Reviews

Third album of kitsch psychedelic pop comes with DVD

Idiosyncratic Liverpudlian's third LP reveals pop direction

Veterans of the Psychic Wars hammer out the soft molten metal stuff

Pick'n'mix four-CD retrospective from original '80s New Popsters, including demos, remixes, rarities and previously unreleased tracks

Crown Prince of ska's classic collection gets reissued with bonus tracks as a prelude to forthcoming new material

Affectionate homage to '40s film comedy

Highly absorbing film about respectable family man Vincent (Aurelien Recoing) who, after losing his job as a consultant, invents a prestigious new career and betrays close friends with fictitious investment deals. Juggling fact with fiction creates ever-spiralling tensions until Vincent's double life closes in around him. A deceptively profound drama.

One of the great Sidney Lumet's thoroughly hypnotic New York movies, where you can smell the sweat of the tension and the barely-repressed panic in the streets. An Oscar-nominated Al Pacino is in hell-for-leather form. Made in '73 and based on Peter Maas' book of the trials faced by real-life cop Frank Serpico, who ended an 11-year career by blowing the whistle on his colleagues, it follows Pacino as the committed crusader exposing corruption in the force. He's abused, ostracised, and ultimately has to flee the country.

The quintessential '90s indie band take a creditable tilt at posterity on this two-disc set. Thirteen delightfully silly videos and two live sets provide the bulk, but the real gem is a detailed and affectionate documentary (reminiscent of Fugazi's Instrument) tracing Pavement from shambolic beginnings to nominally slicker stardom, of a kind. For connoisseurs: plenty of lunatic first drummer Gary Young and Stephen Malkmus interviewed in a sauna.

Retrospective becomes elegy for skiffle king who died in November, aged 71