Fear not if you missed the film in question: the austere soundtrack music that Langhorne produced for his friend Peter Fonda is mesmerising enough to stand alone. In fact, it’s spookily beautiful?the sound of the sometime Dylan sideman working through various haunting themes on a multitude of instruments: a 1920 Martin acoustic, a five-string banjo, a soprano recorder, an upright piano and an Appalachian dulcimer played with a steel bar. Fans of slow, Fahey-esque alt. Americana should apply within.

Having served his apprenticeship with Chico Hamilton, Ron Carter, and Charles Lloyd, Szabo gained wider prominence with 1966’s Jazz Raga. The ’60s found him producing more commercially oriented material with Jim Keltner and Hal Gordon. Szabo’s method?state opening theme, extemporise making full use of drones and false fingerings?is well suited to these cover versions (“Dear Prudence”, “Some Velvet Morning”). Although occasionally straying into blandness, this is mostly lounge-psych of the highest order.

Morrissey, the man who rescued Sandie’s career when he coerced her into recording “Hand In Glove”, once described her as “the most prolific figure in the entire history of British popular music”. Absurd, sure, but from ’64-’69 Sandie had as many UK No 1s as Dusty and Cilla combined (three). This enthralling box set chronicles every A and B from her barefoot heyday to her ’80s revival via hits, memorable misses (eg 1966’s galloping Joe Meek pastiche “Run”), ’70s disco dabblings and Heaven 17’s whimsical B.E.F. offshoot. Prefix “the” with “one of” and Morrissey may still have a case.

SIMON GODDARD

Spanning 35 years of a career that really merits the adjective ‘extraordinary’, this is more than just another hits box. Among the 57 tracks are 13 previously unreleased, other rarities, and a DVD of a 1992 Bucharest concert. Those are the facts. The rest: well, you couldn’t make it up, could you? A Star Is Born meets Hollywood Babylon; Shirley Temple meets Fatty Arbuckle; with world domination, a credibility collapse to match Blair’s, and, somewhere in there, The Wiz. Jackson’s stock has plummeted of late. Aware that the King Of Pop pitch is tired and inaccurate, Sony present this archive with a grasping for artistic kudos, a valid cry that he makes (made?) some incredibly vital music. Nelson George’s essay urges upon us Michael’s authenticity as soul man and pioneer. “Just as he learnt from Stevie Wonder, Jackie Wilson and James Brown, so he’s educated R Kelly, Usher, Justin Timberlake and countless others, with Thriller as the textbook.”

George’s sincerity is evident, but overlooks that since his solo heyday?Bad was as great as Thriller, and Off The Wall was no slouch?Jackson’s quality control has been wayward. He turned down the songs that made Timberlake a star, and his ballads (from the boy who made “Got To Be There”) have been execrably overblown. His funk retains flair: “Blood On The Dancefloor”was underrated, and the ’90s outtakes are juicy. But he can’t reach past the parodied persona now, and neither can we.

Still, there’s a dazzling array of near-genius here. When he’s on it, the breaths, hiccups and falsetto “wee-hee”s not only start something (a terpsichorean bonfire) but see it through. While there’s much left off (“Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Earth Song”), and one wonders why the stodgy collaborations with McCartney and Jagger merited inclusion, Jackson’s heights are euphoric, Esperanto poetry. “Billie Jean”, “Don’t Stop”, “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “The Man In The Mirror”and maybe 10 more could not sound any better, from whipcrack to whoop, from walking bass to Quincy Jones’filigreed kitchen-sink production.

Among the collector’s items here are loose, lean demos (a rootsy “Shake Your Body”, a sketchy “P.Y.T.”) and ’80s offcuts “Scared Of The Moon”(Broadway bombast) and “We Are Here To Change The World”(burbling, of-their-era, sci-fi movie synths). The stuff from the ’90s is remarkable, begging the question of why he stashed it away. “In The Back.” is a dark, slow-burn groove; “Beautiful Girl”a dipping, swaying love song; “The Way You Love Me” is the heir to “Just My Imagination”, no less. Mind you, “Monkey Business”, from ’89, features Bubbles the chimp on backing noises. No, really. Even Michael realised that’d have folks saying he was bananas. Thing is, it’s more “Sexual Healing”than “Funky Gibbon”, and therefore unusually involving.

A gifted vessel rather than a visionary, he’ll never recapture his golden run now, but for a spell there he was in the zone like few before or since, and full of fire.

All the hits (enough said, surely). Plus: mono mixes, alternative vocal takes and an unreleased “Close To You”. The slim gap? you could just slide a sheet of paper through there?between Dusty’s aspirations to sound like her black heroines and the inescapable whiteness of her voice is what makes it so unique and affecting. A frustrated but not tragic character, she riddles every song?the Bacharachs, the Goffin/Kings?with solid sourness and cracked emotion. “Goin’ Back” is just perfect.

