The death of mentor Eazy-E, the imprisonment of original member Stanley Howse (alias Flesh-N-Bone) on gun charges, and last album BTNH Resurrection’s poor sales may have been the end for less resilient acts than Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Fortunately, the four remaining members simply refused to stop recording. The rapping, backed by sharp beats from DJ U-Neek, remains speedily impressive. The misogyny of “Not My Baby” and the Phil Collins-sampling “Home” apart, Thug World Order is an invigorating return to form.

The brainchild of Seattle-born 21-year-old Ryan Beatty, Serene’s debut is nothing if not big on ambition. Beatty admits a fondness for Built To Spill and Sunny Day Real Estate, and much of the music taps into the loud/quiet dynamic and stuttering invention of the latter’s How It Feels To Be Something (1998).

There are echoes of Pavement and Modest Mouse among the pulses and explosions, but it’s not until the home straight that he finally sounds uninhibited, cutting loose on “Last Words Of A Fallen Angel” and relaxing into the stoner vibe of “Autumn”.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat?that’s a guy singing. Acoustic songster Jeff Hanson has a high, airy voice that makes Badly Drawn Boy sound macho, but his pop sensibilities are not far removed from those of the woolly-hatted one.

With a super-spare production and an emphasis on subliminally infectious tunes possessed of a childlike simplicity, Hanson could be the Marc Bolan of the sadcore set.

First released in America two years ago, the third album from the independently-minded pianist-songwriter Jennifer Terran is a conceptual exercise in which the musician of the title is a tortured character called Mad Magdaline who liberates herself and ends up killing the corporate suits?metaphorically or not?who are messing with her art.

Although the character is fictitious, it’s clear the songs are deeply personal. Haunting and intense, she sounds like a rawer version of Tori Amos. But Terran possesses a uniquely fierce and uncompromising voice.

Starbelly

In November 2001, the owner of Tongue Master records invited Mark Eitzel to fly out to Greece and record an EP with Greek musicians under the guidance of Greek composer/producer Manolis Famellos. Backed up by a sort of Greek Buena Vista Social Club, the EP bloomed into this full-length LP.

As well as six balalaika-adorned re-workings of classic American Music Club tracks (“Western Sky”, “Here They Roll Down”, “Jenny”, “Nightwatchman”, “Will You Find Me”, “Last Harbor”), Eitzel offers one decent new song (“What Good Is Love?”), an unremarkable Famellos composition (“Love’s Humming (Black Love)”) and new versions of two previously released solo songs (” Take Courage”, “Anything”). This has self-destructive career move written all over it. Like Alex Chilton before him, Eitzel alternates between genius and audience-baiting mediocrity. After two fabulous albums?The Invisible Man and Music For Courage And Confidence?he gives us this. Whatever next?

Scandinavian by design but closer to the Dutch school of happy-go-lucky power pop, breezy Beezewax jerked the radar when Ken ‘Posies’ Stringfellow produced their South Of Boredom disc.

They have that charming second language factor, using it to combine adventurous harmonies and wall-of-sound drumming with wistful lyricism. “The Brighton Concorde” and “Ballad Of The Beaches” finger their Anglophile sensibilities. Pungent rather than cheesy, Oh Tahoe’s full-force folk rocking refreshes a vintage formula. If you liked Posies’ Frosting On The Seater but are tired of waiting for a decent follow-up from that Seattle band, this could do the (cheap) trick.

Like a soundtrack for a film that never was, most of the dozen tracks on this one-off from the pair behind New York’s innocent urbanites Madder Rose are entirely instrumental. Weirdly echoing guitars and analogue synths weave dreamily between stark piano chords and eerie strings, like Air jamming with Calexico. It’s atmospheric, yet the introduction of vocals on “See The Stars” comes as a relief amid the otherwise chorus-free fare.

The news that The Tragically Hip had headed off to record in the Bahamas with fashionable producer Hugh Padgham (Sting/Genesis/Bowie) instilled fears that perhaps they were about to live up to their name in the most unfortunate manner. Fortunately, Padgham resisted the temptation to give them an artful makeover and instead opted to capture the synergy of the band’s live sound. The result is a pleasing LP of R.E.M.-style guitar rock, and at least one song?”Use It Up”, with its splendid refrain, “I’m a fool for music that can take you away”?is an instant hit.

Eight interwoven, imaginative re-workings of their album cut “The Mello Hippo Disco Show”, working with Jacknife Lee. Totally genreevasive, flowing from echoes of Pink Floyd to Mercury Rev murmurs to trippy trance. Dreamily delicious.

Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc crew have dominated the hip hop mainstream in the past couple of years with their glossy dilution of G-funk. Ja Rule epitomises the style, mingling macho posturing with gruff attempts at sensitivity; “Thug Lovin'” is the most telling title here. One suspects, too, that his popularity is down to impressive musculature as much as rhyming skills, since his clumsy barking artlessly copies the style of real-deal DMX. And what a treat to discover another album (following Xzibit’s recent Man Vs Machine) that samples Toto’s “Africa”.

Joy unconfined.

Thirty years on, and then some, Blue

Never one to miss a trick, hip hop’s leading avant-savant and anti-corporate entrepreneur El-P here recycles his outstanding Fantastic Damage as an instrumental LP.

If the original sounded forbidding, Fandam Plus is even muzzier, with the humanising raps peeled away to reveal layer after layer of rough-cut samples, spluttering beats, deviant synths and indeterminate threats. Hardly essential, unless your karaoke sessions are unusually intense (the lyrics are included, along with remixes and videos, on a second disc). But still the best hip hop dub excursion since Dr Octagon’s The Instrumentalyst in 1996.

Gallic icons rarely let you down, being so impeccably steeped in their own mythology and conscious of their dignity. Like the music world’s answer to Catherine Deneuve, honorary French muse-turned-chanteuse Birkin continues to take artistic risks without capsizing.

Here reinterpreting the songbook of former husband Serge Gainsbourg (and not the obvious pages) with Arab gypsy shadings and Algerian violinists, she reaffirms that she understands Serge’s depressive yet Dionysian urges, never lapsing into parody. “Elisa” and “Comment Te Dire Adieu” are mordantly bittersweet. Tasteful and tense.

Part of the tightening loop between Jamaican ragga and US rap, Bounty Killer prot

Ten songs recorded in 10 different cities constitute the debut from the bespectacled Dane. But Unrest is far from the acoustic strummings of his band, Kings Of Convenience (anyone remember the New Acoustic Movement?) as here

Doug McCombs and Noel Kupersmith’s (aka Brokeback’s) third LP attempts more traditional song arrangements. But true to McCombs’ Chicago-centric instincts?guest appearances from Jim O’Rourke among others?Brokeback don’t deviate from post-rock, with only a tinge of jazz noir as respite. For while silvery reverb may now predominate, slow-shifting movements and droning textures show McCombs choosing familiarity over fresh adventures. It’s hypnotic stuff, but for a side project it’s self-defeating.

Legend has it when Waterboy Mike Scott delivered Fisherman’s Blues after a long time “getting his head together”, a label boss called him in and said, “Great. You’ve spent four years off and you’ve made a fucking folk album.”

Christ knows what he’d make of Lou Reed’s latest double album, The Raven, based on POEtry, the musical founded on the peculiar life and work of Edgar Allan Poe, which Lou and Robert Wilson performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last year. You missed it? No matter. Lou commits it to CD here, on this quasi-‘life and crazy times’ of the poet.

Psychosis plagued Poe’s life. “He was no ordinary Joe,” Reed points out kindly. “If you haven’t heard of him you must be deaf or blind.” In the mood for a rock star lecture? No doubt Poe wasn’t cut from the same cloth as we mere mortals, yet one gets the feeling this sprawling, unwieldy concept, featuring poems set to music as well as some stand-alone songs, will be, at best, admired, played once and filed away. All albums are vanity projects, but this vanity may be in vain, despite its benign nature.

“The Bells” and “Annabel Lee” are influences that have always taken root in Reed’s work, and he’s never been afraid to munch a cockamamie project?Berlin, Songs For Drella, Magic And Loss. The Raven also comes with a stellar cast of musical and theatrical luvvies?Dave Bowie, the missus Laurie Anderson, Ornette Coleman, Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe. Obviously it’s not all pretentious.

Still, at 60 Reed’s entitled to do what he wants. If he wants to do an operatic version of “Perfect Day”, get back into his “Blind Rage” character or duet with Dave on “Hop Frog”, he can. The rest of us may prefer to score some Poe by bell, book and candle. Whatever, you will need inordinate patience to sit through something that sounds like one of Frasier’s follies with Kelsey Grammer going off on one.

What was it the raven quoth? “Nevermore.” I’m with the bird on that one.

Ever wondered where goths go in the daytime? They’re at home listening to this?on headphones, to avoid being attacked by neighbours within a two-mile range. This is monstrously heavy stuff, Norwegian black metal at its most disciplined and powerful. Often veering from the template, it also features slabs of garage rock, subtle orchestral samples, and the magnificently cold voice of Anja Garbarek, who appears on awesome 14-minute closer “Black Lava”.

It’s over a decade since former actor Will Oldham took his first faltering steps in a forgotten backwater of American music. When Oldham began recording with his brother Paul in 1992 he was recovering from a nervous breakdown, staking out an area that provided a refuge for his skewed, haunted but unusually perceptive sensibility. Initially operating out of his native Kentucky as The Palace Brothers, then Palace and Palace Music, Oldham and his collaborators drew on a rich and mysterious well of Appalachian folk, worried life blues and stern, unforgiving gospel.

