Most famous as an advert-friendly session singer (she’s voiced commercials for Brooke Bond and British Gas), Madeline Bell’s debut is nonetheless a lost classic of swoony period pop-soul. Moving to London from her native New Jersey in the early ’60s, Bell worked as a backing singer?most notably for Dusty Springfield?before cutting a handful of sides of Dionne Warwick-style tear-stained soul balladry. Featuring northern soul staple “Picture Me Gone” and the St Etienne-sampled “I Can’t Wait To See My Baby’s Face”, Bell’s A Poppin’ is affecting enough to save Bell’s reputation after recent outings cameoing on Boyzone albums and hawking Big Macs.

A band who can plot a course from the choirs of ’50s Cincinnati to the studio of R Kelly, via epochal R&B, Motown and psychedelic soul are in need of few lessons in adapting to the zeitgeist. Which makes this album of hip hop ‘reconstructions’ of Isley Brothers classics, stuck awkwardly between honorific tribute and more radical reinterpretation, all the more of a tepid affair. ?uestlove barely tinkers with “Who’s That Lady?”, the Black Eyed Peas make a drab slow jam of “Tell Me When You Need It Again” and only Mos Def, with a rapt, downbeat drawl through “Groove With You”, seems genuinely seduced by the spirit of the songs.

The career of Jim Croce was cut short when he died in a 1973 plane crash at the age of 30. Hit singles “Operator”, “I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song”, “Time In A Bottle” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” are all here, alongside 63 further tracks taken variously from the three albums he released in his lifetime, and assorted live and audition tapes.

At times his warm voice and sentimental tendencies recall Don McLean. But he also possessed a wry humour and down-to-earth conviction that stand in the timeless tradition of the best American storytelling.

In the light of this double reissue, it’s possible to follow a crooked narrative through Richmond Fontaine’s troubled world. If the leitmotif of this year’s critically lauded Post To Wire (Uncut’s Album of the Month for May) was a kind of spiritual regeneration?a desperate urge to reconnect with the world?1999’s Lost Son, their third album, was where the initial damage was done and 2002’s Winnemucca was the bunkering down and licking of wounds.

Sonically, Lost Son is mean and feral, sprayed with guitar cuss and fuzz, at times slowing to an exhausted shuffle. In vocal and six-string attack, think Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression or The Replacements’ Hootenanny. Even with the amps down, it’s a restless beast. Arriving at a time when the personal life of singer/songwriter/guitarist Willy Vlautin was shot to hell, it reflects his own weary pessimism. Perhaps understandably, this aptly titled record sometimes loops in on itself, scuppered by its own confusion. What’s immediately striking, however, is the novelistic thrust of the hard-luck lyrics. Like Carver or Cheever, Vlautin has an intuitive feel for life on the margins, tragedy in miniature. Typical is “Cascade”: the tale of an estranged teenage kid off to collect a puny inheritance from his dead mother’s mountain house up “where the rivers are like moving lakes” and “you can disappear without a trace”, only to be ambushed by a step-brother and left in the roadside dirt for $1400.

By Winnemucca?named after the Nevada desert town where inveterate gambler Vlautin would often go to escape?the literary strain had become more evident, largely due to its acoustic pace and the emergence of Paul Brainard’s pedal-steel from the murk. Take Lost Son as the electric storm and this as the crackle of day-after static. “Winner’s Casino” is a clear statement of retreat, Vlautin heading for Winnemucca “cause it seems like the only place I know where nothing’s in decline/Cause there’s nothing to do but rise”. The fine art of disappearance is perfected everywhere, from “Northline”‘s skinhead girl with “scarred-up white legs” to the fading car-wreck victim in epic closer “Western Skyline”. If Post To Wire stoked your interest in the blood, guts and emotional circuitry of this extraordinary band, you need these albums.

Somewhere between Blow-up and The Charge Of The Light Brigade, Hemmings headed to Hollywood and recorded Happens, backed by The Byrds and produced by their manager, Jim Dickson. Happily, despite its overblown psych-baroque ? and unlike similar forays by Richards Chamberlain and Harris ? this is no dud. Hemmings had been a boy opera star, and started life on the UK folk circuit. Gene Clark’s unreleased “Back Street Mirror” is tenderly rendered, as is Bill Martin’s “The Soldier Wind”, while “Talkin’LA” (co-written with Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman) spins a medieval raga like “Eight Miles High”, complete with buzzing saxophone, to improbably stirring effect.

