Album

Various Artists – The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered

Sterling two-disc salute to the (very much alive) godfather of lo-fi

Hamilton Bohannon – The Collection

It may not include Bohannon's mid-'70s hits "Footstompin'Music"and "Disco Stomp", but stick around. Play it—his best moments from five albums for Mercury between '77 and '80 —and you're doing your thing like a hammer, knowing you got to stay funky. With a rhythmic fire that burns like a blaze-up between James Brown, Barry White and Talking Heads, mixing African beat with disco heat, Bohannon—drummer and former Motown arranger—took dance to the point of zen, years before people redefined the noun "trance".

Nip – Tuck

As clinical as plastic surgery in Florida. Gabriel & Dresden are DJs who've remixed Madonna and Britney and had a hit as Motorcycle. Presumably the producers of the already notorious Nip/Tuck required a musical sheen as deceptively pristine and callously effective as its anti-hero sex-addict surgeon, and they've got it. This rush of modern techno-chill drives through The Engine Room, Poloroid and Wax Poetic (featuring Norah Jones) before getting fleshy and flirty with Client, Kinky and then Bebel Gilberto working with Thievery Corporation. What must America think of us Europeans?

Thalia Zedek – Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness

Anti-grunge heroine sticks, perhaps unwisely, to her guns

Matt Suggs – Amigo Row

Heading up Kansas indie band Butterglory, Matt Suggs ended the '90s in disarray as first the band, then his relationship with its girl drummer, dissolved. Returning home to California, he cut countrified solo debut The Golden Days Before They End in 2000. Returning with Brooklyn's Thee Higher Burning Fire as back-up, its successor is harder, crusted in antsy guitars, though Suggs' slightly distracted vocals give it a homemade quality that pushes Amigo Row into Hayden territory rather than straight-ahead rock.

Big, bright, effervescent Peanuts pop from Brighton sextet

Rebel Yell

Texan renegade follows post-9/11 triumph Jerusalem with more political invective

Various Artists

Mega-rock festival staged in Toronto in July 2003, where a bizarre line-up included The Isley Brothers, AC/DC, Justin Timberlake and The Rolling Stones. A voiceover drones on about how Toronto needed a "big idea" to restore its confidence after the city's SARS crisis, but this event is pretty average, and Timberlake's duet with Jagger on "Miss You" is, weirdly, the highlight.

Various Artists – Lost Blues Tapes: More American Folk Blues Festival 1963-65

Archive anthology of blues greats recorded on historic European visits
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