Reviews

After the early patronage of Howe Gelb, Oregon's Matt Ward dished up 2001's End Of Amnesia, one of the most breathtaking albums of recent years. Transfiguration...is another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. The behind-a-screen-door quality of production adds to the strangeness, while the likes of "Undertaker" often stop, start, scuff around then veer off at a tangent. Somewhere between a Gelb bothering to finish off songs and The Band at their most bucolic.

Frequently awesome country-spacerock from Washington DC

Jazz-tinged folk from prolific, political US singer-songwriter

Left-field concept album from arthouse diva

First since 2001's Returning Jesus from durable duo

Plastic pop tarts' revival confirmed by box set

Two-CD, 33-track comp of pioneering street funk with emphasis on early years

Much-bootlegged material finally given official release

Lifting the lid on LAPD brutality and corruption

A double header, featuring two of David Lean's finest directorial efforts. Hobson's Choice (1954) sees Charles Laughton's magnificently overbearing Lancastrian patriarch butt heads with his equally stubborn daughter Brenda de Banzie, while John Mills is splendid as her husband, the worm who turns. The Sound Barrier (1952), in which Ralph Richardson attempts to devise the first faster-than-sound plane, sees stiff upper lips wobble as his efforts come to grief. It's also notable for some fine aerial sequences. Bravo, chaps!