhyming “Malta” with “altar”?is a disappointing exception, and while the closing “Babe, I’m On Fire” is the kind of torrential punk-rhumba that’s been missing from Cave’s past couple of albums, at nearly 15 minutes it risks hammering the song’s experimental novelty to death.

But such transgressions we can forgive when faced with the heart-exploding delivery of Cave and former Saints vocalist Chris Bailey during “Bring It On”, the majestic opener “Wonderful Life” (with its smoking “Come Together” bassline) or the lurching odyssey “There Is A Town” which drifts dreamily upon a wistful sob of violin. And it’s surely a triumph in itself that both “Right Out Of Your Hand” and “Still In Love” are as tender as anything from 1997’s soul-baring The Boatman’s Call.

As the first of three such ‘quick-fire’ albums planned before 2005, Nocturama could be the start of one of the most creatively rich chapters yet in Cave’s career.

Twisted Nerve’s best kept secret, David Tyack started out under the alias Dakota Oak before reverting back to his birth-name for a series of enchanting EPs and mini albums. A multi-instrumentalist, he’s also collaborated with label boss Andy Votel and drummed for acts on the label including D.O.T and Misty Dixon.

On Rip Van Winkle, he teams up with ex-Can singer Malcolm Mooney for a heartfelt tribute to Washington Irvine’s classic short story about an idle fellow who falls into a deep sleep and wakes up to find those he once knew have passed away. Mooney’s abridged reading was recorded in Yonkers?not far from the Catskill mountains where the story was set?while Tyack’s accompaniment was composed and produced in his hometown of Manchester, alongside the nine instrumentals that comprise the first half of the album.

The twist in the tale comes with the news that Tyack went to Corsica a few months after completing the project and never returned. There’s been no trace of the man?whom The Guardian recently compared to Debussy?since September. Friends and family continue to search for him.

Uncut hope he’s working on his new opus somewhere, because Rip Van Winkle is a bewitching album, and a fine introduction to one of Manchester’s finest young artists.

SARAH-JANE

Since quitting ’90s US indie sirens Tsunami, Toomey has emerged as a solo artist of some repute. Tempting carries the same strain of smoky weariness and subtly-layered elasticity as 2001’s self-penned Antidote, explaining why she gravitated towards Bruno in the first place. Calexico supply the uncluttered back-up (“Your Inarticulate Boyfriend” is a typically barrio’d-up Burns/Convertino stakeout), allowing Toomey’s torchy delivery to infuse gems like “Empty Sentiment” and “Masonic Eye” with all the noir ambience of a Michael Curtiz movie.

Raymond Carver’s opinion was that happiness only comes when you forget to think about death, ambition or love (in that order). In which case, conveniently for us, Ed Harcourt isn’t lined up for too much happiness too soon. His second full album is all about death and love, and it’s impressively ambitious. Lucky for him Carver was being uncharacteristically grandiose, rather than dryly accurate.

Harcourt cites Carver as an influence, besides Salinger, Tom Waits and David Lynch. Others have tagged him alongside such historic figures as Harry Nilsson and Brian Wilson. That’s the trouble with being labelled, nominally, a “singer-songwriter”. The term reeks of the past, and a contained, unstartling, unthreatening quaintness. Whereas Harcourt wants to be timeless and wants to be timeless now. His songs are not quaint. They’re as vitriolic and bitchy as Costello’s, as wounded and romantic as Alex Chilton’s, as baroque and demented as Cave’s before he eased into self-parody. He revels in the dying art of wordplay, yet the emotion’s authentic. And musically, yes, he likes to muck around with things like Waits, but he hangs onto a pop consciousness, a love of classic structure and craft, which veils his songs’ darkness, but only superficially. From Every Sphere is the ultimate grower, which moves, in your mind, from quite nice to utterly compelling and addictive over a matter of days, or better, nights.

Harcourt, still only 25 but purportedly much-travelled, originally conceived the follow-up to his Mercury-nominated debut Here Be Monsters (2001) as a double album, The Ghosts Parade. That confused people, so he scaled it down to these 12 songs, and shifted the emphasis from ghosts and dreams to love and loss. But there are still a lot of ghosts and dreams in there. Mingling with the love and loss. As they do.

It’s beautifully produced with the adaptable Tchad Blake, who’s worked with Waits, Low, Pearl Jam and many others. The songs always stay within the bounds of what’s recognisable as a ‘song’, yet there’s a sinister, savage, subterranean smell to them. On a cursory listen you might think that Harcourt makes the perfect Later With Jools Holland music?adult and smart but perhaps a touch cosy, witty, correct, white. Manageable. It is, though, much darker than it seems, and for all the fleeting shafts of huffy humour, its overriding feel is of someone wishing for something they can’t have. Which is, in case I’m being unclear, very high praise. It don’t mean a thing without the yearning.

“Bittersweetheart” sets the timbre at once. “If I could only see straight, I wouldn’t be lonely these days,” he begins, precise piano and shuffly drums ushering in what James Stewart in Vertigo had diagnosed as acute melancholia. The singer questions his own worth, admits that his outlook on life can be bleak, yet allows neither himself or the listener to wallow. Basically, it’s quite a chirpy song. But the key, as for the rest of the album, lies in the skilfully gauged vocals and that word “bittersweet”. If the record’s anything at all, it’s bittersweet.

“All Of Your Days Will Be Blessed”, the first single, might seem perky enough, with its uplifting chorus and “oooh”s. But a bluebird’s died in winter in the first line?dreams down, “the engine’s run out of steam”, and when the lovers “fly away”, they do so “into the void”. Like another major British work of poetic genius, The Faces’ “Cindy Incidentally”, the song lulls you into thinking it’s a beacon of positivity when in fact it’s full-on fatalism.

Are we getting too bespectacled and lit-crit here? Harcourt is, after all, enjoyed by people with high-maintenance haircuts who think, say, Groove Armada are important. He is, in a minor way, trendy?but “Jetsetter” proclaims “never have I been part of any scene”. It’s that urge for timelessness again, though he’s pushing it with “I’m Not Postmodern”, a lyrical excerpt which, let’s face it, doesn’t rock. “Ghostwriter” is a Jim Jarmusch riff, a man in a prison cell banging on a drainpipe with a toothbrush. “The Birds Will Sing For Us” is another song that reveals itself to be about death, the drinking song raised to an art form. Harcourt’s voice is loaded with sandpaper and tiny bits of glass.

“Sister Rene