CHRIS ROBERTS

While the UK was under heavy manners in the early ’80s, DBC’s weekend broadcasts made life in the capital almost bearable. While this comp only tacitly acknowledges the soca and calypso they used to play, it does full justice to the station’s reggae output, drawing on everything from Tighten Up rudeness to cally weed anthems, from Rock Steady to Jump Up, and all points in between. As with all the best pirates, the jingles were often as good as the tunes they punctuated. Ranking Miss P’s “Striving To Be Free” will bring it all back for anyone who was there. And if you weren’t, start here.

Rising without a trace, Travis have pulled off the impressive feat of selling millions of albums without ever revealing much charisma or personality. There’s no denying the chiming beauty of “Writing To Reach You” or “Driftwood”, as Fran Healy shifts through the gears from honeyed whine to choirboy falsetto. But equally. Travis have settled for a placidity which renders even the sole new track, “Walking In The Sun”, pleasant but forgettable. Meanwhile the pleasingly weird swellings and gradients of their 1997 debut hit “All I Wanna Do Is Rock” feels like a stand-out anomaly in these overly manicured surroundings.

STEPHEN DALTON

Some might consider a fourth incarnation since 1982 a little excessive but, really, The Lexicon Of Love is a record that should be reissued every year?subtly remade and remodelled to chime ever more sweetly with the temper and timbre of the times. “The initial idea had been to make music like a factory would build a car,” ran the original sleevenotes, and by rights The Lexicon Of Love should now be a fully evolved design classic, like a fine-tuned Volkswagen or BMW.

Ironically, if pop revivals ran to timetable, the jerky punk-funk of recent years would be succeeded by a Nouvelle Vague of New Pop right about now. But while the ludic productions of Xenomania and Richard X hint at that direction, the opulent, Horn-rimmed ambition of Lexicon…?all slap bass, sax and semiotics?still feels a little beyond the pale, easier to admire than adore.

In part, it’s been a victim of its own success as a commercial blueprint. The pop transvaluation that Lexicon… inspired?a sleek neo-classicism of Brill Building, Bacharach, James Brown and Chic?was so inescapable by the mid-’80s that it can often feel like the official soundtrack to Thatcherism.

But listening to Lexicon…afresh, you hear a poise that was lost in the gold rush. For all its romantic ironies and cynicism (“I stuck a marriage proposal/In the waste disposal” sings the wry Fry on “4 Ever 2 Gether”), Lexicon…is really a grand love story, or at the very least an elaborate seduction. It’s the sound of a band?a generation? falling in love with the new stylistic and technological promise of ’80s pop: of marrying the crude and the cooked, Brecht and Broadway, the Fryed and the Horny.

This expanded edition allows you to track the full journey from the stentorian agit-funk of early demos and outtakes (and two previously unreleased tracks: “Surrender”, a horn-driven demo casting Fry as “gunboat diplomat, ready to attack”, and “Into The Valley Of The Heathen Go”, meta-metal buffoonery oddly anticipating The Darkness) through to B-side pseudo-classical overtures, lite-jazz meanderings and cabaret reworkings of “Poison Arrow”. The deliciously sighed “…maybe” right at the spoken heart of “The Look Of Love”may have lead straight to Spandau’s obnoxiously reverential “True”, but for a second, on the very precipice of the postmodern, ABC conjured a perfect balance.

One glance at the grammatically challenged and logic-dodging sleevenotes will convince you that Mister Ram (Martin to his Earth Mum) was a couple of coins short of a hexagram. Sounding like a Norwegian Eurovision entry on “Oh Mister”, a druggy New Seekers on “And The Whole World”, and Reg Presley singing over a Unicorn-era Bolan backing on “Quaser One”, this is a genuine prog-oddity. It would be nice to report that he’s thrusting religious pamphlets at passers-by as we speak, but apparently he committed suicide in the 1990s. The future 10cc provide punchy production and some meaty beaty backing.

The seven-disc Revenant box set released in 2002 was the ultimate Charley Patton archive for collectors. But for one-tenth of the price of that

Following their immense investment, and the failure of Escapology to make headway in the US, you have to wonder what EMI made of comeback single “Radio”. Bleeping perversely like a Thomas Dolby idea of electroclash, bemoaning the guy who’s “stolen my Oscars”, it seemed to mock the very idea of Williams’ international prospects. New songwriting partner Stephen Duffy may yet prove to be the foil Williams’ anxious intelligence needs (Christmas ballad “Misunderstood” has a lovely horn arrangement, but little in the way of hooks), but this compilation too often shows Williams perched uncomfortably between fag-end Britpop panto and the new Parkypop easy listening.

