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.

There’s eclectic. And then there’s all over the shop. Chuck Prophet veers dangerously towards the latter on his seventh solo album. The opener is a dirty low-down blues. The title song is all harps and windchimes. “You Did” is a cross between hip hop and doo wop. “Smallest Man In The World” is a Lee Hazlewood-style ballad. And that’s just the first four tracks. Prophet admits he hit a wall halfway through and called in the Magic Band’s Eric Drew Feldman to refocus the album from the producer’s chair. But there are still rather too many strands left unravelled.

Complicated, passionate, maddening, eccentric… Westerberg’s solo years offer glimmers of brilliance, but there’s a sense the ex-Replacement is casting about for the most appropriate musical backdrop for his shaggy dog stories.

Folker, his seventh post-‘Mats record, sounds like an accident. Another lo-fi batch of songs recorded in his Minneapolis basement, it only reveals its strengths after a dozen or more plays, as its reflective tenor reveals indelible melodies. The title song is more mockery of the folk genre than homage: “You sing for yourself/You stand up to nothing/As far as I can tell,” he sings before angrily admitting, as the song whirls out of control, that he himself is “a folk star now”. In the record’s subtext, though, he toys with Woody Guthrie-style balladry on three short, one-verse interludes, and, as the record fades out, he briefly (and comically) quotes Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?”

But while the irony of the title cut and the down’n’dirty rock’n’roll of “Gun Shy” are the most immediately winning songs precisely because of their restless underpinnings, most of Folker is given over to winsome fragility. A case in point is the cold, lonely vibe of “Looking Up In Heaven”, with a typically insinuating melody floating on a bed of sympathetic acoustic guitars. Even more gorgeous is the heart-tugging chug of “My Dad”, a show of familial affection more common to bluegrass.

The tender “What About Mine?” and “As Far As I Know”, the latter practically a page out of The Hollies’ songbook, are terrific as well, but Folker falters midway, dragged down by one too many plodding ballads. Songs of longing and regret like “23 Years Ago” display Westerberg’s most hangdog vocals, but their monochromatic sheen tempers the album’s successes. Still, Westerberg’s written more top-flight songs in the last couple of years than he has in a decade, and a record with as much heart as Folker only adds to the legacy.

The concept for this is fairly original?welding riff-tastic heavy metal onto post-rock-styled instrumentals. “Bad Leg” and “Doing Research For An Autobiography” want to be Thin Lizzy?check out the choppy duelling guitars ?but actually end up sounding more like prog-rock nerds Sky.

Things are redeemed with the excellent vocal track “Taking Liberties”, a metal boogie stomp strangely redolent of early Big Star. But the three interpretations of “Gomez” only highlight this venture’s throwaway tone.

It all adds up to a good idea lazily executed.

Frisell’s freewheeling and erudite excursions have previously encompassed old-timey Americana (This Land), country (Ghost Town) and pan-global pop (The Willies). Producer Willner’s day job as Saturday Night Live music supervisor gives him access to hidden treasures of the expansive NBC music library-unlikely starting points for these free-form funk freak-outs, laced with Norman Whitfield psychedelic soul shadings. At best the stealth and ingenuity shine, but a dreamy tendency to take the long road to departure points gives the album a shapelessness that tries the patience.

Ringenberg’s last two efforts proper have veered from stripped-down country to collaborations with The Wildhearts and Lambchop. Here, rustic Americana, including an Indian’s dream, a spirited Link Wray homage, and a heartfelt, fiddle-driven tribute to Dad (“Half The Man”), collide with heated political commentary. Ringenberg righteously mocks the pseudopatriotic political right, borrowing from the Beats on two spoken-word pieces. Best, though, is “Rebel Flag In Germany”, a crash-up of politics, symbolism, and good ol’ sour mash rock’n’roll.

“This is what democracy sounds like!” chant Le Tigre on “New Kicks”, their cut-up tribute to the spirit of the Stop The War coalition, and, on the basis of This Island, you have to conclude that democracy often sounds like Poly Styrene fronting Transvision Vamp. Newly signed to Island, with more RAM for their laptop ramalamadingdong, the group sound as vengeful, slick and sharp as The Shangri-Las produced by Connie Plank on the outstanding “Tell You Now”. But too much here is self-congratulatory sloganeering, with a pyjama party karaoke cover of “I’m So Excited” a notable low.

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Since it’s hard?and possibly verboten?to say a bad word about Tom Waits, unholy shaman of whacked-out Americana, I’ll content myself with expressing a few mild reservations. From the startling departure of Swordfishtrombones?over 20 years old now?Tom’s every subsequent move has been worth following with avid fascination. But with 2002’s simultaneously released Alice and Blood Money, it seemed he was veering off into wilfully art-wank Hal Willner territory. The marvellous Mule Variations from 1999 at least leavened its moments of gruff weirdness with plaintively unaffected piano ballads like “Pony”. Now here comes Tom with a new album that features no piano at all, just a cacophonous brew of ‘human beat-box’, threadbare Larry Taylor bass and jagged Marc Ribot geetar.

