Chic

Pioneers of rootsy Southern fried rock and funk school

Crotchety improv from Chicago's avant-roots collective

This album from Detroit electro-garage band, Electric Six, invites the listener to consider two obvious reference points. One being Dynasty, the abysmal 1979 disco album by stadium rock clowns Kiss, the other being the inside cover of Daft Punk's 1997 debut Homework (a collage of grubby teen paraphernalia—comics, rock stickers, Chic seven inches). Electric Six nail a kitschy hybrid of '70s rock and disco—AC/DC & The Sunshine Band, if you will—but repeated plays reveal little charm and less real humour.

Musical melodrama offers glimpse of Thai culture

Futurist jazz 10-piece from Norway

Swan song from Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy's post-punk trailblazers. Includes five add-ons

Not-quite-brilliant follow-up to Two Against Nature from US collegiate pop's Lennon & McCartney

Round-up of Felix Da Housecat's prodigious '90s electro-disco productions

Ungainly gothic masterpiece marks partial return to classic rock

The definitive example of High Godard (that brief period after his spectacular debut, À Bout De Souffle, and before the left-wing quasi-revolutionary abstractions of British Sounds and Passion), Bande À Part is a veritable checklist of stylish and insouciant Nouvelle Vague chic. There's the casually one-dimensional protagonists, in this case pseudo-gangsters Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and their new playmate Odile (Anna Karina).