Had it not been for the photogenic presence of Michael Hutchence, INXS would’ve struggled to graduate from Australia’s pub-rock circuit. While they aspired to fuse funk rhythms with rock abandonment, more often than not?even on the million-selling Kick?they sounded like the kind of band who rolled their jacket sleeves up to expose their no-nonsense, unpretentious origins. At best they went proficiently where others had gone before, echoing Prince in hobnailed boots on the sprightly “New Sensation”, but elsewhere they epitomised the ponderous mid-’80s?a fact that no amount of comely packaging can disguise.

Anyone familiar with the queasy physical noise aesthetic developed over 20 years ago by Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse will be intrigued and amused by Burned Mind, the first widely available album by hip Ann Arbor, Michigan sound vandals Wolf Eyes. This sinister cacophony, generated by Nate Young, Aaron Dilloway and John Olson and split into parts entitled “Stabbed In The Face”, “Black Vomit” and “Urine Burn”, revels in its own thudding nastiness but brings few new ideas to the table. A formidable racket, undoubtedly, but next time Wolf Eyes should look to cure their myopia.

It’s only a year since APC’s last album Thirteenth Step, but frontman Maynard James Keenan wasn’t going to let the US election pass without comment, hence this collection of protest songs. The raging, metal-reinforced anger of “Counting Bodies To The Rhythm Of The War Drums” sets the tone. But it’s one of only two originals alongside 10 extraordinary covers, most of which are mercifully free of heavy-rock clich

Blue-eyed soul, currently enjoying a critical reappraisal, can be a source of immense pleasure, guilty or otherwise. It can also be an excruciating contrivance. In the late ’90s, all-round musical whizz-kid Lewis Taylor found himself pitched as the UK’s new white boy soul sensation, but while the Marvin-influenced records were startlingly strong, his heart wasn’t quite in it. Not content with being able to sing like an angel, Taylor could also toss out Prince-ly guitar licks with his hands tied behind his back, and this was something he wanted to do.

His plans for a radical change of direction, however, were too confusing for the record company, and thus shelved. Now an independent operator, Lewis can release whatever he likes on his own cunningly titled label (it’s an anagram of his name, see), and the album he had in mind back then finally emerges, re-recorded. By the demand of everyone who’s since heard the (“badly recorded”, he says) demos. Whereas his soul LPs have tended to be improvised over grooves and atmospheres, this is more crafted, the songs written on guitar or piano, the vocals layered with detail and delicacy.

The influences are clear: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Beach Boys, John Sebastian. It’s much closer to that West Coast hippie feel than are other touted ‘now’ bands like The Thrills, refusing to airbrush the follow-ons of The Eagles and America out of history. And it’s hard to believe one man is making most of these sounds. The high, multiple harmonies are exhilarating, the guitar solos eloquent. Taylor himself hears it as a British sound, but there’s as much Joe Walsh here as Clapton or?dare we say?Frampton.

And as his dazzling vocabulary swoops from AOR pomp to unplugged, organic breakdowns, the ’60s sunshine sometimes backs off to allow in more aggressive phrases. “Listen Here” has a hint of Prince’s “When Doves Cry”; “Hide Your Heart Away” could be Fifth Dimension or The Association. He can’t mute the soul, hard as he might try: The Isleys breeze in often, thank goodness.

Taylor’s versatility doesn’t make him a swift pitch, but with each release he dynamites more barriers. You could lose yourself in this.

Tempting as it is to invoke comparisons to CS&N and the mid-’60s folk explosion, they don’t do justice to this follow-up to Tom and Greg Moore’s Colossal Small disc. Operating in a minimalist vacuum, their engaging songs are melt-in-the-mouth without being twee.

Hardly psych, their quiet charms are all about the basics of life. “Mint Mouth Motorhead” and the equally sweet “Color And Kind” manage to be idiosyncratic and utterly immediate.

While they eschew attitude, they still have that brand of certainty that set Tim Hardin apart.

Less is Moore.

Once guitar god with Cali-punks Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs, diabetes and a monstrous drug intake left Ayala a homeless bum busking for nickels on street corners. Now, post-rehab, there’s a Hollywood biopic on the way and this stellar comeback album.

Old running buddies Dave Alvin, John Doe and ex-Minuteman Mike Watt lend support, but the whiskered 54-year-old is a one-man dervish on this cyclonic whirl through swamp-blues, zydeco, country, Tex-Mex and happy hour rock ‘n’ roll. The fretwork is bar-room punchy, the voice grizzled to perfection, the lyrics (particularly “When The Pain Stops Killing Me”) picking at still-fresh wounds.