Jacknife Lee
Jacknife Lee
(Fiction) £11.99
Former punk guitarist Garret Lee's first two albums were clubby affairs that reiterated the eclectic lessons of big beat. Lately, though, Lee's sideline has eclipsed his own artistic output. U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb , Snow Patrol's Eyes Open and Editors' latest were all his productions. Somehow, Lee has found the time to knock out a short album. It's both more rocky and less original than you might expect. The amusing 'I Like It, Yeah' cribs Calvin Harris, but 'Run Me Over' welds LCD Soundsystem melodics to a guitar riff awkwardly. Most gauche is 'Making Me Money', which probably describes Lee's producer job accurately, but hardly endears him to you.
Kitty Empire
Caribou
Andorra
(City/Slang) £10.99
The mathematical precision with which Dan Snaith has constructed his fourth album (the second since he stopped calling himself Manitoba) should restrict its emotional force, but somehow the Ontario-born maths PhD has managed to create a record alive with ecstasy and fragility, a synthesis of computer sequencing and delirious Sixties psych-pop. Snaith sets himself up for a fall by opening with 'Melody Day' and 'Sandy', the album's euphoric high points, but what an elegant fall it is, through the percussive intensity of 'After Hours' and the lysergic oscillations of 'Irene'. A bittersweet delight.
Killian Fox
Kula Shaker
Strangefolk
(Strangefolk) £10.99
Britpop-era stars Kula Shaker's decision to reform certainly shows chutzpah. After making a splash with their debut K, a collection of cod-Indian psychedelic rock as gratifying as a tandoori pot noodle, they became one of Britain's least-loved bands, the result of a pretentious follow-up album and obnoxious frontman Crispian Mills. Strangely, then, Strangefolk isn't awful. The lyrics are as fatuous as ever - 'I'm a dic, dic, dic,' sings Mills on 'Great Dictator (Of the Free World) ': you tend to agree - but musically they've ditched the hippy-mystical bombast for a softer sound with shades of the Beach Boys. Who knows, they may find musical redemption yet.
Hugh Montgomery
Tunng
Good Arrows
(Full Time Hobby) £11.99
Folktronica may be a clunky concept but it produced, in Tunng's Comments of the Inner Chorus , one of last year's loveliest records. Now beefed up to a sextet, Tunng attempt to create something bolder and more dramatic from their blend of pastoral pop and sonic bricolage. Sadly, that extra ambition scuppers them here; a consistent folkiness sustained COTIC 's sense of enchantment but these broader experiments in acoustic pop yield a fragmented album. Good Arrows is not without its charms; the jaunty bounce of the 'Bullets' chorus, for example, contrasts wonderfully with horrorstruck lyrics. But overall, this is less than spellbinding.
Ally Carnwath
Various
Sound of the World
(Warners) £12.99
The annual compilation from radio DJ and writer Charlie Gillett cannily divines 'world' music's mercurial spirit, which seems to find different hotspots each year. Cape Verde is one; the islands have three fine tracks here, two featuring singer and emerging star Mayra Andrade. Belize's Andy Palacio offers another example of a tiny place with its own distinctive style. Many of the 33 tracks here feature displaced artists (Ethiopians in Amsterdam, a West African from Mallorca) and music that is hybrid going on mutant - the avant-garde sounds of Fiona Soe Paing's 'No Man's Land' are a case in point.
Neil Spencer
Wells/Simcock/Creese
Reverence
(Audio-B) £13.99
The band's name may sound like a firm of solicitors, but Spike Wells, Gwilym Simcock and Malcolm Creese are, respectively, among the finest drummers, pianists and bassists in contemporary British jazz. In fact, on the evidence of these 11 tracks, the term 'jazz' itself may be a bit limiting. That is certainly the case with their extraordinary, seven-minute exploration of 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind', which takes the old hymn into realms of pure collective imagination. Elsewhere they do much the same thing with standard songs and a couple of their own pieces. Their ability to think and feel as one is quite uncanny.
Dave Gelly