Uncut

After four years, Cali-punk perennials return with a concept album

Noir garage rock with guile and style

All-star salute to one of America's finest talents

UK hip-hop hope's promising debut offering

Confederate quintet follow last year's Decoration Day with strapping sixth LP

The Lancashire-based Palmer has a delicious hair-in-the-voice approach that gives her a tough edge over more fey contemporaries. This, her third album after 2001's self-funded romantica obscura and predecessor A Certain Kind Of Distance, is mostly just acoustic and voice, sparsely adorned with the decorative frills of guitarist Mark Townson, fretless bass, violin, mandolin and cello (the slow string fade of "Followed Down Sundown" is outstanding).

Drunk, addict, jailbird: Paycheck's tortured life too often obscured his talent. George Jones' bassist/harmony singer in the early '60s, his tough baritone, at its peak, was Jones' only equal. Eighteen months after his death, this Robbie Fulks-produced salute expertly summons Paycheck's soulful heartache. Gorgeous George himself tackles "She's All I Got", Neko Case adds fiery flash to "If I'm Gonna Sink" and Dave Alvin does outlaw twang-fest "11 Months And 29 Days", alongside Marshall Crenshaw, Mavis Staples and Bobby Bare Jr.

Previously available only at gigs or on the Internet (along with the similarly acoustic Weed), War Crime Blues is a masterclass in bottleneck guitar and mud-caked Mississippi stomp from this most distinctive of guitarists. There are similarities to contemporaries like Chris Smither in the wounded delivery, but the Texan's style is more aggressive, his accentuated strums—like sudden lightning forks—more akin to the late great Tucson guitarist Rainer Ptacek (see "Ghost Dance" and the title track).

With both 2002's Stories Often Told and the previous year's Tremendous Efforts, Toronto's Sadies established themselves as feverish pluralists, twisting honky tonk, psychedelia, surf and punk into new forms. More meditative, this fifth LP hones the Southern harmonies and guitar-pickin' crosstalk of the brothers Good (Dallas and Travis) while augmenting the band with the likes of Robyn Hitchcock. "As Much As Such" and "A Good Flying Day" sound like reluctant outtakes from The Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday.

Fifth solo outing for fiftysomething Nashville maestro MILLER'S MORE ILLUSTRIOUS work as guitarist/musical director with Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle has sometimes put his solo output in the shade. A pity, because there's much to discover in the Ohio native's back pages. Earle swears he's "the best country singer working today", while Robbie Fulks calls him country's only living auteur.