Indie hopefuls Buffseeds have an ace in the hole in lead singer-songwriter Kieran Scragg. On “Sparkle Me”, the opening track of the band’s debut album, you’re convinced it’s a woman’s voice. Then it slowly dawns you’re listening to a male falsetto?like a castrato Michael Stipe against a backdrop of subtly shimmering contemporary psychedelia. Scragg’s songwriting is as ambitious as his voice is unusual and he’s not afraid to tackle such subjects as political corruption, personal cowardice and family illness in his impressive compositions. If the best of last year’s new UK bands were The Electric Soft Parade and The Coral, then 2003 has already produced one to rival them.

For those under the impression that the current Brooklyn scene consists entirely of garage-rock rehashes and electroclash posing, the lazy, hazy sound of Folksongs For The Afterlife will set you straight. Like some otherworldly combination of Mazzy Star and vintage My Bloody Valentine, they employ wan female vocals and layers of moody guitar in a mind-bending manner whereby even the uptempo songs feel like ballads. Without venturing into overproduction, Put Danger Back In Your Life conjures a rich sound capable of carrying you off into the daydream of your choice.

ADF have expanded their line-up and brought in Adrian Sherwood as executive producer. However, their energy and principles are the same as those that infused and undergirded 2000’s Community Music. Asylum-seekers, post-September 11 politics and the optimism engendered by ADF’s contacts with cells of cultural resistance are covered here, with an angry gusto drawn from punk, dub, techno and bhangra. The new members bring a new virtuosity and up-to-date rhythmical sensibility to the mix; best track is “1000 Mirrors”, a dub-soaked, impassioned protest against domestic violence delivered by Sin

It’s churlish to accuse the Soledad Brothers of inauthenticity, given that their raw and rickety blues are indebted to the sounds of the Crawdaddy Club, Richmond, circa 1963. We should forgive, then, this young Detroit trio for most of their iconographic waffle about death letters, gospels and devils. Especially since they play pretty well, a menacing chug through the standard “Going Back To Memphis” being the highlight. Nevertheless, the Soledads never quite transcend the role of canny revivalists?unlike their drummer’s housemate, Jack White.

Producer Ry Cooder reckons the second solo album from the septuagenarian Buena Vista Social Club star is “the Thriller of Latin music”. Ferrer has not so far been seen dangling babies over balconies. But under Cooder’s expert tutelage, he’s made a beautiful record that expands the horizons of Cuban music. His voice may have thinned with age but he compensates with a ripe confidence and an outrageous improvisational ability that puts him up there alongside such legendary names as Beny Mor

Longwave may be extravagantly coiffed and pals with The Strokes, but they’re aurally closer to fellow NYC overcoat rockers Interpol. Yet while Mancunian angst-rock is discernible, Longwave wisely mediate such touchstones with The Flaming Lips’ fractured wonderment and Radiohead’s imperious FX squalls. Epic but rarely overblown, the album is rich in nimble detail, shifty atmospherics and an aura of calm invincibility. The real trump card, though, comes with the songs: memorably melodic, plaintive and bigger than skyscrapers.

The intense materialism of much recent hip hop and R&B is tough to satirise, not least because arch-perpetrators like Jay-Z are so knowing and funny themselves. Respect, then, to Bronx seditionary and Majesticons creator Mike Ladd (and friends like EI-P and Cannibal Ox), whose ongoing parody program succeeds through imagination and an affection for the music, if not the morals. In his elaborate fiction, the Majesticons are a bunch of ghetto fabulous robots opposed to rootsy freedom fighters The infesticons. Beauty Party is a concept album, but it’s an entertaining one. And critically, one with tunes so strong?from Timbalandish exotica to buffed nu-soul?they could pass muster in the most discriminating circles.

Despite a horrible cover and an irritating name, Missy Roback has made a fine debut album. Produced by Rain Parade’s Steven Roback and mixed by American Music Club’s Tim Mooney, Just Like Breathing is as melodic as those connections would suggest. But dreamy, lo-fi Americana and haunting, psychedelic arrangements are only half the story. Add Roback’s voice, which has that angelic quality associated with classic ’60s American girl groups, and the juxtaposition is glorious.

