Album

Given his gutbucket-of-blues voice, it's a surprise to find the ex-Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt man's first live album arriving 15 years into his career. Backed by Washington DC's Canyon, this is Farrar's 2003 US tour: the sound crisp, tight and fluid. Alongside thrusting newies "Doesn't Have To Be This Way" and "6 String Belief" are covers of Floyd's "Lucifer Sam" (an early Tupelo staple) and Neil Young's "Like A Hurricane". His solo material is typified by the thudding "Damn Shame".

What's not to love about a score that fills nearly half its running time with diverse versions of Rodgers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine"? Elvis Costello, Chet Baker (sublime), The Kronos Quartet and pianist Marvin Laird all saunter down its plush chandeliered corridors, its tree-lined boulevards, its narcoleptic nooks and crannies. No less a figure than Van Dyke Parks fills up the residual squares and piazzas, and there's even a waft of Julee Cruise (and a shiver of Saint-Saens and Bach) to gratify those desiring even loftier highs.

Third album from New York's Kansas raised tunesmith

First compact disc release for Cave's 1983 Berlin collaboration, plus Die Haut DVD

First released in CD form in 1992, Fragments Of A Rainy Season marked a crucial, pivotal point in the life and career of our greatest living Welshman. After years of alcohol and drug addiction had turned his life into a full-blown shambles, Cale swapped whiskey and cocaine for regular games of squash and full-time commitment to parenthood in the early '90s. Far from blunting his creative edge, sobriety and responsibility appeared to free him up to take greater risks in the studio, and brought the kind of focus that enabled him to hone his live act down to something like perfection.

CD debut for lost '60s soul giant

Grammy-nominated at five (for 1973's "Daddy What If" duèt with famous country dad Bobby Bare), Junior took the Nashville blood and jacked it up with a punk speedball and heaps of seedy Memphis Soul. His second YCSL release is a dark narcotic delight, the beat-up voice straddling the grainbelt between Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams, and flipping the bird with all the wry sarcasm of Red Star Belgrade's Bill Curry. And the back-up's top drawer—Will Oldham, plus Lambchoppers Paul Burch, Paul Niehaus and producer Mark Nevers.

While many of St Etienne's 'concepts' have left me cold, this one resonates, perhaps because I've just read the enchanting coffee-table tome Classic Cafes by Adrian Maddox and Phil Nicholls. Bob Stanley's sleevenotes similarly eulogise the faded majesty and allure of "caffs"—"'It's for lorry drivers,' said my mum." As these temples to a bygone age disappear, they exude the melancholy of half-recalled Donovan songs. In homage to these hallowed halls of grease are kitsch gems from The Kinks, Chairmen Of The Board, The Moments and The Sapphires.

Debut of lean, libidinous mechanico-funk from London DJ duo

Ill-chosen selection that ignores her best work