Heading up Kansas indie band Butterglory, Matt Suggs ended the ’90s in disarray as first the band, then his relationship with its girl drummer, dissolved. Returning home to California, he cut countrified solo debut The Golden Days Before They End in 2000. Returning with Brooklyn’s Thee Higher Burning Fire as back-up, its successor is harder, crusted in antsy guitars, though Suggs’ slightly distracted vocals give it a homemade quality that pushes Amigo Row into Hayden territory rather than straight-ahead rock. When alone at piano (as on spongy opener “Father”), he’s often sublime, while “New Year” and “Calm Down” suggest the protracted healing of a shattered heart.

As leader of Denton, Texas’ Centro-Matic and its slacker country cousin, South San Gabriel, Johnson has been a prolific purveyor of all things bleak and oddly beautiful. Like 2002’s solo debut Murder Of Tides, Vultures Await is a narcoleptic song suite of plucked guitar, sombre piano and drums like stuttering heartbeats. Cloaked in strings and cracked vocals, it’s hardly laugh-a-minute, but absorbing nonetheless. There are shards of brilliance (banjo-fried instrumental “On, Caledonia”), but undisputed standout is “Catherine Dupree”, an empathetic study of the tragic girl who torched her university as revenge for a supposed faulty degree, only to be consumed by flames.

Like his contemporary Rodney Crowell, head Blaster Alvin seems to have reached a reflective career intersection. His first all-new LP in six years revisits youthful memories of the titular LA club where he became spellbound by Big Joe Turner and T-Bone Walker. As a result, it’s his bluesiest, toughest record since ’91’s Blue Boulevard. However, produced by (and co-starring) slide/steel guitarist Greg Leisz, Ashgrove is exquisitely tender beneath the muscle, especially the Nebraska-like eulogy to his late father, “The Man In The Bed”, and the meditative “Somewhere In Time” (a duetted version appears on Los Lobos’ The Ride). As an understated study in mortality, it’s a sawdust-smothered joy.

“Downright disgusted and sick to the soul”of the music they were hearing out there, Hayseed Dixie cut 2001 debut A Hillbilly Tribute To AC/DC in two days, loaded on beer and bourbon. Now, from the (sadly) fictional valley of Deer Lick Holler, comes this: 12 Appalachian blasts through Kiss, Queen, Mot

Stunning all-star tribute to country music’s first dynasty, produced by John Carter Cash

As musical legacies go, the Carter Family takes some topping. From an obscure 100,000-watt Mexican radio station, the truly seminal recordings of Alvin Pleasant Carter, wife Sara and cousin Maybelle took country to a whole new coast-to-coast American audience in the ’30s. As vocal-harmony innovators, they were as vital to the development of bluegrass as Bill Monroe. The mainly familial concerns of their output?via rural hymns, spirituals and parlour songs?may carry a whiff of sepia quaintness today, but the uncompromising execution, the emotional rawness, still startles and astounds. As testament to their enduring influence, it’s hard to envisage a stronger line-up than the one assembled here (with the exception of Sheryl Crow, whose “No Depression In Heaven” seems woefully misplaced). Naturally, there’s a direct emphasis on family tradition. AP and Sara’s offspring Janette and Joe Carter?who keep the flame alight every Saturday night by performing at the old Clinch Mountain homestead in Virginia?feature strongly with the knottily wonderful “Little Moses”, as do the late Johnny Cash (“Engine One-Forty-Three”) and wife June Carter (“Hold Fast To The Right”). In this context, it’s easy to appreciate the central role that simple song played in these people’s lives.

Of the non-kin, George Jones serves up a perfectly drizzled “Worried Man Blues”, Emmylou Harris (backed by the Peasall Sisters) a thoroughly lived-in “On The Sea Of Galilee” and Willie Nelson a gnarled “You Are My Flower”. John Prine’s “Bear Creek Blues” rattles like a clapboard church, Shawn Colvin’s “Single Girl, Married Girl” is immaculately rendered by the twin-picking acoustics of Earl and Randy Scruggs and The Del McCoury Band lay high lonesome waste to “Rambling Boy”. Perhaps the finest moments come from unexpected quarters?Marty Stuart’s sublime reworking of murder ballad “Never Let The Devil Get The Upper Hand Of You”, with sitar and mandolin, and the overlapping harmonies of the Whites’. “Will My Mother Know Me There?”, with Ricky Skaggs. If you’ve only room for one country compilation this year, look no further.

