Album

Two Cali guys, one guitar and a raft of hickory-smoked folk in vintage Elektra vein

Captain Beefheart sideman and off-her-Trolley vocalist lay their debut album on the table

New York songwriter goes for Berlin-based makeover on third album

Astonishing 8-track avant-pop unearthed by Animal Collective

Off-kilter art rock from San Diego duo

There's little original Dylan footage and no music in this unofficial bio co-produced by the fanzine Isis. But what we do get is a series of fascinating new interviews—with old school friends and teachers in Hibbing who describe a loner who gave little hint of the extraordinary gifts he was later to develop, early colleagues who played with him in Greenwich Village and leading Dylanologists such as Clinton Heylin and CP Lee. NIGEL WILLIAMSON

Career-spanning compilation of Cohen covers

Having served his apprenticeship with Chico Hamilton, Ron Carter, and Charles Lloyd, Szabo gained wider prominence with 1966's Jazz Raga. The '60s found him producing more commercially oriented material with Jim Keltner and Hal Gordon. Szabo's method—state opening theme, extemporise making full use of drones and false fingerings—is well suited to these cover versions ("Dear Prudence", "Some Velvet Morning"). Although occasionally straying into blandness, this is mostly lounge-psych of the highest order.

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.