Hyped in some quarters as “the most respected female rapper in Britain”, there’s no doubting 24-year-old west Londoner Estelle’s proficient mic skills or innocuous dial-a-diva warble.

After years of guest spots and shop work, she scored her first Top 20 hit this summer with the syrupy childhood yarn “1980”. Like many albums by hot young stars, The 18th Day is precision-designed for mass appeal at the expense of its protagonist’s personality. A shame, as formulaic R&B like “Hey Girl” or the plastic Motown soul of “Dance With Me”, written by a squad of US producers, dilute what’s otherwise a sassy debut.

Three years on from double album Southern Rock Opera?sniping at outsider stereotypes of the South’s culture via the legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd?Drive-By Truckers are back in familiar territory. Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to be exact. It’s where lead Trucker Patterson Hood grew up and where his dad David, as part of FAME Studio’s own Wrecking Crew, played on classics by The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and Aretha.

Bottling any residual gold-dust is only part of it, though, for the key to this signal band lies neither in time nor place. For them, the South is a state of mind. This record is about identity and resolve in the face of wretched fate. Awash with folklore, there’s a rare sensibility in the songs of Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell that’s gripped by mortality as much as myth.

Classic rock it may be, a three-way guitar lockdown (

The Lancashire-based Palmer has a delicious hair-in-the-voice approach that gives her a tough edge over more fey contemporaries. This, her third album after 2001’s self-funded romantica obscura and predecessor A Certain Kind Of Distance, is mostly just acoustic and voice, sparsely adorned with the decorative frills of guitarist Mark Townson, fretless bass, violin, mandolin and cello (the slow string fade of “Followed Down Sundown” is outstanding). We’re in Joni Mitchell/Shawn Colvin territory here?pin-drop ballads with the faintest country-blues undertow-but, as on “Fishtails”, she can pout like the sassiest of bar-room queens, too Impressive.

Previously available only at gigs or on the Internet (along with the similarly acoustic Weed), War Crime Blues is a masterclass in bottleneck guitar and mud-caked Mississippi stomp from this most distinctive of guitarists. There are similarities to contemporaries like Chris Smither in the wounded delivery, but the Texan’s style is more aggressive, his accentuated strums?like sudden lightning forks?more akin to the late great Tucson guitarist Rainer Ptacek (see “Ghost Dance” and the title track). There are unexpected moments of sublime dexterity, too, not least on a fully-wired cover of Lou Reed’s “I Can’t Stand It” and The Clash’s “The Call Up”.

With both 2002’s Stories Often Told and the previous year’s Tremendous Efforts, Toronto’s Sadies established themselves as feverish pluralists, twisting honky tonk, psychedelia, surf and punk into new forms. More meditative, this fifth LP hones the Southern harmonies and guitar-pickin’ crosstalk of the brothers Good (Dallas and Travis) while augmenting the band with the likes of Robyn Hitchcock. “As Much As Such” and “A Good Flying Day” sound like reluctant outtakes from The Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday. But the rest is too sussed to be mere homage, from the frontier-at-noon drowsiness of “The Curdled Journey” to the Gram-like “Why Be So Curious (Pt 3)”.

Fifth solo outing for fiftysomething Nashville maestro MILLER’S MORE ILLUSTRIOUS work as guitarist/musical director with Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle has sometimes put his solo output in the shade. A pity, because there’s much to discover in the Ohio native’s back pages. Earle swears he’s “the best country singer working today”, while Robbie Fulks calls him country’s only living auteur. Midnight And Lonesome (2002) beautifully distilled the moonstruck honky tonk of a relatively late-starting recording career (1995 debut Your Love And Other Lies came after years on the road in bluegrass bands), but this is his most complete yet.

Like Rodney Crowell and Dave Alvin, Miller seems to be undergoing a mid-life stock-take but, rather than reaching out to folk-blues or old-time country, gospel lights his way. Indeed, he blends styles as expertly here as Ray Charles did on his 1962 landmark Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music. There are strong echoes here of The Staple Singers, classic Memphis soul and the full-throated harmonies of Nashville’s Fairfield Four (guest vocalists Regina and Ann McCrary are scions of the latter’s Reverend Sam). Dylan’s influence is here, too, particularly the less-celebrated Slow Train Coming! Saved! Shot Of Love triptych?although it’s Miller’s remarkable nine-minute reworking of “With God On Our Side” from The Times They Are A-Changin’ that acts as centrepiece. His vocal and emotional range make it entirely his own, bringing added poignancy to the pathetic political lie of the Almighty as selective cheerleader for countries at war.

