Famously hailed by Sinatra as “the best in the business”, Bennett’s been so-square-he’s-hip for decades now, his sons managing his credibility cunningly. This is a no-gimmicks, old-school album, though, recorded live on stage in Englewood, New Jersey from the Bennett Studios next door. Impeccable orchestration, tinkling ivories, whispering brushes and a sax that’s both sleazy and classy. Gliding across it all is the man’s exquisite phrasing, and he’s written his first ever lyrics on “All For You”. These ballads, tidily ironic comments on dreams and loss, ache with piquancy when he throws away a line like, “When my life is done…”

CHRIS ROBERTS

Though not a core Wondermint, Scott Bennett has become an integral part of Wilson’s current marvellous band. This mostly solo, self-produced marvel explores the darker side of power-pop

Unlike Emmylou Harris, with whom she must dread comparison, Nanci Griffith has slid into an all too sickly-sweet niche. It’s impossible not to hanker after the more strident country-folk of 1986’s The Last Of The True Believers rather than this mawkish collection. Too well-meaning and consumed by “all-conquering love”, even the songs with a message seem merely worthy. There’s no doubting Griffith’s heartfelt honesty and passion, but flawless execution nullifies intent. Do we really need more songs about 9/11 or, indeed, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath?

She sounds instantly familiar, but it’s just your memory playing tricks with echoes of Patsy Cline and Peggy Lee drifting down the ether from 40 years ago, compounded by the ’50s atmosphere lovingly reconstructed by producer Liam Watson. “The Luckiest Girl” and its sitar belong in 1965, but everything else is stuck in a roadhouse during the Eisenhower years, where the juke is stacked with blues and heartbreak. Golightly’s voice is irresistibly fragile, her lyrics possessing the simplicity and crystal clarity (“turning to embers is all I remember”) of country at its best, and the combination makes for shivery magic.

PETER HOGAN

There’s a thin line between wallpapery ambience and the sort of meditative drone music that demands unflinching attention. Happily, although Olympia duo Growing use some pretty ambient signifiers?a lot of birdsong and babbling brooks, chiefly?their second album falls emphatically into the latter cultural camp. The most obvious reference point for these beautifully phased guitar and bass hums is minimalist innovator Lamonte Young. But like fellow travellers Sunn O))), there’s also a sense of an immense, tethered rock power: the gargantuan fuzz ritual of “Anaheim II” effectively finishes the work abandoned by Jason Pierce and Sonic Boom when they split Spacemen 3.

JOHN MULVEY

There can be few less enticing prospects than the live hip-hop album, particularly when the protagonists are as unpredictable, not to mention past their best, as the Wu-Tang Clan. It’d be nice to report that this set featuring all nine of the New York crew’s members eschews the call-and-response bunkum particular to the genre and renews your faith in Staten Island’s one-time kingpins. It does not. As marvellous as tracks like “Re-United” and “C.R.E.A.M.” are, played live they’re divested of the originals’ nuances, resulting in a one-paced, muscle-flexing album full of terrace-style chanting.

PAUL MARDLES

Ariel pink was hanging in obscurity in the LA hills until he handed a demo of material recorded in 1999/2000 to the members of Animal Collective. They were so impressed that they broke with precedent and offered to issue his work on their own label. There are key points of similarity between Ariel and AC?preoccupations with childhood (“Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups”) and campfires, a general feeling of regression that is characteristic of 21st-century outcrops of psychedelia. Beyond that, however, Ariel Pink languishes alone. Although these two albums were recorded on 8-track, their range, volatility and Simultaneist overload sounds like The Beatles circa 1967, The Human League, FM radio’s Hall Of Fame, Phil Spector, Tiny Tim and the great R Stevie Moore all frolicking at once in an acid bath in his own head. Ariel’s vocals are adrift, bobbing up all over the place in the mix, now a distant cry on the horizon, now right up nose to nose with you, and, on “Haunted Graffiti”, crawling right up into your ear canal.

Tracks like “Among Dreams”, on which Ariel sounds like he’s swimming in his own brain, shouldn’t work?so rambling, so amateurish. Yet somehow they have a way of lapsing perfectly into misshape, so that you can’t take your ears off them. “Strange Fires” sounds like Babybird’s “You’re Gorgeous” regurgitated (indeed, as lo-fi troves go, this is comparable with the shock of first coming on BB’s early, long-unreleased work). But “The Ballad Of Bobby Pym” crowns the collection, one of those sunshine-after-the-rain moments you experience too occasionally both in music and in life.

The six short tracks of Vital Pink (on the same disc) are less multiple, with less slipping and sliding, offering relative respite. Great musical ideas apportioned one or two at a time, rather than in the nines and tens. Still, it testifies to an idea that the spirit of pop and rock past can only be recaptured by returning to the meagre studio means of yesteryear, rather than drearily hi-tech recording methods which clog every sonic pore. As Pink proves, it’s the perfect way to access the frightening no-limits of the imagination.

