When Elliott Smith died last year, he left behind a large number of tracks from which he was assembling the follow-up to 2000’s Figure 8. The plan was to release a double album that would break up the more accessible songs with tracks that were significantly more distorted and disorienting. With no final track listing left behind as a guide, Smith’s estate?his divorced parents and their respective partners?has overseen a version of From A Basement On The Hill, and certainly the more unpalatable tracks appear to have been weeded out.

What remains is a 15-song collection that sits in contrast to Figure 8 and 1998’s XO. Where those two DreamWorks albums benefited from musicianly flourishes and retro instrumentation, From A Basement…returns us to the more unfiltered, denuded sound of his earlier Kill Rock Stars records. There’s no strings or vibes or bass saxophones here. While that precludes the pop magnificence of “Baby Britain” and Costello-esque brilliance of “Waltz #2”, it does remind us of what made Smith so special on his first three albums: the soft, double-tracked phrasing that’s part Paul Simon, part Alex Chilton; the dragging lo-fi riffs; the wounded moods he conjured through his bittersweet chords.

From A Basement… alternates between angry and pretty?sludgily heavy (“Coast To Coast”, “Don’t Go Down”) and gossamer-light (“Let’s Get Lost”, “Last Hour”). The grungey stuff is as good as “Junk Bond Trader”, the delicate songs as intimate as “Angeles”. God, he was great. Inevitably, one searches in these songs for clues as to Smith’s state of mind over the last two years of his life. The inferences are not cheerful. “Fond Farewell” is virtually a suicide note to himself. “Strung Out Again” is all but self-explanatory. “King’s Crossing” is almost psychedelic in its suicidal intensity. While his own “Basement” must remain hypothetical, here are 15 more reasons not to forget Elliott Smith’s harrowing sadness?and his singular musical intelligence.

Clearly conceived as Britain’s answer to Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne, the 24-year-old Lucie Silvas has an impressive vocal range and a veritable committee to help out with the songs, many of which find up to five names sharing the royalties. Perhaps that’s the problem, for the smell of formula is stronger here than in a chemistry lab. No coincidence that the best moments come on the stark piano ballad “Forget Me Not” and the simple and affecting “The Longer We’re Apart”, both written by Silvas with just a single collaborator.

After guesting on the last two Blind Boys Of Alabama albums, Ben Harper has now recorded a full-length collaboration with the world’s oldest group, which amazingly still includes survivors from the original 1940s line-up. It’s as inspirational as you would expect such a blues-gospel summit to be. Harper contributes stinging slide guitar and adds his own distinctive vocals to those of the magnificent Clarence Fountain and his Alabama veterans on material that ranges from the traditional “Satisfied Mind” to contemporary Harper compositions, via a stripped-down and sparse version of Dylan’s little-known “Well, Well, Well” (co-written with Danny O’Keefe).

In less assured hands, the coolly understated aesthetic tradition of northern Europe evoked by Copenhagen’s name might strike a pretentious note. Neil G Henderson, Kirsa Wilkenschildt and co, however, deal in unusually subtle orchestral pop, and their Sweet Dreams… is the stuff of deliciously penumbral slumbers. Drawing on sources as diverse as Eberhard Weber, Scott Walker and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and directed by Henderson’s lugubrious vocals, Copenhagen play out their quiet dramas with minimal instrumentation and admirably spare arrangements. The Weimar cabaret tradition that underpinned their debut takes a back seat, although a decidedly sinister feel persists on the splendid “Revolving Day”.

Despite the popularity of “Little Star”, her exquisite contribution to the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet in 1996, Nordenstam was never likely to follow Bj

Rock purists derided Costello when he first flirted with classical forms 11 years ago, but his Brodsky Quartet collaboration The Juliet Letters still sounds like a bold career swerve. It could even be considered a punk statement in its bare-faced arrogance (stop sniggering at the back). Countless eclectic excursions later, Costello returned to Shakespeare in 2000 when an Italian dance troupe commissioned him to score a ballet based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. An hour-long condensation of that score recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, Il Sogno may invite more sneers for its vaulting pretensions. But it still makes for very easy light-orchestral listening, rich in airy melody and playful pastiche. It’s not even classical in the old-school sense. There are echoes of Debussy but also of Gershwin and golden-age Hollywood soundtracks, plus recurring swing-jazz flourishes that recall Costello’s last album, North. Hardly a major work, but another pleasantly competent string to his bow. Literally.

