Reviews

The Pastels always seem to find their wheelbarrow positively overflowing with acclaim, though some of us have struggled for over a decade to remember what they actually sound like. Here they wibble along, inoffensively enough, through a 25-minute accompaniment to the recent Brit road movie directed by David Mackenzie. It climaxes, if that's not too bold a word (it is), with a Jarvis Cocker collaboration, "I Picked A Flower", a parody of a pop hit which demonstrates that Cocker used up all his parody power a while ago.

Double CD featuring Velvet Underground chanteuse's solo comeback material from early '80s

New compilation in surround sound, plus unreleased Johnny Cash duet

Documentary about the lives of gay and lesbian orthodox and Hasidic Jews

Veteran producer Irwin Winkler's 1990 directorial debut, recreating the paranoid climate that enveloped early-'50s Hollywood during the anti-communist witch-hunts. Robert De Niro is the fictitious RKO director watching lives, morals and ethics come apart under the strain. A clear-eyed and heartfelt history lesson, with a Martin Scorsese cameo that's a barely disguised portrait of blacklist exile Joseph Losey.

Claude Lelouch arguably never surpassed this 1966 Oscar-winning romance, which sweetened French new wave experimentation for the global mainstream. For all the heart-tugging lyricism, it's still immensely affecting. Bright Anouk Aimée and brave Jean-Louis Trintignant, both widowed, fall in love as that durable theme tune twinkles away.

Thirty-one years after its initial US release, Wes Craven's debut retains its power to shock, detailing the worst night in the (short) lives of two teenage girls and the bizarre comeuppance of their tormentors. Dated (and overrated) but worth a look.

Following the attention heaped upon 2002's lovely I'm Coming Home, Norway's most famous ex-postman Thomas Hansen began to wilt, preferring to "hide behind the beer". Straightened out and under the wing of producer Mark Nevers (Lambchop), Hey Harmony is the product of a frantic's week recording in Nashville, spotlighting the 26-year-old's Anglophilia and US country-folk leanings. Sort of Neil Young and Donovan tripping at The Wicker Man's solstice fest.

Since surfacing from the Detroit underground in 1993, Matthew Smith's outfit have trodden an ever tangential path with infuriating results. Touching all bases from garage rock through prog, psychedelia and beyond requires a deft touch that's often eluded them but, though this record still finds the ground shaking beneath their feet, it's probably their most assured to date.

Pioneering German techno-dubsters relax rigorous approach to electronica