Album

In the mid-'80s Alex Cox, having made Repo Man and Sid & Nancy to some acclaim, was deemed a financially viable punk auteur. This changed after Straight To Hell, his surreal anti-comedy-cum-spaghetti-western, which had a peculiar genesis. Cox had booked a bunch of less than abstemious musicians for a Solidarity Tour of Nicaragua.

Latest instalment in one man's crusade to keep the spirit of the '60s alive

Third album proper from ex-Boo Radley Martin Carr

Seminal '80s country-punks repackaged

Dolls man hooks up with MC5 guitarist in predictably volatile combination

Demented third from Grammy-nominated Liverpudlian misfits

Listless ambi-minstrel recruits post-rock royalty

Third nu-soul album by sometime writing partner of D'Angelo

Blustery rock by former chill-out heroes

Recorded at the LA Troubadour in 2000—and gaps like that never bode well. Though it covers moments when the band were at their defiant best—"Olympian", "For The Dead", "Fighting Fit"—it still feels like they're going through the motions. And that's a shame as Gene always had a lot more to them than their ill-deserved reputation as Britpop fops. Worth seeing for what could have been.