Album

Startling return from the abyss for LA-based Carlos Ayala

A solo vehicle for 16 Horsepower leader David Eugene Edwards, Woven Hand sacrifices his other outfit's thunderous bombast but retains the glowering intensity. This follow-up to 2002's self-titled debut is a masterstroke of creeping gothic: spectral percussion, skeletal guitar and Edwards' ominous voice, lent added weight by the religious significance of the lyrics (especially the startling "To Make A Ring"). Of his contemporaries, only Nick Cave and Willard Grant Conspiracy's Robert Fisher sound as eerily portentous.

Gentle solo album from Broken Family Band man

Portishead associations fail to rescue disappointing debut from Bristol soul luminary

JJ, Sonny and Joe enlist some top pals for a nostalgic yomp

NYC nu-punk trio live and loud, with bonus Spike Jonze documentary

Only a perverse spoilsport could claim that Neil Young was not a giant among the North American singer-songwriters who emerged in the '60s. For this reviewer, he dwarfs all of them. Young is greater even than his hero Bob Dylan because he is more Heart than Head, more Body than Brain. There's something intuitive and primitively intense about Young's best music that Dylan rarely matches. More Dionysus than Apollo, Young puts music first, words second. And what music it is.

Four-disc overview of Dagenham Diva

Disappointing return from Creedence lynchpin

Two years on from first album Delicate Shades Of Grey, Anglo-American duo Cicero Buck return with a more confident set of folk-pop songs. Songwriter/vocalist Kris Wilkinson is particularly effervescent on the tough "Gonna Fly" and the rippling Nashville skiffle of "Little Songbird", while Muscle Shoals veteran Jack Peck adds brass to the dusty twang of "Black Road".