Concern over cultural intolerance is apparent everywhere, but it’s a record that’s ultimately redeemed by his own faith. Both the Louvin Brothers’ “There’s A Higher Power” and the churchy ecstasy of “Shelter Me” (one of four co-written with wife Julie) are as much affirmation as sanctuary. The pilgrim-soul of “Is That You?” is breathtaking, while the tender “Wide River To Cross” is a brittle duet with Emmylou Harris, acting as flipside to “Don’t Wait”‘s double-fisted rock-out. Essential.

Luna just keep on murmuring, their gliding guitars and hypnotic rhythms insistently reminding you they’re more than just the phoenix that rose from Galaxie 500’s ashes. Their own identity long established, it’s a pity then that this isn’t as precious as Romantica or the divine The Days Of Our Nights. Sean Eden’s songs and voice aren’t as fine as Wareham’s, and it moseys a little too languidly. That said, the druggy take on “The Owl And The Pussycat” is arresting, and cuts like “Cindy Tastes Of Barbecue” and “Motel Bambi” are svelte and sexy? all the cooler for not trying too hard.

With Lemon Jelly opening the commercial floodgates for a more lighthearted form of downtempo, Dan Carey (Ivor Novello nominee for co-writing and co-producing Kylie’s “Slow”) and Rob Da Bank (Sunday Best founder and Radio 1 chill-out specialist) up the ante with an imaginative cast of collaborators. Roddy Frame steals the show with the uplifting “Western Skies”, Lee “Scratch” Perry spouts coded politics on the title track, while the up-and-coming Estelle’s melodic hip hop brings soul to the party.

Over the past decade, David Dondero has been a marginalised mainstay in America’s alt.folk sector. His previous band, Sunbrain, released three LPs between 1993 and 1996 with zero impact. This second solo album will hopefully fare better. Teaming up with associates of Bright Eyes, Dondero’s tremulous vocals and brisk, gritty blues-folk is similar to Conor Oberst (who guests here on backing vocals). But he’s no pale imitator. With songs as energetic and beautiful as “The Stars Are My Chandelier”, Dondero is clearly in a class of his own.

F

Taking a portable studio packed into two suitcases on the road, Bryan Adams recorded these 11 songs in different hotel rooms around Europe. Unsurprisingly, there’s a restless theme to many of them, such as “Open Road” and the title track (“You could be in Philadelphia, you could even be in Rome”), Adams’ instinctive grasp of classic rock idioms can sound as if he’s doing it by numbers, while his ballads sometimes sound like a poor man’s Rod Stewart. But despite its inherently conservative nature, Room Service is still a better record than you might imagine.

With their “Desertesque” track currently soundtracking the British government’s “Preparing For Emergencies” infomercial, State River Widening are doing their bit to calm the nation. Post-rock these days being a dirty word, it’s better to think of their third album as folktronica, much as Kieran Hebden left behind the Tortoise stylings of Fridge with his Four Tet project.

Kieron Phelan and David Sheppard (also part of The Wisdom Of Harry and Ellis Island Sound) eschew electronic trickery in favour of pastoral acoustics, however, sidestepping the excessively academic approach, and focusing instead on shimmering, occasionally Eno-esque reflections.

Undemanding stuff, and all the better for it.

It seems like a good few lifetimes have passed since Paul Weller famously dismissed the songs of Leonard Cohen as “music to slash your wrists to”. That was back in 1984, the same year that Cohen’s Various Positions album (one of his most beauteous) went unreleased in the States, when its creator’s stock had fallen as low as it could possibly go, when Cohen was so hopelessly unfashionable that Weller’s fatuous, knee-jerk remark could pass by uncontested. Two decades on and Laughing Len is just about the coolest man on the planet. A poet, a singer, a part-time monk and a cocksman extraordinaire, he’s universally regarded as the ultimate bohemian.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Cohen became hip again. Perhaps with 1988’s I’m Your Man, when he updated his trademark sound with toytown synths and, nudging his gallows humour to the fore, reminded us that he was indeed the Buster Keaton of despair. Or with 1991’s more expansive The Future, where he dug downwards and outwards to expose the spiritual and cultural vacancy of the times. Through the ’90s, as he disappeared from view, holed up in a Californian mountain-top abbey, his silence was filled by the sound of others (Bono, Jeff Buckley, Nick Cave and all) ringing his praises from a heavily indebted place up on high.