Subtle, simmering ‘new acoustic’ debutThese gentle, vaguely retro acoustic stylings from British songwriting duo Hudson and McDevitt exude real charm, evoking melancholy memories, tempered optimism and warm pints in cold country pubs. Reference points include a less tortured Turin Brakes or less populist David Gray, though ticking clocks, babies’ cries and the mesmerising “For You” will have you digging out your crusty copy of Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Bursts of energetic violin from Chris Goddard give it an extra edge. Pastoral peaks.

Nasir’Nas’ Jones

Paul Simon had the songs but Art Garfunkel had the voice. Not that he’s used it to much effect on a slew of tedious MOR albums since the duo split in the early ’70s. On Everything Wants To Be Noticed he’s joined by Buddy Mondlock and Maia Sharp to create some lovely, intimate trio harmonies and, as Rolling Stone head honcho Jann Wenner observes in the liner notes, that voice still sounds “preternaturally young”. Close your eyes and it could almost be 1968 all over again as a youthful Dustin Hoffman is being seduced by Mrs Robinson. Just one problem: Simon never would have written melodies as banal as most of these.

Having met while performing in St Etienne’s touring band, Debsy Wykes (from all-girl post-punk popettes Dolly Mixture) and Paul Kelly (ex-East Village) front the elegant chamber pop quartet Birdie. Comprising unreleased tracks, alternate versions and new cover versions, their third album is all poignant melodies with strong, mellotron-driven hooklines and wan female vocals.

Given their history (support on two Antipodean tours and collaboration on forthcoming Gene Clark tribute LP), it’s hardly surprising to discover Sydney’s Golden Rough in thrall to all things Joe Pernice. Singer/songwriter David Orwell’s hushed, breathy delivery-particularly on “99%” and “Summer Feeling”?is eerily Pernice-ish, though the beautifully understated melodies savour The Scud Mountain Boys’ quiet desperation over The Pernice Brothers’ fuller-bodied pop. Lyrically, though, it’s an astute vision of Orwellian dystopia.

Hailing from California, Mad At Gravity were recently the focus of a furious bidding war. Bearing in mind they’d only played 10 gigs, you’d expect their debut to be mind-boggling. Instead, you get plodding rhythms, Slash-influenced guitars, a lot of chest-beating and the kind of cloying vocals that make Nickelback so irritating.

With the universal acclaim accorded 2000’s eponymous debut, Suffolk-born McRae hoisted himself firmly into the vanguard of the new acoustic wagon train. Since then, of course, the field has become saturated with sensitive singer/songwriter types whose frailty is matched by earnestness. Thankfully, McRae remains ahead of the pack.

Produced by Ben (Blur/Elbow) Hillier, Just Like Blood occupies the same territory as Tom McRae, though at least a couple of hues darker, haunted at the edges, by turns stony and impassioned. Loosely themed around the idea of travel?be it arrivals, departures, or just wishing you were somewhere else?there’s palpable menace beneath the softly-softly facade. McRae’s songs are emotionally and politically inseparable, so seemingly simple love songs are really choking messages to the human race. At times, his swooping voice is so hushed you strain to hear it, wrapped in acoustic guitars and strings, lulling you into a false sense of serenity. It’s like lounging on a summer beach, then having sand ground into your eyes.

“Stronger Than Dirt” is typical: a mesh of spindly guitars, a slap of drums and McRae’s buttery timbre declaring the importance of standing for what you believe in (“I’ll still be here when the dust has cleared/Will you?”). “Walking2Hawaii”, too, summons its power not from sonic bravura?though, despite the sparse arrangements, there’s a richness of tone, a fullness of expression here?but from the quiet smoulder, its bleak intensity unpicking the common illusions of everyday experience: “Falling feels like flying/Until you hit the ground/Everything is beautiful/Until you look around”.

Occasionally he broadens the palette for added oomph (“Mermaid Blues” has distorted synths like a squadron of harriers on afterburn while a raft of xylophones surf through “A Day Like Today”), but this is largely subversion through stealth. Even the poppiest cut, “Karaoke Soul”, is a broadside at our Will’n’Gareth culture. Closing track “Human Remains”, however, is darkness incarnate, bemoaning the universal inability to address the present (“Looking away, too scared to see human remains/Soon enough, soon enough, this will all be a memory”) and proving that McRae’s venom is ultimately borne of concern, not contempt.

