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.

If anyone can make the uneasy partnership of comedy and hip hop work, it’s f

Billed as a return to the Reprazent mainman’s underground indie-label roots, Return To V is a lengthy anthology which varies immensely in quality.

While the walloping sub-bass rumbles and precisely knotted beat clusters of “Shoulder To Shoulder” or “On And On” surf the hardstep fringes of Aphex or Squarepusher at their most extreme, Size’s posse of guest MCs also deliver banal Brit-rap and ragga-chat of a distinctly 1992 flavour. It’s striking how Size now sounds frozen in time while fellow Mercury prize-winner Dizzee Rascal is tearing up the old drum ‘n’bass rulebook.

Since his 1999 solo debut Black On Both Sides, Brooklyn’s Dante “Mos Def” Smith has proved himself to be hip-hop’s renaissance man: the backpack rapper who’s also a Hollywood star and Broadway actor, political activist and awards show host. Here he resists the obvious big-budget comeback and (aside from the glorious Kanye West-produced “Sunshine”) delivers an experimental and melancholic set. “Black Jack” is a bass-heavy blues jam, “Boogie Man Song” dispenses with traditional hip-hop beats and suggests a new kind of lo-fi folk-soul, while the 11-minute “Modern Marvel” manages to sample Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On” and get away with it. The rap metal of “Ghetto Rock” and “Zimzallabim” might just be a step too far, though.

MALIK MEER

Pro Forma’s original line-up featured a synth/keyboards player, drummer, guitarist and vocalist called Paul Thomson, now better known as the drummer from Franz Ferdinand. Prurient curiosity isn’t the only reason to investigate this short collection of the band’s output to date, however.

The (then) trio dubbed their sound “council house”, which is as accurate a description as any of their tense, darkly glowering lo-fi disco-punk approach. Joy Division, Kraftwerk, The Normal and “Being Boiled”-era Human League have clearly all made an impact here, but the band’s post-house and techno interests divert them from the over-familiar, retro road.

Befitting a band permanently on tour, Biffy Clyro are well drilled, precise alt.rock shouters, now keen on extending their range. They shouldn’t have bothered. Recent Top 30 single “Glitter And Trauma” bizarrely mixes Buggles with Cheap Trick’s dafter moments. Elsewhere the prog-rock timescales, pompous a cappella tracks and cartoon synth crunches would make even Muse go crimson. A pity because, on the likes of “Only One Word Comes To Mind”, Biffy Clyro capture grunge’s emotionally bruised centre quite naturally.