Reviews

Second likeable album by singer/guitarist once known as Spiral Stairs

Feisty, top-drawer compilation from Californian shit-stirrers

Limited edition third album, recorded live over seven days and out in double-quick time

Exhaustive trawl through Pierce's archives

Legendary '60s Bay Area quintet featuring the notoriously frazzled Skip Spence

Mountain-harmony brilliance revisited

Jack acts his age in smug romcom

In this quasi-autobiographical account of the tortured filming of A Ma Soeur's sex scenes, formerly dour feminist director Catherine Breillat holds tongue firmly in cheek as she demolishes the petty vanities of 'movie people' (including, gamely, her own honed auteur persona) while simultaneously celebrating the alchemy of movies themselves.

James Foley back on form with a nimbly entertaining, fleetingly noir, conman romp. Ed Burns, Rachel Weisz and gang unwittingly rip off sleazy crimelord Dustin Hoffman, and are forced to pull a bank heist for him. Andy Garcia floats around, countertwist follows triple-bluff, but for all the cleverness it's pacy and energised, with a smattering of drop-dead one-liners. Makes you want to like it.

The Damned were always a proficient and exciting live band, and they still are. However, their air of danger disappeared with Rat Scabies, and it's disturbing to find a keyboard-playing goon with a perm and a drummer in a gorilla costume compounding Sensible's permissible buffoonery.