First And Last And Always R1984 (4) Floodland R1987(5) Vision Thing R1990(4) You can’t say we weren’t warned. Way back in the 1980s, when we were all partying like it was 1999, he loitered in the shadows, a bag of bones lit only by his cigarette, barking at us until he was hoarse that we were all damned to hell. So now the world is coming to an end - the oil’s all gone, the seas are rising, the nukes are loaded and the Middle East is about to ignite the daddy of all bonfires - the very least we can do is listen. Come and meet Andrew Eldritch. It won’t take long. He was a fine man, a wise man… and he only made three albums with The Sisters Of Mercy. We used to say that was because he was a speed freak who just couldn’t recreate the horror playing in his head. But now the scenario looks a lot more scary. Now it looks like he stopped because he’d said everything there was to say. When you shake hands with Eldritch, you shake hands with Armageddon. But we have to find him first. He’s gone to ground, only occasionally resurfacing to tour what’s left of civilisation. And when he does, he’s laughing. He always did. Laughter was the thing that elevated him above the faddish Goth hordes with their adolescent crush on the dark stuff. He laughed because laughter is the only intelligent response to an atrocity you can see but can’t do anything about. Eldritch was a literary fellow. So I wonder if it’s accidental that, listening to the Sisters on the eve of the apocalypse, it makes most sense to play the catalogue in reverse order. Just as Martin Amis rewound the holocaust in his book Time’s Arrow, the smoke from the gas chambers ceding to clear blue skies, so the Sisters’ output plays out the final story back to front. 1990’s Vison Thing - ironically named after President Bush Sr’s infamous statement that he lacked the “vision thing” when it came to foreign policy – is the uncannily accurate soundtrack to today’s abomination; a rat’s nest of corrupt, self-serving ‘politicians’ living high on the hog in plush hotels on Desolation Boulevard, with their “25 whores in the room next door”. These are arms dealers, drug dealers, dealers in human traffic, cranking out the AOR in their armour-plated Hummers. They couldn’t give a fuck for your Fair Trade or your Fundamentalism – show me the money! 1987’s bombastic Floodland is when it all comes down. The geographical location may have shifted from Eldritch’s “Mother Russia” raining down on the earth, but “This Corrosion” – orchestrated by Wagnerian maestro Jim Steinman with a pomp that My Chemical Romance must surely envy – is the sonic backdrop to the dividends of sins callously sown. And finally there’s his debut, First And Last And Always, the remainder of the species left on a Black Planet to shelter from the acid rain and – oh, the irony of the human condition - still obsessed with the suspicion that she’s fucking that guy behind your back even when there’s no air left to breathe. To paraphrase what they used to say about another pop revolutionary: it’s Eldritch’s world, we just die in it. STEVE SUTHERLAND

When Jay-Z announced his retirement on 2003’s The Black Album and sold out Madison Square Garden for his farewell party, few believed hip hop’s most skilful operator was gone for good. A new day job as president of Def Jam might have stemmed his flow, but the Jigga continued to make guest appearances on records by famous friends like Beyonce, as well as bolstering the credibility of his own young signings. A sceptic might assume that the whole retirement was a Sinatra-esque piece of self-aggrandisement. But then, with Jay-Z, we can permit a little chest-beating. With his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter was part of a celebrated generation of New York rappers - amongst them future rival Nas - who represented a spell of extraordinary creativity in the city. Unlike his peers, though, Jay-Z refused to be limited by the doctrines of NYC hip hop. With a businessman’s nose for collaboration, he worked with a spectrum of artists and emergent producers from all over the States like Timbaland and The Neptunes. Sampling Broadway musical Annie, 1998’s “Hard Knock Life” also proved that rappers willing to compromise could open up huge markets. Then in 2001, when a lust for publishing royalties had largely banished samples from rap, he released The Blueprint. With the help of producers Kanye West and Just Blaze, the album took a passion for soul and painted it in exaggerated Technicolor. Flush with samples, The Blueprint combined a thirst for the future with an artful reconfiguration of black musical past. In the hands of an arch populist like Jay-Z, rap suddenly made sense to a host of listeners previously excluded by the music’s arcane rituals. The premise behind Kingdom Come, fairly predictably, is that he has been forced to cut short his retirement because hip hop needs him back. Whilst a gift for converting arrogance into entertainment has always been one of Jay-Z’s strongest suits, Kingdom Come skirts perilously close to the showboating that marred 2002’s bloated double album, The Blueprint 2. In places, it strains under the weight of auditions from Def Jam debutants and guests like Usher and Beyonce. Even Chris Martin joins in to produce and voice its most unlikely moment, “Beach Chair”, on which both he and Jay-Z overstretch themselves on each other’s turf. But a familiar board of creative directors save the day. Dr Dre helms five tracks, and his unusually organic productions lend charm to the likes of “30 Something”, a celebration of advancing years delivered by Jay-Z with an irrepressible glint in the eye. Just Blaze contributes a brilliant opening trio, including the title track which deftly reclaims Rick James’ “Super Freak”sample from MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”. The Martin misfire apart, there’s no attempt at reinvention here: with such dazzling wordplay and production fireworks on display, Jay-Z could keep this up ‘til Kingdom Come. Permanent retirement, you suspect, is still a long, long way away. JAMES POLETTI