While there’s something a touch dated and perhaps na

Unbowed following his tepidly received debut, pint-sized chain-smoking rapper Gold Chains (aka Topher LaFata) returns with a startling album of high-spirited pick ‘n’ mix pop that reminds us why we first fell for the charismatic MC three years ago. Perhaps it’s new cohort Sue Cie’s B-52s-ish influence, or micro-house guru Vladislav Delay’s sympathetic production, but there’s a breezy, confident swagger to When The World…, suggesting LaFata was, until now, a frustrated pop star in search of a suitable medium. With addictive punk-funk highlights “California Nites” and “Show Us Your Heart”, however, Gold Chains is still very much a contender.

Best known as the moody male half of reluctant electroclash pin-ups Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Michel Amato has always appeared happiest producing and DJing searing melodic electro. Hardly an innovator, on Reves Mechaniques Amato updates sounds and ideas developed by Detroit minimalists Dopplereffekt (“Sequenced Life”) and Belgian new-beaters Front 242 (“The Brutalist”). His old sparring partner Kittin graces “Masterplan”, a superbly curdled revision of their “Frank Sinatra”Euro-disco hit, while dreamy synth lullabies “Electronic Snowflakes”and “Sleeping Machines” reveal this rave stalwart’s romantic side. A well-rounded effort.

Sally Timms is not the first to present an album of songs written by men reinterpreted from a female perspective?Tori Amos did similar with 2001’s “Strange Little Girls”. Produced by Johnny Dowd, there’s a sparse and spooky sound to Timms’ versions of Mark Eitzel’s “Corporal Chalkie”, Ryan Adams’ “Fools We Are As Men” and half a dozen other songs about war, marriage and abandonment. But you’re left wondering quite what point she’s trying to make other than the simplistic old clich

It’s impossible for Callier to cut a duff record, such is his luxuriant ooze of a voice. And, though this follow-up to 2002’s Speak Your Peace is the first self-produced album of his 40-year career, the stylings and subtle nuances remain the same, blowing effortless smoke rings of late-night soul-jazz. And there lies the rub. Beautiful as it is?including a wonderfully free interpretation of The Beatles’ “And I Love Her”? you crave for him to strip back the cocktail piano, stretch out, isolate himself in more naked settings. There’s a masterpiece waiting to be hard-won.

The brainchild of Black Mountain’s Stephen McBean, this remarkable record was apparently conceived on a Colorado freeway at dawn while high on trucker speed. The premise is hardly unique?a Velvets chug spiked with MBV fuzz-drone?but McBean bathes it all in peep-show neon, electric pulse and raging libido in tow. Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret for the Tindersticks crowd. Standout is the noirish one-night fling of “Tourist In Your Town”, but chunks are torn off Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”, alongside the Bo Diddley bleat of “Sweet ’69” and “I (Fuck) Mountains”‘ aching throb. A cult classic in the making.

For every band that’s copying The Libertines, there are plenty more still lurking in Coldplay’s shadow. Take Alaska. While undoubtedly bleaker and darker than Chris Martin and co, their slow-burning gloom fits loosely within the vogue for epic emotionalism (see Elbow, Doves et al). When this is as affecting as it is on “All The Dead Astronauts”, this is hardly a problem. They also have a surprising range?narcotic drone-rock, crepuscular slowcore and creepy interludes figure among the rolling anthems.

Who would have predicted that the year’s most thrilling and inventive ‘British’ album would in fact be delivered by a Montreal aesthete and his band? Had anyone in Britain actually heard of The Dears, would they have bet on the corpse of Britpop being reanimated and reconfigured by frontman Murray Lightburn, a cocksure Dickensian rogue who looks like he’s gone 10 rounds with life and been knocked down in each? Would they even have dared to suggest that this palest of white boy’s music could be (whisper it) hijacked by a black intellectual maverick?

The Dears are all about breaking conventions, and when you’re taking on the sacred cows of indie pop, you’d better be as good as you think you are. The Dears take as their touchstones The Smiths and mid-’90s Blur, a doubly dangerous thing to do when Lightburn’s vocals recall both Morrissey and Damon Albarn. Fortunately, The Dears are frequently even better than they believe, for the most part able to outrun these ghosts and bust through the structural constraints their influences impose, seemingly fearless in their pursuit of music of true pathos, gravity and swagger. This is seriously literate stuff, and all the better for it.

From the outset it’s clear that Lightburn’s intentions are precocious, crediting himself here as sole writer, producer and director. It’s his role as “director”?in the cinematic sense?that sets No Cities Left apart as he seeks to create a record that carries a narrative, both musical and lyrical, without becoming a turgid concept album. At times they do suffer from the weight of their inspirations?”Lost In The Plot” sounds worryingly like Gene?and, were this the film it dreams of, it would benefit from an intermission. But at its finest?”Pinned Together, Falling Apart”‘s blood-curdling denials of love lost, “Never Destroy Us” hurtling towards its unexpected and desperate d

This gloriously frazzled album is the finest work to date from Andy Meecham, half of hip house duo Chicken Lips and one-time Bizarre Inc member. Composed on vintage analogue hardware and propelled by generous Krautrock grooves, Aimee Tallulah Is Hypnotised could be the freewheeling soundtrack to a William Burroughs-penned lysergic head-movie helmed by John Carpenter. Meecham skilfully steers this enjoyably indulgent romp through disco, radiophonica and flute-fried psychedelia without ever losing focus, proving, on the addled odysseys “Watching Flying Body Parts” and “SH3A”, that a cracking tune always wins out. Magnificent, man.

The multi-million-selling soul charlatan cobbles together refried chunks of The Isleys, Stevie Wonder and Timmy Thomas and… it’s fantastic. Happy People is an extraordinarily buoyant record, giving off irresistible party vibes and forcing you to step like it’s 1989 and Jam & Lewis (rather than Kanye or The Neptunes) are the names to drop. He’s the black Strokes: you’ve heard it before, but it’s fun to hear again. U Saved Me is lumpy ballads full of guff about “faith” and “spirit”, but that first album, with its contrived between-tracks atmosphere and banter, is a curning, crackling, can’t-keep-still classic.

For his new band project, Mick Fleetwood uses players better known behind the scenes, rather than making it a star-studded affair. Whatever the label says, this is essentially singer/guitarist Todd Smallwood’s album. He has a hand in writing all but one of the songs, Fleetwood taking co-credit only on the drum-fuelled “Passion” which, we’re sad to relate, is no Tusk. “No Borders” drags on board Fleetwood’s long-time partner John McVie and lost Mac slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer. It’s a nod to his past on an album that might actually have been exhumed from incarceration 30 years ago. Well intentioned, well executed, but for Fleetwood Mac completists only.

Unlike the bulk of Planet Mu’s abrasive buzz-saw output, Special Forces is a carefully measured yet heartfelt album that owes a great deal to the neo-psych whimsy of The Flaming Lips and early Aphex Twin. Mostly instrumental with a few mournful vocal tracks, it’s reminiscent, too, of Mu label boss Mike

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One fears their career will be forever hindered by the ascension of The Flaming Lips, but the Stars may find, in compensation, that their long-standing association with the now notorious Toerag Studios lends them shadowy cool. Vastly underrated, they refract the spirit of Double Indemnity through originally twisted shades of Morricone, Hazlewood, Tindersticks and the Mary Chain. Max D

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 (