Waits is still taking more risks than most US ‘singer-songwriters’ of his generation, and parts of this album rock righteously. It’s just that some of Waits’musical modes?the Fat Possum stomp of “Shake It”, the Tod Browning gallery that is “Circus”, the sepulchral loungecore of “Dead And Lovely”?have been done before, and much better. By him. The templates for Real Gone?”Temptation”, “Such A Scream”, “Lowside Of The Road” et al?were altogether more satisfying. Hearing those marvels reprised in “Don’t Go Into That Barn” and “Baby Gonna Leave Me” suggests that Waits is chasing his own musical tail.

What does redeem Real Gone is a small clutch of songs that stick their political necks out. The eight-minute “Sins Of My Father”, with its fretless banjo and muted rock-steady groove, alludes none too obliquely to George W and the Florida rigging, while the warped Afro-Cuban groove of “Hoist That Rag” hints strongly at the Bush administration’s jingoist warmongering. But the most affecting song is saved for last. “Day After Tomorrow” is almost out of place here, so plain and unalloyed is its message in the form of a letter written home from the war front. Are you listening, Rumsfeld? A whole album in the vein of “Day…” might be the most radical thing Tom Waits could do next. One from the heart, in other words.

When Nancy Sinatra performed in Oslo in 2002, Norwegian newspaper VG carried a front-page photo with the headline “Tragic”. Yet when she performed this year at Morrissey’s Meltdown in London, a wander through the auditorium during the legendary “These Boots Were Made For Walking”elicited scenes reminiscent of a walkabout by Robbie Williams. Style rules over substance, in the capital at least. And it’s undoubtedly style rather than content that’s on show on this quasi-comeback album, for which she dresses herself in the musical equivalent of the finest threads. Here the songs are penned by veterans like Bono, Jon Spencer, Thurston Moore and, of course, her unlikely neighbour Morrissey. Nancy has often rested on others’ laurels, whether her father’s or writers like Lee Hazlewood’s, and this time is no different. It’s easy to forget, given how iconoclastic Nancy is these days, that her standing centres upon only a small amount of music. Certainly she made many records, but few are memorable.

Here she’s once again dependent upon her collaborators, and the truth is that few can match the skills it took to draw the best out of her. Calexico and Jarvis Cocker fare best simply by apeing Hazlewood, though Thurston Moore’s contribution is striking by sounding like nothing else she’s ever done (though like most of what he has done). But much of the album lacks cohesion, and even seems lazy: Bono and The Edge’s tune was originally written for Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. There’s no trading on Dad’s reputation here, then… It’s left to the relatively unknown Reno to rescue things with “Bossman”, its massive chorus finally allowing Nancy to display some character, and “About A Fire”, which echoes? & The Mysterians'”96 Tears”. That this is the only uncredited song on the promotional CD seems to emphasise that Nancy doesn’t know where her strengths lie.

For a while back there, Nottingham’s kosmic jammers Six By Seven seemed keen to set the controls for the heart of the sun and drift off into some kind of ever-expanding post-rock ionosphere. But they pulled back towards epic guitar territory with The Way I Feel Today two years ago, and their snappily titled fourth album continues the same trajectory towards super-heavy shoegazing of the Spiritualized/Valentines school. Rich in grand lysergic drones, fuzz-pedal overload and drowsy thunder, 04 remains as ’60s-fixated as any number of second-stage festival regulars. But Chris Olley redeems these trad tendencies with mighty sunbursts such as “Ocean” and “There Is A Ghost”.

Having spent the millennium thus far producing The Coral, The Zutons and laughing all the way to the bank whenever there’s a major international football tournament, the Lightning Seed returns. Not a Britpop hit in earshot, mind. Instead we get polished, introspective acoustic minstreldom with similar tunes to Badly Drawn Boy, particularly the Bewilderbeast-ly “Smoke Rings”. The psychedelic scallies that he’s been hanging around with in recent times also leave their trace, both physically as guest musicians and spiritually on the skunk-skank of “Always Knocking”. All in all, an admirable comeback.

Though not quite the out-and-out classic that Lekman’s three prior EPs seemed to promise, …Dog is still superior fare. Both vocally and lyrically, there’s much of Stephin Merritt in the hangdog croon and deadpan wit, keening wryly at a world forever pissing on his parade. Musically, it makes sticky bedsit dream-clouds of lounge, Vegas, folk and chamber pop. Try the finger-poppin’ Andy Williams-meets-Jonathan Richman a cappella of “Do You Remember The Riots?”, “You Are The Light” (where Caesar’s Palace and ’60s French pop get wiggy) or the mordant Scott Walker fancy of “The Cold Swedish Winter”.

Buoyed by the success of last year’s Biography hits collection, the 20 million-selling Stansfield sought out Horn to give her career a lift. Reining in the excesses of his style, the producer highlights Stansfield’s dependably no-nonsense approach. Her smouldering version of Prefab Sprout’s “When Loves Break Down”?complete with a new McAloon-penned verse?is an unexpected highlight. The chattering rhythms and glacial touches on the title track are representative of how Horn enlivens the material; in these bespoke settings, her honesty and directness are hard to dislike.