Alt.country traditionalists dismayed by the avant-garde inclinations Jeff Tweedy showed on Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will be demoralised further by the appearance of Loose Fur. A third collaboration between Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke and drummer Glenn Kotche, it takes the fluid, impressionistic style of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and O’Rourke’s Insignificance to a brittle new level.

Actually, Loose Fur was their first work together, recorded some three years ago, long referred to as the “Nuts” project and delayed until the protracted YHF campaign was over. The three songs sung by Tweedy and two by O’Rourke, plus one deft instrumental, have a surprising unity: a rolling, hazy style which circumnavigates usual verse/chorus/verse dynamics. Instead, typical Loose Fur pieces begin as sketchy songs before undergoing a kind of gracious metamorphosis into long, semi-improvised passages.

Only “You Were Wrong” is spared an elaborate coda, a perfectly-realised fragment of Tweedy melancholia that, distant dysfunctional clang notwithstanding, should sit easily with Wilco’s more conservative heartland?though the superb opener, “Laminated Cat”, found its way into a few Wilco sets last year. But to imagine Tweedy as some sort of humble, straightforward balladeer being led astray by the arthouse trickery of O’Rourke is to miss the point of Loose Fur. The group allows O’Rourke to indulge his songwriter instincts and Tweedy to exert an often-suppressed experimental imperative.

So when O’Rourke essays the frail “So Long”, his acoustic reverie is interrupted by an electric guitar line from Tweedy, whose pointillist soloing recalls no one so much as improv hero Derek Bailey. Kotche, too, is complicit in the plot, sounding as if he’s more interested in throwing his drums down a staircase than playing them. It takes some six minutes before the trio glide into unison behind O’Rourke’s breathy harmonising.

The effect is brilliant. You can look at it two ways: as a document of shifting tensions between songform and skronk, a big virtuoso tease that may well aggravate as much as illuminate Tweedy and O’Rourke’s contrasting fans. Or as the discovery of the common ground between songwriters and experimentalists.

Little has gone right in Osborne’s career since her 1995 hit “One Of Us”, which found her bracketed with Alanis and Sheryl as part of a new and assertive breed of American female singer-songwriters.

After being dropped by two major labels, on How Sweet It Is she’s gone back to her blues and R&B roots and made a defiantly non-rock album of songs originally done by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Edwin Starr, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Hendrix and Sly Stone. You could be forgiven for not expecting much. In fact, she’s a brilliant reinterpreter and sounds far happier in Raitt territory than she ever did as a Morissette clone.

In the late-’90s, moody alt.country songpoet Buckner went all post-rock for two major-label albums. This is the official release of a homemade acoustic demo CD he later peddled at shows, containing bare-bones versions of songs from those records. Stripped of adornment, these elliptical songs make a much more direct emotional impact and provide easier points of entry. Imagine Townes Van Zandt with some DIY mud on his shoes and you’re in the ballpark.

They may be punks, but this five-piece purvey a sound redolent of a time before the punk aesthetic was codified and encompassed everything from Generation X to the Rich Kids.

While there’s no letup of energy here, Bombshell Rocks display a surfeit of songcraft and production smarts without ever getting near the Green Day-soundalike mill that dominates the contemporary punk-pop scene.

Watch your backs, Bad Religion! The Great Swedish Takeover of rock continues unabated.

An authentic children’s band from Lewes, East Sussex, Hunkydory signed to that safe haven for eccentrics,

Those familiar with The Ukrainians?who began as a Wedding Present offshoot in 1988 and released an unusual Smiths tribute EP in 1992?will be heartened to know their unique gypsy folk-punk hasn’t been diluted with age. Charging forth like Taras Bulba in a Ramones T-shirt, they even treat us to both “Anarchy In The UK” and “Pretty Vacant” in an east-of-Moscow stylee. Daft but somehow deft with it.

Peter Elkas and Ben Gunning make a virtue out of locating the place in AOR rock where synths take over and ironic carnal knowledge of Supertramp and Joe Jackson becomes a brand new melodic wheeze. Smart alecs for sure, they are often compared to Steely Dan. “Never Had To Fight” and the cool “Dragging Out The Barrel” are robust enough to survive initial smiling and linger in the bloodstream. Seriously softcore and endearing, the Rabbits will appeal to Webb Brothers and Ween lovers. This, their third album, is curiously excellent, well arranged and deliciously accomplished. Catch their buzz.

If Arbol had been around in the late-’80s they would probably have been snapped up by 4AD and promoted as the missing link between the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil.

