Reviews

Successor to 2000's Ghetto Love debut by 23-year-old soul great in waiting. Mary J Blige guests

Both Jim Krewson and Jennie Benford were raised in tradition-steeped communities (in Pennsylvania and Vermont respectively), rebelling into punk before reconnecting with roots years later. Their third album smudges the boundaries of bluegrass and old-time (fixin' a party between Scruggs-style, three-finger banjo and orthodox clawhammer) to strike a picture of high'n' lonesome authenticity. Aided by the Pinetops' propulsively rhythmic playing, the marriage of Benford's clear mountain preen and Krewson's hickory yelp is life-enhancing.

Reissue of US indie icons' undervalued third album

Definitive 52-track compilation spanning 1958-1972

Marden Hill CADAQUEZ Various Artists THE COOL MIKADO ALL ÉL In the '80s, Mike Alway's él records were a beacon of intelligent perversity, elegantly absurd and non-commercial.

DIRECTED BY David Cronenberg STARRING Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave Opens January 3, Cert 15, 99 mins Over the years, with films like Rabid, Videodrome, Crash and eXistenZ, we've come to expect eerie, special-effects-laden, futuristic horror fare from David Cronenberg. His latest is a sinister but understated study of a schizophrenic (Ralph Fiennes) known only by his childhood nickname of Spider. The film opens in the 1980s with Spider checking into a grim halfway house in a run-down area of east London after 20 years in psychiatric care.

Retired actor Alexander (Erland Josephson) is celebrating his birthday with friends and family when an imminent nuclear catastrophe is announced on TV. So Alexander offers to make a deal with God to avert the disaster. Andrei Tarkovsky's final film is as powerful as you'd expect.

Sandwiched, chronologically, in between Jules Et Jim (1962) and Fahrenheit 451 (1964), La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin) is an intriguing anomaly in the François Truffaut canon. A neo-Hitchcockian tale of infidelity, it methodically observes the extra-marital deceptions of apathetic intellectual Pierre (Jean Desailly) before rashly culminating in a bizarre shotgun shootout courtesy of Pierre's hysterical wife. For Truffaut completists.

First studio album in 10 years from top pop-goths

"Strawberry Letter 23" psychedelic soul boy wonder turns '70s session man