Band

Two towering '80s icons get back on track but with some way to go

The Cole Porter of the Lower East Side adrift in his own wake

Sixth album from California's desert-dwelling husband-and-wife team

Impressive bass-free post-hardcore debut

This is the perfect album for your inner schizo Francophile hippie. Factually based in the late '60s, but so wilfully mixed up it's very postmodern-ly now, one of its personalities is fuzzily made up of Hendrix, The Doors and the Grateful Dead (plus actor Michael Pitt murdering "Hey Joe" with his band). The other's stylishly into nouvelle vague, with blissful borrowed excerpts from the scores to The 400 Blows, Breathless and Pierrot Le Fou, and warblings from Françoise Hardy and Edith Piaf.

Haunting back-porch quirkiness from former Be Good Tanya

Nineteenth album from a great American storyteller

Mixed bag from McGuinn's immediate post-Byrds career

First time on CD for vanished 1972 solo album by leader of The Strawbs, featuring Rick Wakeman and Roger Glover

The glory years of 1992-1999, thoughtfully compiled on two CDs