With 12-inch releases on Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud among others, and a series of appearances on tracks by other notables like Smith & Mighty, you’d hope that Tammy Payne aka Jukes would be no stranger to real feeling. But sadly her debut album, produced by ex-Portishead bassist Jim Barr, offers more pastel soul than acoustic soul, full of aimless strumming and one-dimensional vocals, akin to a lo-fi Zero 7. Worthy, much like the bookstores in which it will be played.

Texas-born Greg Ashley fronts The Gris Gris, an Oakland-based trio wandering, on its debut, through an unruly, occasionally creepy acidic landscape. Alternately childlike (as on the sing-songy “Mary #38”) and darkly lysergic (as on the whacked-out house of mirrors that is “Everytime” and the feedback-drenched “Best Regards”), The Gris Gris summon comparisons to everyone from Roky Erickson to The Velvet Underground to outr

Self-styled city boys with hillbilly souls. The Popes boil up a traditional storm like an Irish Mekons, making The Saw Doctors sound like Sunday choirboys. This live set from 2003 is a hoot, frontman Paul “Mad Dog” McGuinness roaring them on through furious Gaelic rockers and fiddle-strewn hoedowns, replete with “Church Of The Holy Spook” and “New Rose”. Included as a bonus is 2000 debut Holloway Boulevard (all bawdy ballads and breathless flings), highlighted by the great “Like A River” and MacGowan taking lead on his own “Chino’s Place”.

So June’s Flashlight Seasons was no fluke?Gravenhurst really does sound like Nick Drake. Yet this swift six-song successor to his Warp debut proves there’s more to Nick Talbot, Gravenhurst’s bruised soul, than willowy finger-picking and sotto voce pining. The title track, for example, is an exquisite lament that swells over seven minutes into electric turbulence. And his heartfelt, stripped-down rendition of H

Goth techno, built for stadiums and sung by Liam Gallagher and lggy Pop, is evidently a thing of Death In Vegas’ extravagant major-label past. Now on their own Drone imprint, Richard Fearless and Tim Holmes’ ambitions are more modest, that rotten album title notwithstanding. A song called “Sons Of Rother” reveals more?that they’ve consciously restyled themselves in the image of ’70s Krautrock, especially Michael Rother’s Neu! and Harmonia. At times it’s hard to see the point of such a meticulous homage to motorik; one suspects Kraftwerk themselves might have trouble differentiating the start of “Zugaga” from “Trans Europe Express”. Nevertheless, DIV’s most aesthetically satisfying album, and perhaps an explanation of why their production work for Oasis last year was so abruptly terminated.

JOHN MULVEY

Listening to his easy-going version of country these days, you sometimes wonder where Nelson’s “outlaw” status comes from. The smooth vocals, the simple arrangements and the gentle, often sentimental songs sound more Jim Reeves than Steve Earle. And yet the rock’n’roll aristocracy reveres him as a legend.

Look at the line-up for live album Outlaws & Angels, recorded for a recent US TV special. There’s Keith Richards, who learnt his country from listening to Hank and hanging out with Gram, duetting magnificently on “We Had It All”. Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne and Rickie Lee Jones also step up to the plate while, to illustrate the breadth of respect, Kid Rock and Toots Hibbert also appear. Sadly, Dylan’s duet from the event isn’t on the record, presumably for contractual reasons. But the impression that a serious repositioning is going on cannot be dispelled, even by the presence of flag-waving token redneck Toby Keith.

Nelson’s new studio album offers further evidence of an attempt to broaden his appeal. It Always Will Be finds him covering Tom Waits and indulging in more duets with the likes of Lucinda Williams (again) and Norah Jones. But this reaching out to a new audience does not involve compromising the simple verities and virtues that have characterised Nelson’s records for years.

He rocks gently with daughter Paula Nelson on her splendid “Be That As It May”, and “Dreams Come True” is an atmospheric late-night jazz smooch. But, for the rest, it’s all about the emotional honesty of the simple country ballads, particularly his own compositions such as the title track, the lovely sing-me-back-home closer “Texas” and the unadorned, laid-back honesty of his voice. Thankfully, he hasn’t tried to reinvent himself as some born-again alt.country maverick. Authentic, uncomplicated, direct and unerringly true, this is simply how country was always meant to sound before they added the saccharine and sequins.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

Though he’s still best known for his role in Truly’s 1995 album Fast Stories… From Kid Coma, Robert Roth is way beyond grunge. This solo debut is crammed with classy naked city observations like the magical opener “Vicki And Jacky” and the epic “Walk All Over Downtown Life”. With a musical talent to match his ear for detail, Roth slips mellotron, loops and Farfisa in between some richly arranged songwriting that echoes Pink Floyd and Jorma Kaukonen. If Bob’s voice is eerily reminiscent of Syd Barrett, the notes and nuances are highly original.