Emerging from an uneven middle period of marital discord, free-range experimentation and ill-advised beards, the artist formerly known as Declan MacManus appears to have upped both his work rate and his quality control. Because this is a strong and lusty country-punk album placing him in Tom Waits or Neil Young territory.

Recorded in a stone-walled shack in Mississippi, The Delivery Man is closer in its attack to the 2002 Imposters record, When I Was Cruel, than Costello’s polished but inert collection of jazzy laments from last year, North. Initially conceived as a semi-concept album about a Deep South town, the narrative became fragmented on the way. The end result is still steeped in Dixieland storytelling, but pleasingly ramshackle. Linear plots are out, twisted and trampled by spine-shakingly loud guitars. The White Stripes approach, raw and bloody.

As on When I Was Cruel, many of the tunes are thrillingly visceral and amped to distortion level. The spittle-flecked sneer of “Button My Lip”, the valve-blowing rant of “Bedlam”, the no-brakes pick-up truck bouncing down a muddy track that is “Needle Time”?Costello hasn’t sounded this energised for years. Maybe he is throwing down a gauntlet to young pretenders like Jack White. If so, he has an ace up his sleeve in more melodic numbers like “There’s A Story In Your Voice”, on which guest vocalist Lucinda Williams bleeds ragged soul. But the tenderest mercies arise from a trio of Emmylou Harris duets, especially the sepia-toned steel guitar lullaby “Heart Shaped Bruise” and the pastoral, banjo-stroking finale “Scarlet Tide”, Costello’s characteristic bluster giving way to a lightness of touch.

The Delivery Man is not without flaws. A good third of it clanks and flails along, invoking the other Elvis and Robert Johnson as alibis for clumsy excursions into moonshine-drunk Americana. But it still proves that 50-year-olds can rock out with dignity. And most of the time, it delivers.

Heaton and co’s latest attempt at carrying on up the charts is on the back of these admittedly unusual takes on Newton-John and Travolta’s “You’re The One That I Want” or S Club’s “Don’t Stop Moving” (both rearranged as Tindersticks-lite doom ballads). We also get Lush’s “Ciao!” and The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”. So something to piss off just about everybody, then?

Eight years after his death, the backlog of unreleased Tupac Shakur recordings appears to be exhausted. The sound of the Death Row barrel being scraped, this is his first live album (oh, the irony). The atmosphere is strangely muted and there’s very little sense of his charisma, although the Biggie-lambasting “Hit ‘Em Up” still has a grisly impact. Overall, the poor quality, and 2Pac’s inability?or unwillingness?to use the live arena to explore the full range of his art makes this an inessential addition to his legacy.

A compendium recorded the globe over, the bulk of Soft Commands is given over to rolling, near-baroque piano balladry, as on “When U Find Someone”, which hews as close to late-’60s, post-SMiLE Brian Wilson as a late-summer burnt-orange sunset. The standout rocker is “Don’t Die”, with its biting guitars and double-tracked vocals, but it’s “You Drew”, an abstract love song with a soaring melody reminiscent of “American Pie”, that has the most staying power.

At 78, Burnside is old enough to remember sharecropping in the Delta, but his latest album is as cutting-edge a slice of nu-blues as you will hear. Remixed and reworked by hip hop heroes such as Lyrics Born, there will be those purists who will find A Bothered Mind an abomination. Anyone with a more open mind?and fans of Moby’s Play in particular?will love its raucous boldness.

Stockholm’s Karin and Olof Dreijer are the Grammy-winning brother-sister pop duo who record as The Knife. A stark collision of boxy ’80s electro-pop and flinty modernist vocals, Deep Cuts is a fetching item, with a creeping sense of arty unease lurking beneath its not-quite-techno surface. Bj

In early 2002, TSOOL’s Grammy-nominated Behind The Music should have put the six-piece on a commercial footing with The Strokes and White Stripes, but their blend of slashing riffs and nimble, flowing psychedelia was perhaps too subtle. This fourth album offers a slightly simplified version, stripping back the riffs and stepping up the anthemics. Their pastoral side is still here (“Midnight”), but no longer dampens their overall attack. Majestic, life-affirming and touched by magic, right now TSOOL sound like they’re on top of the world.

Ever since Andrew Oldham discovered his “angel with big tits”, as he described the teenage Faithfull, the best moments in her career have come from being mentored by a strong, sympathetic figure who understood her talent and knew how best to showcase it. Oldham teamed her with a songwriting duo called Jagger-Richards, who came up with “As Tears Go By” for her then virginal voice. The late-’70s reinvention of Broken English was masterminded by Chris Blackwell, who brilliantly suggested she wrap her now ravaged vocal cords around such material as “The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan” and “Working Class Hero”. Her best album of the ’80s, Strange Weather, was conceived by Tom Waits and produced by Hal Willner. And in the ’90s, Angelo Badalamenti produced and added the music to her lyrics on A Secret Life.