Singer Suzy Mangion has one of those voices that hovers between ethereal and doleful, while Miguel Marin is a master at creating delicate, ambient soundscapes. Tracks like “Three Reasons” fuse jewellery-box electronics with a haunting piano refrain while others splice grainy loops, beats and samples with emotive guitars, drums and viola. Quietly enchanting.

Scintillating citizen Kane is the first man to outrageously describe himself as “Al Green singing Leonard Cohen” and find us all in total agreement.

Lyrically doomed and dextrous, musically flying from gospel to flamenco to feedback howls, and blessed with a magnetic white soul voice, Kane hails the potency of cheap music on “Me, The Ladyboy And Gloria Estefan”, which concludes that Estefan “understands that life is painful and ultimately futile”. But there’s nothing cheap about his novelistic range and ambition. Lovers drink, confess and break their arms in seven places, our hero beats himself up like a broodier Brel/Bukowski, and we’re reminded that music can matter like murder.

A ragged, graceful revelation.

Even if you remain immune to the dark charms of Joss Whedon’s mighty Buffy The Vampire Slayer, you’ll have noticed that some of us drone on about The Musical Episode from season six like it was the second coming of Abbey Road, Diamond Dogs and Closer. It is absolutely that and no less. The soundtrack, my most prized possession since someone burned it off a mobile MP3 laptop duck-billed web-pager for me (or whatever), is now officially released by popular demand, the first authentic use of the phrase ‘by popular demand’ since Disraeli’s era. It rocks, desperately and epically, and is funny and heartbreaking. Love it without irony.

The genius Whedon wrote the music and lyrics, which is as quietly depressing for the rest of us as learning that F Scott Fitzgerald was Gershwin in his spare time. The cast perform gutsily, but not slickly, which gives it a spooky, sour edge. Whedon often employs a Greek chorus, resulting in fantastic moments such as a demon taunting the declining slayer with, “She’s not even half the girl she…ouch”, and rhyming “my life’s endeavour” with “yeah, whatever”. Willow and Tara sing of their lesbian love. Anya and Xander have an acidic divorce-looming song?”When things get rough he/Just hides behind his Buffy/Now look?he’s getting huffy”, while neutered punk vampire Spike wallows in unrequited angst?”If my heart could beat it would break my chest/But anyway I can see you’re unimpressed”. Eventually they all heroically “Walk Through The Fire”, but not before Willow responds to “I’ll kill her” with “Erm, I think this line is mostly filler”. No room here to list a tenth of the prime-cut gags, any of which Seinfeld or Sanders would slay for. That the songs are genuinely great is a ridiculous bonus. The best album by a bunch of actors playing resurrected bisexual sometime-demon archly witty mutant cuties ever.

After the steamy funk of Boogie Nights and the Aimee Mann tearjerkers of Magnolia, PT Anderson’s new film basks in heady strings and wonky harmoniums, scored by regular collaborator Jon Brion. It’s deliberately dizzying and disorientating, and not always pleasurable. But the borrowing of Nilsson’s “He Needs Me” from Altman’s Popeye, sung with sugary desire by Shelley Duvall, is inspired. Waiting to interview Anderson in a hotel lobby recently, I congratulated Emily Watson on her singing of this. It’s the only thing I’ve ever said to Emily Watson. She politely replied, “That isn’t me, that’s the Shelley Duvall recording.” When it comes to fact-checking, the soundtracks column lives on the front line.

Underwhelmed as we are by franchise McBlockbusters, this score’s by the really rather talented Howard Shore, who was responsible for the coolly sexy sounds which rippled under David Cronenberg’s Crash. His soppy strings for the first Baggins movie won him all manner of awards and made the UK Top 10. This one is distinguished by its remarkable guest vocalists: Iceland’s Emiliana Torrini and former Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser?from “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” to Gollum and Samwise: it makes a kind of sense, no? What with this and Lisa Gerrard regularly elevating Michael Mann’s films, can we soon expect to hear Kim Deal singing the Harry Potter theme song? Maybe not.

It’s easy to be cynical about a windy old narcissistic diva but less so to heckle one who’s come back from a horrible brain disease: 18 months ago Minnelli was told she’d never walk or talk again. That she battled back to do these live shows at New York’s Beacon Theater is the kind of courage that wins you a whole new audience, possibly even including some heterosexuals. On the other hand, if she’s really unlucky, she might just get saddled with further Pet Shop Boys collaborations. This is the real juice, defiantly arms-akimbo glamorous?”Cabaret”, “Over The Rainbow”, “New York, New York”?and despite the control-freak hubby’s gushing sleevenotes, it’s the-show-must-go-on-tastic.