Mory Kant

Teen superstars are nothing new. Melanie Safka snuck out of Woodstock in 1969 with a herbal mixture of idiot savante poesy and vaguely salacious fare like “Brand New Key”. Sweet to the point of twee, then, the woman-child now makes Jewel sound like Annette Peacock. You’ll need a strong constitution to persist with “Elements” and the totally unnecessary attempt at U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

The only consolation in Brothers in Arms’ planet-conquering weight was the way it crushed Dire Straits, too, leaving them capable of only one limp follow-up before Knopfler retreated to a low-key solo career. Shangri-La should be more appealing, steeped as it is in pulp narratives and mid-century Americana: Sonny Liston and McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc are featured, and “Don’t Crash The Ambulance”, seemingly set down a Cold War missile silo, gets the hardboiled lingo just right. But mostly it’s mannered, played with tepid, mid-paced, life-draining politeness: more James Last than James Ellroy.

If Merritt’s acclaimed 2002 debut Bramble Rose was her very own Elite Hotel or Heart Like A Wheel, the follow-up’s gone all Dusty in Memphis There are still echoes of slow-burning enchantment on the likes of “Plainest Thing”, but the classic soul ache of “Still Pretending”and “Good Hearted Man”‘s brassy gospel are more Carla Thomas than Linda or Emmylou. Merritt may have realised a dream in enlisting producer George Drakoulias and teenhood heroine Maria McKee (The Jayhawks’ Gary Louris is here, too), but the key lies in the expressive pull and dew-on-the-vine purity of her remarkable voice. For hip-shaking Stax sass, try out “I Am Your Tambourine”or “Shadow In The Way”.

As frontman of grunge-soulsters The Afghan Whigs, Dulli presided over a band for whom covers were an exhilarating part of their modus operandi, so it’s surprising that he’s only just got round to devoting a whole album to them. But although the breadth of his track selection is impressive (Bj

An accessible, melodically vivacious primer for those yet to sample the surreal guy-done-wrong repertoire of Douglas (practically everybody, then). On Statecraft, this unsung New York heir to the geekdom of Jonathan Richman benefits from the fret-pizzazz of Joey Santiago. These 16 tracks bring a Daniel Johnston-style kookiness to post-OJ Edwyn funk (“Splitting The Atom”), Pinky Blue-era Altered Images (“Close To Me”) and, with “Free At Last”, the year’s best punk-pop riff this side of Graham Coxon’s “Freakin’ Out”.

Songs about women and a series of duets with them add up to a concept album of an unusual stripe from Louisiana swamp-rock legend Tony Joe White. Shelby Lynne adds her lazy Alabama drawl to the smoochy swamp-rock of “Can’t Go Back Home”. Lucinda Williams smoulders with intent. Emmylou Harris is less earthy, but her keening tones contrast thrillingly with the pebble-dashed vocals of white, who, now in his 60s, sounds like a cross between JJ Cale and Johnny Cash. If you dug the two recent Country Got Soul compilations, this should be your next stop.

Philadelphia has long been known as “the city of brotherly love”, but a number of nu-soul artists-namely Ursula Rucker, Vivian Green, Floetry (who relocated there from their native south London), Jazzyfatnastees and Jaguar Wright?are challenging that epigram’s gender bias.

Most notable among them is Jill Scott, who first made her name on Philadelphia’s spoken-word scene but broke into music after she was discovered by Amir “?uestlove” Thompson, drummer with conscious hip hop crew Roots. Scott co-wrote their 1999 Top 40 hit “You Got Me”, and subsequently recorded with them before going on to work with Will Smith, Common and Musiq, among others. She made her solo debut in 2000 with the wryly titled Who Is Jill Scott?

Words And Sounds Vol 1. Despite its slipperiness, “nu-soul” is as good a term as any to describe Scott’s style?a blend of R&B and hip hop with ’70s soul?but her rootsy poeticism sets her apart from the likes of Mary J Blige and aligns her far more closely with Erykah Badu. Beautifully Human is a warm and sensuous, seductively fluid affair, with Scott easing off on her trademark spoken scat and instead unfurling a singing voice that moves from plaintive, Holiday-toned blues through Kitt-enish cool to Franklin-like gale force. Only the crypto-cosmic nonsense of “I Keep Still Here” (“I am the love unshattered/I am the great orgasm”) mars an otherwise emotionally subtle, righteously soulful treat.

