Uncut

Second full-lengther from Liverpool-via-Bradford quintet, its title inspired by a Bulgarian folk ditty

Russ Meyer meets The White Stripes

Difficult third album dilemma quashed by slow-burning Madison, Wisconsin quintet

After the early patronage of Howe Gelb, Oregon's Matt Ward dished up 2001's End Of Amnesia, one of the most breathtaking albums of recent years. Transfiguration...is another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. The behind-a-screen-door quality of production adds to the strangeness, while the likes of "Undertaker" often stop, start, scuff around then veer off at a tangent. Somewhere between a Gelb bothering to finish off songs and The Band at their most bucolic.

After the largely unheralded triumph of 2001's Tremendous Efforts, Toronto brothers Dallas and Travis Good-along with Sean Dean and sometime Pernice Brother, Mike Belitsky-serve up their finest yet. With Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor replacing old producer Steve Albini, their trademark mix of Sergio Leone twitch, surf, cowpunk and desert-rock is cushioned with Lee Hazlewood-like ballads ("Oak Ridges", "The Story's Often Told"), fat horns ("Mile Over Mecca") and spooky duets (Dallas and mother Margaret's "A Steep Climb"), without compromising intensity.

La Ciccone does it again with the help of French sonic eccentric

Latest attempt to "change the face of art"

Exiled Scots maverick follows up 2001's Folktronic, now with added glitches

Credit Atomic Kitten for one thing—their version of "Eternal Flame" is partially responsible for this Valley High reunion. Susanna Hoffs' acting career (with her mum) is a thing of the past, so the chief Bangle has motivated her crew to come up with an assured, if airbrushed, female power pop disc that's loaded with tooth-kind melodies: "Stealing Rosemary" and "Single By Choice" are instant brain worms. Whether demand for the Bangles' cute Cali cool exists today is open to debate. Hurrah for big hair, anyway.

One-time Ed Kuepper cohort Hancock has been in various Australian bands since the '80s, and it shows across her maturely enthralling solo debut, on which she sounds like a less fractured Marianne Faithfull. Backed by a fine band who effortlessly blur the boundaries between rock, folk and jazz, her own compositions are marked by arresting observations on the war of the sexes. Yet best of all are her extraordinarily haunting covers of David Crosby's "Everybody's Been Burned" and, more improbably, Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" done country-rock style.