Animal Collective
Sung Tongs
(FatCat)
There are dozens of strange and wonderful bands operating in the American left field at the moment. One of the most unproblematically pleasurable is the Animal Collective, based around two men calling themselves Avey Tare and Panda Bear. Their latest Sung Tongs album -'tongs' being their word for songs - is rife with surging acoustic party music, full of naive chants, arcane whispers, unconventional percussion and free-flowing guitar ragas. Joyous and instinctive, it sounds like you imagine the radical Burning Man festival to sound before the sun goes down in the Nevada desert and the really scary people come out. Recommended.
Lenny Kravitz
Baptism
(Virgin)
Lenny Kravitz doesn't want to be a star. He says so, repeatedly, on 'I Don't Want to Be a Star'. This being the multi-platinum-selling, sunglass-sporting, Nicole Kidman-dating rawk cartoon who recently teamed up with P Diddy and Pharrell of the Neptunes for a single that celebrated their celebrity, it is with difficulty that we swallow the self-examining, regular-guy guff that animates Kravitz's seventh album. But even though it kicks off with a ridiculous track called 'Minister of Rock'n'Roll', Baptism is by far the least bloated record Kravitz has ever made. There's virtually no coffee-table funk here - Kravitz's homages to Hendrix and Prince are rock. Instead, garagey pop songs such as 'California' and stripped down tunes such as the Kidman-inspired 'Lady' dominate. By the time he ruefully croons 'What Did I Do with My Life', you almost believe in his Damascene conversion. Almost.
Gomez
Split the Difference
(Hut/Virgin )
Until the Coral staggered in from the swamps, Gomez were what passed for quirky roots rock in duller student circles. Their fourth album does nothing to dispel the 'so what?' feeling that has dogged them since Gomez's last two albums failed to follow up the success of their debut, which inexplicably won a Mercury in 1998. The parping analogue pop of their latest 'Silence' single is a red herring here: Split the Difference remains brimful of stodgy sub-Pearl Jam blues like 'Where Ya Going' and songs that think they're experimental - like 'Sweet Virginia', in which carpentry noises feature. The advent of the White Stripes should have wiped out this sort of mediocrity: with any luck they'll now split the difference with their label and farm trout forthwith.
Radionhead
Com Lag: 2+2=5
(Parlophone)
Like tectonic plates on the move, a subtle but potentially far-reaching shift is underway in British music. Radiohead's recording contract is up: what they do next will grip fans and industry-watchers alike. Till then, there's a final Parlophone release, this B-sides compilation whose Japan-only status seems meaningless in the internet age. Com Lag rounds up Hail to the Thief-era B-sides and remixes for a useful snapshot of this band at a crossroads. A live '2+2=5' and a stripped down 'I Will' bear witness to one Radiohead, the stadium Cassandras. But they're important patrons of electronica too: the remixes by Four Tet and Cristian Vogel are as brittle as you like, and 'Where Bluebirds Fly' proves once again that Radiohead are fluent digital converts. 'Gagging Order' and the live 'Fog (Again)', however, are surprisingly simple, with Thom cosying up to an acoustic guitar and piano respectively. A footnote of note.
Keane
Hopes and Fears
(Island)
It's said that there are no certainties but death and taxes but this year we can add 'the success of Keane' to the list. With Coldplay at a hiatus and Travis coasting, the trio from Battle are poised to fill the soppy and anthemic gap with their piano rock debut. If it becomes a single, the genuinely remarkable 'Bend and Break' can only hasten them on their stadium-bound path. As with most self-declared 'emotional' music however, Hopes and Fears is a curiously unmoving experience. It's dense with emotional signifiers - Tom Chap lin's falsetto, crashing ivories, manipulative key changes, echoes of Ultravox's 'Vienna' - but few epiphanies or real catharsis. Then there's the band's embarrassing debt to Coldplay, and their tendency to repeat themselves ('This is the Last Time' is 'Bend And Break' mark two). Despite these flaws, however, there is no denying the effectiveness of their formula, or Chaplin's massive voice.
Kathryn Williams
Relations
(Caw/East West)
Kathryn Williams is that rarity - a guileless folk singer. The gentle Newcastle refusenik was signed around the same time as her Little Black Numbers was shortlisted for the 2001 Mercury Prize. If she's yet to make a major-style impact, her mountain-stream voice and almost naive directness make her works special. Relations is a covers album Williams recorded to quell her growing cynicism with the business of music; its appeal lies in Williams's caress of a voice and simple arrangements sneaking up on big game like Neil Young, Nirvana and Leonard Cohen. That said, Williams is a little too quirky in her selections to appeal directly to the Radio 2 massive, and Relations lacks the otherworldly charge of Cat Power's Covers Record . But anyone who has fallen for Norah Jones's unassuming charms really ought to sample Williams's earlier works.