With hindsight, the Rocket’s choreographed, anthemic garage punk peaked six years too early. Had they arrived in 2002, slicked-back and uniformed, chances are they would’ve stolen The Hives’thunder. Rock’n’roll may have caught up in the interim, but 1992’s Circa: Now! remains ferociously potent. An inventive mix of grinding riffs, rabble-rousing choruses and Stax horn charts, it still sounds tremendous?like Dexys Midnight Runners schooled in US hardcore, loosely. A punchy new mix, four good bonus tracks and sleevenotes by Rocket kingpin John “Speedo” Reis complete the package: Reis’ tale of recording in LA during the riots explains, in part, the album’s vivid, fervid atmosphere.

With Roger Chapman’s “manic behaviour, contortions, and swearing”, as the wonderfully inept sleevenotes put it, and Charlie Whitney, Rick Grech and Jim King’s delicate augmentation, Family developed one of the most distinctive sounds of the late ’60s. Given the band’s propensity for live improvisation, the earliest tracks here remain surprisingly faithful to their studio counterparts. The lull and lilt of the hippie pastorale gives way to a more boogie-driven direction on selections from the band’s third album, A Song For Me, and by the time of “No Mules Fool” in late 1969, hit singles and campus acclaim beckoned.

Axl Rose may have frozen Guns N’Roses in semi-limbo for a decade, but the rise of post-Guns supergroup Velvet Revolver has renewed interest in LA’s last great self-styled hard-rocking outlaws. Billed as an album of buried treasure from the band’s earliest incarnation, The Roots Of…actually features just five tracks of sub-Iron Maiden punker metal, each of which is then remixed twice by ex-Gunner Gilby Clarke and Cinderella drummer Fred Coury. Wherever you stand on Axl’s songwriting skills, nobody besides autistic completists needs to own even one version of these generic pre-Slash slammers, never mind three.

Like the recent revival of Candi Staton’s lesser-known work, Honest Jon’s Swann compilation is a trawl through the soul archives which produces some real jewels. This is ‘soul’ which often thinks it’s country, what with serrated takes on “Stand By Your Man” and “Angel Of The Morning”. Louisiana-born Bettye (real name: Betty Jean Champion) didn’t enjoy the business much in the late ’60s (when racism was still rife), and disappeared long ago. She’s now a teacher in Vegas. But she once made the rainiest stetson ballads scorch with R&B sparkle: Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” resonates with her rich, regal yet ripped-in-places tones. Terrific.

McGhie’s solo debut is one of those funk records whose price (circa $600) and legend climbs in inverse proportion to the number of people who’ve actually heard it. Mercifully, it proves to be worth at least some of the fuss. A Studio One veteran who emigrated to Toronto in 1967, McGhie mostly abandoned reggae (save the fabulously amiable “Cool It”) in favour of a grab-bag of funk and soul styles. The Sounds Of Joy have an easy grace, and McGhie makes a decent fist of “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”. Militant crate diggers, though, will be weeping over the over-priced vinyl.

It’s no surprise that Sweet Inspiration, recorded in 1989, has remained unreleased until now. The soulful southern voice is still there and the band, which features Spooner Oldham on keyboards, is clearly accomplished. But the material is weak and covers of the Oldham-Penn title track and a steel drum-driven “Let It Rain” far outshine the eight characterless Bramlett originals.

Worse, the horrible ’80s-style production renders much of the record, and the drums in particular, nearly unlistenable.

The evergreen rock chuggings of Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons get another collective airing on this handy compendium of the San Jos

San Franciscan rock satirists The Tubes actually pulled in some heavyweight support as they camped out in ’70s America. Drawing a fan club that included Captain Beefheart, Larry Graham, Stanley “Acid Lab Rat” Owsley III, and Frank Zappa, this theatrical circus version of Steely Dan didn’t equal the successes of their “White Punks On Dope” again. But the core musicianship of Roger Steen, Bill Spooner and eventual Dead pianist Vince Welnick ensured that “Hit Parade” and “I’m Just A Mess” maintained a glossy, slick momentum, despite the best excesses of Fee Waybill and sexy Re Styles. With songs pitched in by Ron Nagle, Scott Matthews and Lee Hazlewood, Now(originally released in 1977) still sounds surprisingly classy.

Less a Greatest Misses than a series of acute growing pains, this compilation plots Red (C/K)rayola’s evolution with considerable panache. With Mayo Thompson as its constant?the earliest incarnation goes back to Texas ’66?their idea of kinetic noise collages and schizophrenic time signatures still sounds exhilaratingly fresh today, not least 1978’s “Wives In Orbit” (with Pere Ubu) and 1980’s “Born In Flames” (with The Raincoats’ Gina Birch and Epic Soundtracks). And though sometimes guilty of disappearing up his own avant-garde, Thompson’s mid-’90s line-up?Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs and John McEntire included?delivered tersely textural delights?like “Chemistry” and “Farewell To Arms”?that foreshadowed post-rock.