Album

Inoffensive country rock featuring original Burrito Brother Sneaky Pete Kleinow plus Band deity Garth Hudson

Pixies guitarist raises bar for nerdrocker

Sydney's finest reunited

Another lengthy hiatus, another Blue Nile album. Here Paul Buchanan revisits the same spot on the hillside overlooking the evening city lights, is still filled with the same surging, oblique melancholy and longing that has sustained The Blue Nile since 1984, is still crafting singularly mature MOR in a darker shade of turquoise all his own. This time, however, the overall return feels diminished in effect—"I Would Never", for instance, trespasses dangerously close to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

Recorded in March, this is the same stylish stage show that Sparks brought to London earlier this year. Built around the Li'l Beethoven set, you also get a big helping of bonus tracks from that beguiling back catalogue, including the scarily prescient "The Calm Before The Storm". The motorik medley of "The Number One Song In Heaven" and "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" takes some beating.

Mid-price reissues from one of the progenitors of intelligent rap

Cult horror movie-inspired synth-pop

Near-fatal 1958 car crash fails to prevent career resurrection

Nebraskan new wavers make a canny swerve for fourth LP

Saucer-eyed Santa Cruz psych-noise