The “In The Fish Tank” series is the brainchild of Dutch label Konkurrent. The concept is straightforward. While playing shows in Holland, Konkurrent invite bands to record new material (“in the tradition of jazz”) with the following guidelines: they are only allowed two days’ studio time to lay down “20 to 30 minutes” of whatever they please, to 24 tracks.

After collaborations between Low/Dirty, Willard Grant Conspiracy/Telefunk and Tortoise/The Ex, In The Fish Tank No 9 is a three-way studio fest between Jim O’Rourke, Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth (with additional percussion from William Winant), Ab Baars, Hans Bennink and Wolter Wierbos from Dutch jazz outfit ICP, and Luc and Terrie from New Zealand noise-rock unit The Ex.

The resulting eight tracks explore territory that will be familiar to Sonic Youth fans who bought the band’s SYR EPs and kept abreast of solo projects by Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. In particular, much of this CD will remind you of Moore’s work with Nels Cline.

There are also throwbacks to the John Coltrane of Ascension, to Albert Ayler at his most blistering, to Ornette Coleman, as well as to contemporary avant-jazz players such as Evan Parker and Derek Bailey.

The terrific closing track, with its horns, lumbering bass rumble and classic Sonic Youth fretwork, sounds not unlike the kind of stuff the Youth were playing when they started out. The rest of the album teases, prods and jousts with the listener as squalls of guitar, brass and percussion cut in and out with taut ferocity.

A fine album for Sonic Youth die-hards, lovers of all things avant-garde and jazz nuts.

Armenian liturgical chants and Joy Division may not be the most obviously winning influences, but Deleyaman (also including French, Turkish, Swedish, Georgian, Orthodox, Anglican, Cramps, Banshees and Bach inspirations in its five-piece fold) create a charismatic, shifting, sensual ambience from these dirge-like elements.

It’s gypsy cathedral music, exotically sacred and nomadically slippery, plus a touch of the dancefloor and the spy film, with unearthly male and female spiritual cries.

While Richard Warren’s previous sonic escapades saw him navigating the outer limits of motorik austerity, the follow-up to 2000’s Volume 2 finds his alter ego’s drone-rock aesthetic enveloped by a warm, electro-pop hue. Despite the vaguest hint of mainstream surrender, the results are as charming as they are accessible, with “Lately Lonely” and “Automatic Eyes” proffering sweet respite from electroclash’s icy self-regard, while the quickened krautrock pulse of “Wasted Spaces” ensures purists are similarly assuaged. The boy done good.

Philadelphia’s appropriately named Brian McTear is Bitter, Bitter Weeks. His deceptively lo-fi indie troubadour sound should find favour with those enamoured of the first, mostly acoustic Ryan Adams album. McTear’s neither as snotty nor as convinced of his own genius, which makes for a humbler, more open emotional journey. Dashes of Alex Chilton’s ragtag pop and Jonathan Richman’s childlike wonder give a warm glow to this boy-and-his-guitar bundle of agreeably melodic, soft-pedalled laments.

The distinguishing mark of world music is that it’s sung in other languages, which makes lyric sheets and translations crucial for comprehension. This three-disc guide fails to provide any such documentation, leaving the tracks to succeed or fail as pure sound events. If you don’t mind not knowing what the hell a singer is singing about, you may be in the market for these themed discs (World Party, World Caf

Any new Roots album comes with a three-part guarantee: sublime, R&B-guested crossover (“Break You Off” with Musiq, “Complexity” featuring Jill Scott), muso indulgence (the hideous epilogue muddying the otherwise sparkling “Water”) and, crucially, a willingness to push the envelope of their organic jazz-rap that leaves the competition standing. The latter is best exhibited on the riffy “The Seed 2.0” and stripped-bare squiggles of “Rolling With Heat”, less successfully on the electroclash-influenced “Something In The Way Of Things”. Thankfully, though, Phrenology is more therapy than quack science.

MTV show-hosting brothers Benji and Joel Everly are the driving force behind Good Charlotte’s second album. They co-wrote all 14 of these slick, punk-pop songs. Though, on occasion, they are Green Day-lite, there are enough solid rock moments to keep their youthful following happy.

First single, “Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous”, is a speedy thrash at celebrity-whingeing (“All they do is piss and moan inside Rolling Stone”), while sole ballad “Emotionless” really is quite lovely.