Hovering somewhere between the endearingly shambolic charms of early Built To Spill and the hushed and intimate tones of the late Elliott Smith, Rogue Wave continue Sub Pop’s recent revitalisation in the wake of The Shins and The Constantines.

Former dotcom worker Zach Rogue escaped the San Francisco silicon crash to New York, where he fashioned a deliberately rustic sound despite his urban surroundings with producer friend Bill Racine.

Inventively hook-laden, crammed with joyous harmonies and lo-fi studio trickery, this is the sound of a creative spirit rejuvenated and unleashed.

Elliott has walked with the greats, from Elvis to Hendrix, in a chequered career as sideman and garage band leader. Hep, though? his seventh solo album?confirms his own strain of illusionless, desolate black humour and backwater regret. The pedal-steel-laced music is spare, artful rock’n’roll, and Elliott’s mordant voice sometimes yelps into an Orbison shiver. But it’s his careful, implacable stories of beaten but unbowed losers that makes this connect: trawling through Tampa for temporary thrills or staring at their TVs, searching for an exit, yet stuck in “Nowhereville”.

There are several surprise elements to Weller’s covers LP. The first is that he’s made it now, for such collections are more usually delivered as a contractual exercise when artist and record label are parting company. Yet oddly, Studio 150 is Weller’s debut for a new label. The second is the choice of material, as he’s avoided the ’60s rock classics we might have expected in favour of a varied selection that ranges from funk to folk. Apparently, they are not even his own Desert Island Discs, but simply songs he felt he could meaningfully reinvent and make his own. As with most such enterprises, sometimes it works and sometimes it goes horribly wrong. “Close To You” was an utterly daft idea that Weller admits began as a joke with his kids on holiday. There it should have remained. Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” is given a country-tinged acoustic treatment but it’s unclear in what way this makes it his ‘own’, for if Dylan’s version on Self Portrait was pointless enough, Weller’s take has even less purpose. Neil Young’s “Birds” is another rum choice, while doing “All Along The Watchtower” in the style of Blue

The Go! Team’s chuck-it-all-in-the-Moulinex philosophy has yielded one of the year’s strongest debut albums, something like The Avalanches go C86 or a big beat Belle & Sebastian, with much fun to be had spotting where the instruments start and the samples end. The song titles read like situationist slogans? “Junior Kickstart”, “Feelgood By Numbers”, “Panther Dash” ?and when they’re not doing hairclip harmonies, two girls do a rap/ girl group thing over crash-bang-wallop arrangements which sometimes sound like they’ve been lifted from ’60s TV shows, other times battered old northern seven-inchers. And the thing is, no note feels wasted. No filler, just smiles all round.

Three decades since joining forces on No Pussyfooting and The Evening Star, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp are old masters of ambient avant-pop. Their latest collaboration, titled with knowing reference to their shared past, contains seven wordless tracks of celestial self-indulgence and deluxe sonic wank. While Fripp’s guitar noodles and gloops into infinity, Eno adds cinematic chord clusters and icy electronic mist. In purely experimental terms, of course, The Equatorial Stars is the emperor’s old hat. But standout tracks such as “Lyra”and “Tarazed”contain distant echoes of the duo’s superlative instrumental work on David Bowie’s “Heroes”album. Soothing, quietly beautiful, utterly inessential.

Jon Spencer’s commitment to rejigging the blues according to his own punk aesthetic has sustained him for 13 years. His band cut a distinctively rough dash until 2002’s Plastic Fang, which replaced their visceral riffing with conventional song structure and?thanks to Rolling Stones producer Steve Jordan-a conscious retroism. For seventh album Damage, the (now “Jon Spencer”-free) trio hired five different producers (Jordan, David Holmes and DJ Shadow among them), plus guests Martina Topley-Bird and Chuck D to further broaden their sound, which embraces Stax-style soul, nuggety funk and gruff, politicised rap with equal enthusiasm. More variety in their blues, certainly, but no less vigour.

Mandarin largely draw on late-’90s post-rock?all somnambulant guitars and feedback, a formula that quickly lost its potency. The weaker tracks here conform to dynamic clich