On Before The Poison, Faithfull has two key collaborators in Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, and it’s particularly fascinating to hear her working so closely with another woman for the first time. Harvey wrote three tracks outright and co-wrote two more, and her presence is so forceful that songs such as “The Mystery Of Love.” and “My Friends Have” risk sounding like outtakes from her own Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea album. Yet Faithfull inhabits them so convincingly that it never becomes a takeover, more a case of the two women finding an intuitive connection.

The three collaborations with Cave are more democratic. He provides the music to Faithfull’s lyrics and clearly worked hard at creating the musical context to maximise the theatrical qualities in her delivery. In addition, Damon Albarn contributes “Last Song” and Jon Brion juxtaposes a fairytale-like melody to some dark Faithfull lyrics on the closer, “City Of Quartz”. Overall, the result is probably the most potent album she’s made since Broken English a quarter of a century ago.

Julie Doiron was formerly bass player with psychedelic folksters Eric’s Trip. Since they split in the late 1990s, she’s embarked upon motherhood, photography, and a slightly hesitant solo career.

Like her previous two solo albums, Goodnight Nobody offers sparse, intimate and rather morose lo-fi-folk.

“Snow Falls In November” is on a par with Damon & Naomi’s finest, while “Dirty Feet”‘s hallucinogenic ambience showcases Doiron’s knack for affecting, minimal arrangements. Unfortunately, she doesn’t sustain the initial magic as her flat, characterless voice begins to grate. Too often, Doiron simply moans, forgetting the melancholy.

Cut loose last year from Vic Twenty (the band she shared with Adrian Morris), Angela Penhaligon’s solo debut (as Piney Gir) is carte blanche for a loose-footed spirit. It’s easier to list where she doesn’t go, but let’s say that the early-’80s analogue of “Creature” (equal parts Human League and Depeche Mode) is as effective as the kooky country of “Greetings, Salutations, Goodbye” and the Gallic ’60s pop of “Sweet”. Her voice?sticky-sweet with a dark aftertaste?is the key, capable of tearing apart “My Generation” one minute then playing cupid to Simple Kid (lounge-swinger “Nightsong”) the next.

Jon Brooks is regent of a timelocked region whose anthem was composed by Delia Derbyshire, where the first lady is the Slimcea Girl and Robert Moog is a knight of the realm. Bordered by the eerie plains of the Boards Of Canada and the dreamy suburbs of St Etienne, with a prevailing climate of wistful reverie, the principal exports are poignant reconstructions of half-remembered TV theme tunes. When they drift beyond the generically pretty (as on the mournful “Divertissements” or the noir of “Crazy Lions”) the results are delectable, but much here seems destined to soundtrack commercials for soft furnishings.

What a relief to find a female songstress not being marketed as the new Katie Melua or Eva Cassidy. Kate Aumonier has a sharper focus, assisted by the fact that she’s served her time in the business, including singing backing vocals on Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt’s 1999 album, Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions. Her songs are confessional and full of sharp observations on the mating game (“I just fell for Mr Wrong, isn’t that amusing?”), and there’s no disputing the appeal of her voice. Sadly, the album’s anonymous, identikit rock production lets her down.

The shocking thing about Richard Buckner’s latest isn’t its low-key magisterial elegance, which is always a hallmark of this fiercely individualistic songwriter. It’s that, rather than mimic his intense noise-rock/punk stage show of recent times, Dents And Shells essentially comes on as Impasse II, unassumingly echoing his 2002 album’s obtuse, impressionistic, non-linear songwriting. As ever, Buckner’s dense, elliptical melodies and bits of whispered wisdom, given half a chance, will get under your skin and put you in a darkly meditative state. Best song: the hypnotic “Her”, which, like his best material, is no more concrete than a long, late-afternoon shadow.

Driver was signed to Island as a singer-songwriter in the early ’90s, but was then offered a lead role in the film Circle Of Friends?and that was that. A decade later, she’s finally found time to record a rather fine debut album. Backed by members of The Wallflowers and Pete Yorn’s band, she’s got an appealingly bittersweet voice and, with the exception of one cover (Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart), wrote all the songs herself. The title track has a chilled, Morcheeba-ish feel, and “Wire” sounds like surrogate Dido. But that’s as commercial as it gets?the rest is classic country-folk fare.