Reviews

Grant Lee Phillips and Jeffrey Clark, natives of California's San Joaquim Valley, formed Shiva Burlesque in what is now Santa Clarita, 30 miles north of Los Angeles, in 1986. As you can hear from their eponymous debut album, released in 1988 to howls of approval from an enthusiastic fanbase at what used to be Melody Maker, Shiva were in thrall to the looming psychedelia of The Doors and Love.

Haunting, well-judged biopic of Plath and Hughes

The closest that Jean-Luc Godard ever got to directing a star-studded blockbuster, Le Mépris, shot in Cinemascope and featuring Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and Fritz Lang, follows the making of a crass adaptation of Homer's Odyssey while ridiculing commercial cinema and giving Palance some cracking lines: "You cheated me Fritz! That's not what's in the script!"

Fighting free from the monumental shadows of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman, Gary Winick's Tadpole—hewn from that same Upper East Side social milieu and following the vaguely familiar unrequited infatuations of Aaron Stanford's 15-year-old Voltaire-quoting, stepmom-fancying preppy—is 77 unapologetic and mostly witty minutes of romantic ephemera.

Macca talks with his usual earnest charm in this documentary about 1989's Flowers In The Dirt. Casting Elvis Costello as the sarcastic Lennon figure during sessions for "My Brave Face", McCartney leads his band through selections from the album, The Beatles and classic rock'n' roll.

Frontman of LA's The Negro Problem takes another solo splurge

K7! Given her wonderfully insolent and vital contributions to Matthew Herbert's previous musical endeavours (most notably on 2001's Bodily Functions), this debut album from singer Dani Siciliano is long overdue. Indeed, the record has taken some three years to come together, Siciliano having invested in a basic home studio and learnt from scratch how to assemble the 11 performances featured here. And how do they sound?

Seven-track EP with four brand new Wayne Coyne compositions

Re-release of '94 box with extra material

Best-of, plus two new recordings