Flushed with hubris after the success of his “non-carbonated energy beverage” Pimp Juice and a part in the new Adam Sandler movie, Nelly jumps on the trend of releasing two albums simultaneously. His populist rapping dominates the superior Sweat, which brings on press darling/smug bastard Pharrell Williams, Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott. “Flap Your Wings” is a rehash of “Hot In Herre”, and nearly as much fun. Suit is touted as more grown-up. Ron Isley and Snoop drop by for a swig. State-of-the-art pop, but as he’s nothing to say except “shag me”, its fizz fades fast over two hours.

CHRIS ROBERTS

With a dream band that features Mick Taylor, Ian McLagan, pedal-steel guitarist BJ Cole and saxman Anthony Thistlethwaite, Nikki Sudden’s Treasure Island has all the hallmarks of a career record. Certainly it’s more focused, more seamless than the lion’s share of Sudden’s prolific post-Swell Maps work, though it hardly veers from his beloved archetypes. Like a ’70s fugitive wandering through the long-lost songbooks of Ronnie Lane, Ian Hunter, Johnny Thunders and Elliott Murphy, Sudden writes evocative songs hatched in the church of rock’n’roll and performed with a true believer’s gospel fervour. Best song: “Stay Bruised”, a gorgeous bit of ensemble brilliance.

“The best rock’n’roll,” reckons Keith Richards, “is about teamwork.” No one needs to tell the Kings Of Leon. Their debut, 2002’s Youth And Young Manhood, melded wide-eyed Allman Brothers/Creedence-style Southern rock to student disco-compatible post-Strokes indie, going on to sell over half a million copies. It was also the product of some highly organised teamwork: the implausibly young (bassist Jared is still only 18) and implausibly good-looking Nashville quartet acted as a front for a studio ringer (Angelo), a stylist and, seemingly, a biographer steeped in William Faulkner. The story of the three Followill brothers (plus guitarist cousin Matthew) and their alcoholic preacher-man dad travelling the South in a battered estate car spreading the gospel could almost have been taken from Robert Duvall’s Louisiana melodrama The Apostle. The great storyline, though, was only one part of their perfection, alongside great songs and beards.

Written in a few weeks in Nashville but then recorded in LA, this time round the Kings are forced to act out a more prosaic plot?the difficult second album. Angelo and former producer Ethan Johns have been retained, but where their debut was sun-dappled and airy enough to release four singles from, Aha Shake Heartbreak is almost defiantly dense and prickly. Ditching the rock radio choruses is a brave move, as is the bold?some might say foolhardy?step of introducing yodelling to the mix on “Day Old”. Elsewhere, though, this feels like a step backwards: opener “Slow Nights, So Long” recalls the graceless lurch of The Wedding Present. Proof that Aha… is nothing more than the uncomfortable sound of a band escaping their svengali, though, comes with the fact that the two best songs (“King Of The Rodeo” and single “Bucket”) are ones written entirely by the Followills. It doesn’t matter that Aha… is a slight falter. Left to their own devices next time round, the Kings might produce something truly special.

Following in the footsteps of Berliner Ulrich Schnauss, whose A Strangely Isolated Place has become something of a word-of-mouth phenomenon, teenager Connor Kirby-Long has also accidentally reinvented shoegazing with this beautifully evocative lo-fi debut. The stunning opener, “Man From The Anthill”, sets the scene, distant voices bleeding over a blizzard of radio static and warm synth washes, while “Crapstone”‘s na

As if our own arena-conquering Muse weren’t proof enough, anyone doubting the widespread and undiminished appeal of prog-rock should bend an ear to Washington DC’s Apes. Pinning down their sound isn’t that simple, however. In fact, nailing buttered fog to the floor would be easier. Brutally blurring the boundaries between punk, metal and stoner rock, ’70s psychedelia and prog, their third album rampages about in the same darkly disturbed ballpark as Liars, Oneida and Trans Am.

A perverted church organ is the melodic lynchpin, but it’s the lurching, lead-lined bass grooves that provide the thrills. Iron Butterfly fans should definitely investigate.

The prospect of Jones The Voice jamming with Jools The Hands is not a happy one. Containing 19 vintage blues, soul and early rock’n’roll standards, this album certainly makes for a depressingly conservative period piece. But it’s also clearly a labour of love, raw in execution and pleasingly free of marketing gloss. Holland’s boogie-woogie piano playing is an acquired taste, to put it midly, but at least he is on punchy form here. And when Jones strays into lusty gospel-soul with “Who Will The Next Fool Be?”, he still sounds magnificent.