Dear Heather remains more or less faithful to the template of his 2001 album Ten New Songs. A loungey soundscape of ghostly synths, gently palpitating beat-box, almost imperceptible guitar, notional sax and soft, heavenly female voice (Sharon Robinson now sharing shifts with Anjani Thomas) giving permanent fixity to Cohen’s parched vocal. But there’s something more here. Something completed. The vocal sounds more sepulchral than ever. And the words that vocal carries, they sound very final this time. As though Cohen intends this latest batch of songs about spiritual yearning, erotic longing and the limits of intimacy to be his last word on the subjects.

He’s conjured the best of his art by scraping songs from his heart. And the heart is scraped so raw this time around that you can’t help wondering whether the spectre of mortality has become the most regular muse.

As ever, these are mostly songs about love, songs about women. “Go No More A-Roving”, co-written by Lord Byron no less, concedes that the flesh is weak but hints that the spirit might yet overcome and there could still be fireworks at bedtime. “Because Of” humbly admits the dying of the light even as Cohen imagines a beautiful woman bent naked over a bed. On the imperiously jaunty title track, he fantasises about being so enthralled by a woman’s face that he loses the ability to spell words out. Mightiest of all is “The Faith”, based on a Qu

While plenty in the power-pop underground over the years have mined that crucial 1977-81 period that launched everyone from Elvis Costello to the Plimsouls, precious few have expanded upon its pure rock’n’roll smarts and lyrical acuity. Edwards’ debut, though, is audacious by any standard, and clearly measures up to its classicist pedigree. Blaring forth with assured vocals, cutting guitar figures and a melodic sense that marries Tom Petty to Squeeze, Edwards spills out 14

Arguably, this isn’t a proper follow-up to 2001’s instrumental set Change Is Coming. With only six tracks clocking in at 18 minutes, it is?as the title itself indicates?merely a work-in-progress release. The good news here, though, is that Money Mark has largely returned to the quirky pop classicism of 1998’s Push The Button. “Three O’Clock” is a lovely slice of breezy Stevie Wonder soul, while “Nice 2 Me” shows that MM can do indie guitar pop as effectively as he can keyboard funk. All good stuff, but such gems deserve a full-length setting.

With this year’s second album under his Savath & Savalas identity, Scott Herren retreats gently back into a world of avant-garde glitch that previous LP Apropa’t seemed to have left behind. There, hooking up with Spanish vocalist Eva Puyuelo Muns, he concocted a delightfully lightweight world of summery Spanish psychedelica, but here he immerses himself in cut-and-paste trickery that overshadows the genuinely pretty nature of songs like “Ya Estoy De Vuelta”. Muns remains a soothing presence, but the electronic flutters and twists are more distracting than innovative, leaving a record that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Too clever for its own good.

There are 13 songs in 34 minutes on Sam Phillips’ album?and yet still nothing sounds rushed. She merely strips away intros, solos and ornamentation and presents her songs with finely honed economy. It would be unfair to call this stark?produced by her husband T-Bone Burnett, her acoustic guitar is supported by drums, piano and even a small string section in places. Intimate is a better way to describe a set of melodies only made the more memorable by their brevity.

Understated and underestimated.

Based in Tel Aviv, Izabo draw from fascinating influences: Gang Of Four, early Talking Heads, Jane’s Addiction, Television, Pere Ubu and the Arab music of their immediate neighbours. On this five-track mini album (their British debut), Ran Shem-Tov sings (in English) over angular, spidery guitars while keyboard player Shiri Hadar backs him up with her sweet, sunny voice. Behind them, warm runs of white punk-funky bass chase a pulsing, danceable drumbeat. A promising, infectious debut.