This is beautiful, chilling stuff.

Todd Haynes is a film-maker you’re never quite sure whether to champion. In the past, when he’s won accolades, it’s been for something boring and indulgent, like Safe, which moved as quickly as Laurent Blanc in diver’s boots in Montreal snow. When he took a hammering, it was for the vivacious, accurate glam rock Citizen Kane that was Velvet Goldmine. Which, relevantly, was gorged with fantastic music. Now he’s everybody’s darling again, tipped to enjoy Oscar orgies with his deeply stylised Douglas Sirk homage, Far From Heaven. Under a veneer of pristine ’50s repression, it focuses on racism, homosexuality and Julianne Moore giving a performance which will be praised as “impeccably restrained”, although one wonders if, as with Safe, she was half-asleep.

It’s a visually ravishing film, if not quite the earth-shaker US critics are claiming. What’s really odd is the use of the more-than-legendary Elmer Bernstein’s old-school score. Bernstein is now 80, and without wishing to be ageist, there’s a chance that Haynes-an avowed fan of Bowie, Grant-Lee Phillips and Shudder To Think?is deploying him with steaming cartloads of skittish irony. And that old Elmer doesn’t know it. Although he made his name with the radical jazz of The Man With The Golden Arm in 1955, and remained a young buck through such gems as The Sweet Smell Of Success, he’s been a venerable institution from The Magnificent Seven onwards, and done plenty of rubbish since his 1967 Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie. With Scorsese’s Cape Fear there were hints of rehabilitation: it never truly transpired. The lush, sumptuous orchestration here may be Haynes’ way of satirising the period charm; for Bernstein it was surely just another day at the office. He’s so good at the genre?he IS the genre?that you go with it. Heaven, subverted from afar.

Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko of Wondermints (who performed admirably as Brian Wilson’s backing band on his recent Pet Sounds tour) met in the early ’80s, and before striking out in their own right they jobbed as arrangers/performers for other artists. In the late ’80s they teamed up with power pop diva Lisa Mychols on Lost Winter’s Dream, a suite of songs updating 1963’s A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector. Receiving only a very limited cassette release in 1990, this is the project’s first appearance on CD, and sounds like a blueprint for the style that would later make the band a huge critical, if not commercial, success.

Is this the first book soundtrack? Stephen “(The Real) Tuesday Weld” Coates’ sophomore album investigates what it is to be human. Lucifer is given a chance to redeem himself on contemporary Earth, finding himself reincarnated as a depressed writer interrupted in mid-suicide. Coates’ dream-like, softly crooned vocals hover between optimism and melancholy, backed by an inspired sampling of ghostly jazz 78s in collision with breakbeats.

Meticulously arranged, touching, intimate, and with mesmerising melodies, this is superbly atmospheric.

Remember back in 1995 when Eric Matthews’ mix of contemporary rock sonorities and Brian Wilson production values (It’s Heavy in Here) was supposed to be the cat’s pyjamas?

Well, singer-songwriter Tony Romanello from Oklahoma has finally delivered on that promise. Post-Sergeant Pepper glockenspiel and horn section lead into Jeff Buckleyesque wailing. String quartets give way to distortion-laden guitars.

The presence of Flaming Lips skin-pounder and multi-tasking whiz Steve Drozd is a further clue that Counting Stars is psych-pop successfully made modern.

The poignancy of this concert lies in the fact that bassist Bernard Edwards died later that same night. Otherwise, it’s a dismal spectacle. Ironically, Edwards and guitarist Nile Rodgers play superbly throughout, but one listen to guest guitarist Slash ruining “Le Freak” will make you weep.

For a group so dependent on elegance and delicacy, it is somewhat humiliating to experience a past-it Sister Sledge warble “We Are Family” for 10 minutes, to witness them plodding with Steve Winwood through Hendrix’s “Stone Free”, and to hear them reduced to segueing “Good Times” into “Rappers’ Delight”. They deserve a better memorial.