It is 2003, and Daniel Rossen and Fred Nicolaus, roomies at New York University, have a plan. For the last couple of years, Rossen and Nicolaus have been holed up in their dorm recording sample-heavy pop songs on a laptop under the name Department Of Eagles. Now, though, they are listening back to their debut album, The Cold Nose, and deciding that something is not quite working. The new plan? A new, well-recorded set of songs in the shadow of Brian Wilson’s Smile and Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle. They don’t know it yet, but this will prove a smart turning point. In four years, Department Of Eagles will release the wonderful In Ear Park on 4AD, cracking the Billboard Top 200. Perhaps more significantly still, Rossen’s other band, Grizzly Bear, will be supporting Radiohead, playing live with the London Symphony Orchestra, and crashing end-of-year lists the world over with their third album, 2009’s Veckatimest. Archive 2003-2006, then, captures this period of invention and investigation – a three-year period coinciding loosely with the beginning of the pair’s final year of study at NYU and concluding with the release of Grizzly Bear’s aquatic, fully-orchestrated second album, Yellow House (the first to feature Rossen on songwriting duties), in 2006. Those expecting the dreamy depths charted on Veckatimest may, consequently, come away not entirely satisfied. But Archive 2003-2006 is more than just half-finished sketches. Containing the duo’s early experiments in orchestration, and layering, it is somewhat vestigial, but is nonetheless beautifully played and often captivating in its ambition and accomplishment. The content here mostly comes from two main sessions. The first, a suite of numbered songs entitled “Practice Room Sketch” recorded by Rossen in NYU’s rehearsal rooms, are brief, largely lo-fidelity, and experimental in tone. This is best illustrated by the 90-second opener “Practice Room Sketch 1”, which combines halting piano and distant birdsong. Deeper into Archive, these gain a little more form. “Sketch 2” commences with bubbling synthesiser and a burst of harmony singing, before morphing into a fey, Devendra-ish folk song: “When… is it going to get easier?” they repeat, over clacking percussion and eddying guitars; “Sketch 4 (Tired Hands)”, meanwhile, is a gentle piano piece that strings something of fragile beauty out of its amiable stupor. These sketches are scattered around what we might call Archive’s meat: five tracks from the January Sessions, fruits of a month of recording in 2006, intended for Department Of Eagles’ second album. Rossen and Nicolaus would ultimately deem the sessions a failure, although it’s often hard to see why. “Deadly Disclosure” begins as a light pop song but slowly gains mass, taking on melancholy chorales, banjo, and finally, padding drums and tambourine. In three short minutes, “Grand Army Plaza” winds through numerous sunlit passages, chiming guitars setting the tone for a secret rendezvous – or a daylight robbery: “Guess I’ll see you soon/When the coast is clear…” Probably the album’s finest track, though, dates from neither session. Recorded by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor in Brooklyn, “While We’re Young” is a hymn to youthful abandon, powered by Mariachi-style drums and Beatlesy cello. It is probably not unfair to point out this record would not sit on shelves were it not for Grizzly Bear’s meteoric rise. Rossen admits to Uncut that this music is seeing the light of day thanks to contractual obligation, adding “it’s a strange thing to politely promote a batch of material that we would have preferred not to release”. But this record doesn’t feel like a bodged-together contract closer. Yes, it is formative, but it is never amateurish, and where Grizzly Bear’s fully symphonic songs can, at their worst, feel somewhat glutinous, the tracks of Archive 2003-2006 combine a lean feel and try-anything ambition that’s well worthy of investigation. Louis Pattison

As Liam Gallagher is also about to discover, maintaining your swagger is tough when you’re estranged from the musicians who gave it to you in the first place. Richard Ashcroft’s three post-Verve solo albums sold respectably – albeit largely to the ageing ladrock constituency whose definition of rockstar mystique is not wearing shoes on stage – but offered little in the way of inspiration, with Ashcroft becoming an increasingly marginal, mockable figure on the rock landscape. Inevitably, old wounds were patched up and The Verve reconvened. Initially the signs looked good – a series of triumphant comeback gigs, the colossal “Love Is Noise” single, the old chemistry simmering nicely in places on Forth – but ultimately the reunion only served to remind mercurial guitarist Nick McCabe why he quit the band twice before. A fifth Verve album now looks about as likely as Gallagher Jr going dubstep. So Ashcroft is back on his own, although this time he’s employed what’s known as the ‘Albarn Manoeuvre’ and hooked up with an American hip hop producer. United Nations Of Sound is a collaboration between Ashcroft and Dion Wilson, aka No ID, who cut his teeth making albums for Common, mentored Kanye West and most recently produced the brilliant “DOA (Death Of Auto-Tune)” and “Run This Town” for Jay-Z. While this is a bold move for someone as musically conservative as Ashcroft, it’s not as if he’s started sipping sizzurp with Lil Wayne. No ID was favoured for his familiarity with classic, canonical soul; live strings here are arranged by Benjamin Wright (Gladys Knight, Barry White, Michael Jackson), the record is engineered by Lamont Dozier’s brother Reggie, and Mary J Blige sideman Steve Wyreman handles guitar (although you’ll want to wrap it around his head after one too many flashy, sub-Ernie Isley solos). Evidently, Ashcroft is hoping that such company will confer deep soulfulness upon him, and for a while, the ruse works. “Are You Ready” is certainly a stirring opener, its swirling strings an obvious callback to “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (or at least the James Lavelle remix thereof). “Are you ready? Ooh, are you ready for the day/ He’s gonna come back down to earth, I hope you’re gonna pray” hollers Ashcroft in that wonderful Pennine howl of his, as somewhere in the Deep South a gospel preacher wonders who’s stolen his sermon. With songs called things like “Beatitude” and “Born Again”, numerous entreaties to “sweet Jesus” and even a reference to “speaking in tongues” you wonder if Ashcroft’s taken to spreading the word of the Lord. However, he’s quick to clear things up: “I ain’t a Christian,” he protests, “I am just living life in my own ’culiar way.” It’s a ’culiar way indeed – “I’m like a fish with legs!” he wails fantastically at one point – yet Ashcroft’s passion is so generalised that he soon ends up marinating in cliché, offering up a Curtis Mayfield pastiche cringingly titled “This Thing Called Life”. “Good Loving” and “Life Can Be So Beautiful” succeed by wearing those same early-’70s soul influences a little more lightly, but there are some real horrors, too: a ropey blues jam called “How Deep Is Your Man” leads straight into “She Brings Me The Music”, a rotten power ballad. It’s also hard to decide if the flagrant lift of the riff to “Sweet Jane” on “Royal Highness” is an inspired ‘sample’ or indicative of a dearth of original ideas. No ID is unable to conjure up anything as punchy as “DOA”, abandoning crisp breakbeats in favour of propping up Ashcroft’s anthems with a soggy clip-clop. There’s something heroic about Ashcroft’s unshakable conviction in this often quite average music, his unrelenting passion simply about being passionate, and his utter imperviousness to ridicule, even when channelling Jim Morrison and bellowing lines like “Cancel my subscription to the resurrection!” You’re willing him to succeed, but ultimately it’s hard to listen to a lot of this album without cringing. Sam Richards