Reviews

Travis-lite trad-rockers' debut LP

The Czech Republic's biggest little band return with their first UK release in eight years

Legendary T.S.O.P. strings arranger finally releases debut solo album after 39 years in the business

Superior, previously uncollected singles and B-sides from melancholy ex-Field Mice

BEATIN' THE HEAT

Career round-ups for two of the brightest lights of '80s Britfunk

Casually packaged highlights compilation

Downbeat, Neil Labute-esque tale of male inadequacy

John Malkovich slums it as the evil mastermind plotting to turn Britain into a giant prison camp, while Rowan Atkinson, as the titular rubbish spy, presses all the wrong buttons. Puerile, deeply unfunny and, as an advert for our country, downright treasonable. A crime, if memory serves, still punishable by death.

Recorded during a series of gigs in Japan with his band The Oddballs two weeks before he died of a heroin overdose in April 1991, Who's Been Talking offers a voyeuristic insight into the twilight world of Thunders. Gaunt and deathly pale, the wonder is how he played at all, for he'd been immediately hospitalised on arrival in the country. He summons a chaotic-narcotic energy during a set of more than 20 songs. But there's a ghoulish irony to hearing him sing "Sad Vacation", his Sid Vicious tribute.