The Montreal-based electro-pop duo Chromeo arrive bearing an impressive CV: discovered by DJ Tiga; remixed by both Output chief Trevor Jackson and f

Remember when Michael Portillo told us that a reformed Tory Party had found a warm place in its heart for gays and single mums? Well, something similar is going on in mainstream country right now. Nobody votes for the hat acts any more, so Nashville has gone faux-progressive with Big & Rich’s improbable mix of honky tonk and hip hop, novelty songs such as “Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)” and outrageous stage act. It’s a shameless gimmick, but not without merit, based on formidable musicianship and clever songcraft. The duo’s John Rich (once of lame country act Lonestar) turns up again writing half the songs on the debut by Gretchen Wilson, whose album and single “Redneck Woman” both recently topped the US country charts. And guess what? Halfway through the album, Wilson starts hick-hop rapping, too. Yet for all the new attitude, it remains mainstream Nashville, just as the Tory Party is still full of hangers and floggers.

Backed into a cult corner here, Cranes remain mythic enigmas abroad, where their streams of sadness and panoramic lurches of power grace adoring throngs. Ali Shaw sings of love, astronauts, snowflakes and the mysteries of time and space with well-honed eccentricity.

(CR)

Whatever Dolly grabs your trolley?the cake-slapped rhinestone self-parody, honky tonk angel or latterday roots revivalist?it’s all represented here. Recorded in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee in December 2002, it’s inconceivable that she’d chosen to stay off the road for 10 years when the live arena is so vivid a setting for her songs (and personality) of many colours. Sure, there’s cheese aplenty?”Stairway To Heaven”, for one?but the return-to-the-mountain bluegrass of recent years (“The Grass Is Blue”, “Shine”, “Little Sparrow”, “I’m Gone”) is brilliantly served by one of the most irresistible forces in the history of country.

Back in the late ’70s, Wreckless Eric’s tuneless vocals rivalled John Otway in the it’s-so-shite-it’s-fantastic stakes. After adopting a confusing array of different names and spending nine years living in France, he’s now returned home, and his first album as Wreckless Eric in almost a decade suggests that nothing much has really changed. He still can’t sing, and his home recordings remain defiantly anti-fi rather than lo-fi. He can also still write ridiculously catchy songs with outrageous lyrics, such as “33s & 45s”, while “Continuity Girl” sounds like a bumbling, middle-aged version of The Streets. Shambolic, wilful, infuriating and hugely entertaining.

Electroclash may be officially over in a 2002 kind of way, but whatever Riton?aka Newcastle-born turntablist Henry Smithson?is doing with squelchy beats and semi-salacious lyrics sure feels good. The signature style on Homies And Homos is bouncy and restless and infectious as hell, but nowhere near as trashy as it first appears. Over pulsing electronic rhythms that morph between acid ripples, filtered house and Prince-style liquid-funk jams, Riton transforms the everyday chants of street beggars into cheeky vocal motifs on “Homeless”, and even revives the mildly controversial Cure classic “Killing An Arab” as a fresh techno stomp.

At a time when much British alternative rock is hobbled by the demands of ‘authenticity’, Brighton’s Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster strike a rowdy, triumphantly rulebook-flouting note. Clearly, they have their heroes?The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, Melvins and Kyuss among them?but the band’s wide-ranging vision suggests they couldn’t churn out copies of the music they love even if they tried. The Royal Society explores themes of mental derailment and the black arts against a backdrop of the heaviest psychobilly, grunge-metal and stoner rock. That there are tunes to boot is further proof of this band’s talent.

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.