But Oldham’s songs were not just genre exercises?they refashioned old forms to give a striking and original angle on the modern world. A timeless quality pervaded Oldham’s compositions, casually entwining themes of death and despair, spiritual decay and fleeting images of carnal contentment. They signalled the arrival of a unique new voice: the late 20th century literate hillbilly.

In person, Oldham would often appear furtive and distracted. With his wilfully obtuse stance he seemed either intent on hijacking his career at every turn or, more intriguingly, constructing an elaborate mystique to deal with the troublesome business of increasing fame and notoriety.

Along with the name changes, there were the monosyllabic interviews where he cast himself as a withdrawn hypochondriac or a diehard fan of Mariah Carey. Righteously bristling at any attempt to ascribe him alt.country figurehead status, Oldham seemed determined to remain an outsider, carving a niche as a genuine auteur of American song. Confirmation that his strategy had worked came when he unveiled his current persona on his astonishing 1999 album, I See A Darkness. Both this and the album that followed, Ease On Down The Road, suggested that, in Bonnie, Oldham had discovered a new sense of artistic freedom. On the Palace records, Oldham had marked out his musical and psychic landscape; the shimmering foreboding of Darkness and the jaunty. singalong merriment of Ease On Down The Road was where he explored the humanity and relationships of the characters who dwelled there.

Despite his natural inclination for sabotage, the release of Oldham’s third album in his Bonnie ‘Prince’ incarnation finds him more popular than ever. Johnny Cash’s recording of the “I See A Darkness” title track conferred respect, while liaisons with Marianne Faithfull and P J Harvey enhanced his standing and heightened his profile.

However, this increased recognition has not diverted Oldham from his singular path. Quite the opposite?stepping back from the carousing cheating songs and infidelity celebrations of its predecessor, Master And Everyone presents the Bonnie lad in his starkest incarnation to date.

Produced by Mark Nevers, the Nashville engineer who added the spooked effects and eerie sonic dimensions to Lambchop’s Nixon, the album also features ‘Chop associates Tony Crow and Matt Swanson alongside Oldham’s younger brother Paul. But the naked, demo-like quality of the recordings, complete with off-microphone background noises, snatches of rhythms tapped out by a foot on the floor or a hand slapped on the thigh, lends a weird but welcome intimacy.

The songs unfold like tentative quests. Centred on Oldham’s vastly improved voice and open-tuned guitar, they are parables that alternately puzzle over and cling to the ideal of monogamy in a turbulent world.

First is “The Way”, with its glowering cello accompaniment and a gently woozy vocal that recalls Nick Drake’s in full yearning reverie. But the Baptist imagery (“into the river we will wade”) and tender but bawdy instruction (“let your unloved parts get loved”) are inimitably Oldham?balancing lust with deep emotional commitment.

The first of two duets with veteran Nashville vocalist Marty Slayton, “Ain’t You Wealthy, Ain’t You Wise?” is a spellbinding, open-hearted declaration of faith and commitment. The immediate reference point is Gram and Emmylou, but Oldham goes further, deeper. Nevers’ swirling effects capture the fear and turmoil beneath the surface (“Now you’ve seen the evil eye/Hold onto me while I cry”) but is here banished by true love (“There’s no pain in the night/There’s no dream left undreamt”).

By turns an innocent abroad and a rogue prankster who calls the shots, the Bonnie ‘Prince’ goes places other songwriters leave uncovered, striking disarmingly frank poses throughout. On “Wolf Among Wolves” he praises his inner animal and bemoans his partner’s inability to “see me for what I am/A wolf among wolves and not a man among men”. He delivers folk parables for the modern world on “Maundering” and “Joy And Jubilee”, and a modern gospel message on “Lessons From What’s Poor”.

But the recurring theme is the nature of love and commitment: the unbearably ominous “Even If Love” edges along the brink of the abyss of loss before toppling right in. “Three Questions” plays out a pagan marriage ceremony in a post-nuclear setting. On the closing “Hard Life” he breaks away from duet-partner Slayton on the last verse: wracked by the possibility and imagined pain of a life spent alone, he ends the album moaning for release.

In just over 35 minutes, the Bonnie Prince’s mastery of form, blend of gentle awe and trembling sweetness are distilled to their essence. Who knows what Oldham will do next: cast off his regal mantle and make a Mariah Carey tribute album? Get together with a mean and dirty electric band and recast these songs as sneering, demonic pledges? The choice is his.

Meanwhile, Master And Everyone is a perfectly balanced blend of candour and heartstopping beauty.