Signed to Slash and contemporaries of The Del Fuegos and Beat Farmers, Wisconsin’s BoDeans began cutting solid, if unspectacular, roots-rock with 1986’s Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams. Despite top-notch producers (T-Bone Burnett, Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison), touring with U2 and a Rolling Stone Best New Band gong, they never quite pulled it off. The tight’n’fast “Wild World” and downbeat ballad “Slipping Into You” apart, their return seems similarly blighted: there’s gusto aplenty, but Sam Llanas’ and Kurt Neumann’s emotive vocal attack and chiming guitars ultimately lack killer hooks or instinct.

In something of an audacious coals-to-Newcastle move, this formerly London-based quartet upped sticks and headed west to become the darlings of the California alt.country/alt.folk scene, and can currently be found working a second job as Pete Yorn’s backing band On Fly The Radar, their second full-length CD release since relocating, they continue to explore loneliness, love and loss, wrapping the sentiments up in unforgettable, harmony-drenched melody.

Nick cave has spent THE past half-decade holding rock’n’roll in contempt, while carving an increasingly traditional plinth for himself in the marbled pantheon of singer-songwriter greats. A run of reflective albums has included some drop-dead classics, but a creeping air of Calvinism and cold porridge has dampened his electrifying muse at times. And although last year’s Nocturama marked a partial return to full-blooded form, it was recorded in a mid-tour rush and lacked focus.

But now, having opened up his songwriting to his fellow Seeds (though not recently departed mainstay Blixa Bargeld) and reunited with Nocturama producer Nick Launay, this double-CD splurge is the happy result. Unconstrained by any over-arching style, both are rich and expansive banquets of soul, folk, blues and punkoid clamour. Featuring the London Community Gospel Choir, the lineage they invoke includes Spiritualized, Tom Waits and Memphis-era Elvis. But mostly they just sound like vintage Cave?chaotic, darkly glamorous and fired by illicit passion. With a lusty peacock strut, he’s got his mojo working again.

Abattoir Blues is the heavier of the pair, born in a controlled explosion of stack-heeled soulman stomping called “Get Ready For Love”. Cave songs sometimes threaten to overwhelm their tormented narrator, but this time he rides the roaring tidal wave with a Dionysian swagger. The Lyre Of Orpheus is gentler, jazzier and spiced with a faintly Latin flavour, from the light-headed semi-calypso “Breathless”to the fierce bolero “Supernaturally”.

Anguished confessions and slavering cannibals lurk within the shadows, but Cave has rarely sounded more romantically upbeat than on strumming single “Nature Boy”, a warm-blooded comedy of seduction and intoxication. Any resemblance to Steve Harley’s “Come Up And See Me (Make Me Smile)” is, of course, purely coincidental. Most chapters from Cave’s 25-year history are represented: woozy lust anthems and hellhound howls, achingly literate laments and quasi-biblical junk-blues eruptions. With this feast of fearsome rock’n’soul, Beelzebub’s favourite lounge singer has returned to reclaim his throne.

“Who are you?” asks Rachid Taha on the title track of an LP that raises awkward but vital questions about racial, political and personal identity in the post-9/11 world. Born in Algeria, raised in Paris, Taha began in French punk band Carte de Sejour but has since emerged as the chef de bande of a cross-cultural musical movement that does for North Africa what Manu Chao achieved for the Latin/Caribbean diaspora. Potently produced by Steve Hillage, authentic Arabic sounds swirl around pounding rock rhythms, heard to particularly fine effect on “Rock El Casbah”, a stirring bilingual homage to Joe Strummer.

In late 1997, Tommy Stinson joined Guns N’Roses. Seven years on, that band’s Chinese Democracy album remains unfinished, so Stinson can hardly be blamed for making a solo record. Varied and melodic with echoes of Big Star, Cheap Trick and, inevitably, The Replacements, there are crisp ballads (“Light Of Day”), Stones-style rockers (“Something’s Wrong”) and the odd full-throttle riff (“Couldn’t Wait”). Opener “Without A View” is a heady brew of acoustic’ guitars, cellos and layered vocals unlike anything we’ve heard from Stinson before. Still, he’d be better advised giving his old mate Westerberg a call.

Taking up the baton so tragically laid down by Bill Hicks in the early ’90s, comedian David Cross also echoes some of the late Sam Kinison’s heavy metal comedic riffery, as an appallingly wonderful, knee-weakening abortion joke illustrates early on here. Though as gross as he can be, Cross isn’t tediously politically incorrect, as anti-war and anti-Bush routines pour fresh and furious scorn on neo-con trickery. A routine about a mega-expensive restaurant’s gold-leaf-topped dessert as “capitalism’s ultimate fuck-you to the poor” will leave you sick and reeling. Ten years we’ve been waiting for this guy…

Americana being everywhere now, it’s getting hard to distinguish between the good stuff and the same old same-old. The fact that Burrito Deluxe boast cornerstones of both The Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers doesn’t actually make the enchilada complete. Garth Hudson is a genius, but he’s wasted on a set of songs as comfy and unchallenging as the proverbial old slippers. Carlton Moody is doubtless a decent cove, but his cornball Nashville larynx is no match for the wavering ache of Gram Parsons. And Se

Even Liam Howlett concedes that The Prodigy’s dismal 2002 comeback single, “Baby’s Got A Temper”, marked the world-conquering Essex rave squad’s nadir. After that, the producer began this troubled project afresh, excising live stooges Keith Flint and Maxim’s contributions, and replacing them with actress Juliette Lewis, rappers Princess Superstar and Kool Keith, and brother-in-law Liam Gallagher. Musically, however, Howlett long ago entered a stylistic cul-de-sac and appears unable to write anything other than numbly aggressive, breakbeat-battered schlock-rock; ideal, still, for clubs and PlayStation 2 games. Flashy standouts “Girls” and “The Way It Is” recall Utah Saints’ poppier moments. The remainder, turgid and humourless, is at best ordinary.

Glaswegian McCluskey fled to America mid-’90s to seek stardom, recording two albums with The Wild Colonials and working with Dr John, The The and Joe Henry. Former Shudder To Think lynchpin Nathan Larson is the latest svengali to believe she’s special?he’s produced this (in Sweden and Manhattan) and written more of it than she has. It’s nearly great, but can’t decide whether it’s classy pop (say, Raissa) or more twisted (PJ Harvey), and falls, albeit gracefully, between two stools. A cover of Matt Johnson’s “Love Is Stronger Than Death” reveals latent power.

The US underground’s current infatuation with all things eldritch and rustically psychedelic has produced some marvellous music of late, most conspicuously from Devendra Banhart. The second album by PG Six?singer and multi-instrumentalist Pat Gubler? is every bit as lovely, flitting between brittle wire-strung harp pieces, gently churning acid-rock and intimate acoustic folk. While Gubler also makes brackish drone-music in the fine Tower Recordings collective, his solo work is more orthodox. Celtic traditions loom out through the mist but, like fellow traveller Alasdair Roberts, Gubler generates a close, mystical atmosphere without lapsing into mimsy clich

A slight improvement on 2002’s grey, DFA-assisted Gotham!, Radio 4 are now closer to a late-’80s pop/funk/house revival group with elements of political protest. Indeed, tracks like “Party Crashers” and “State of Alert” ?although all basically the same song ? come on like INXS doing “Naked In The Rain”, with the occasional touch of Jesus Jones. There’s even a Clash-do-dub pastiche in “Nation”. However, unlike The Clash, Radio 4’s politicking seems spurious and tacked-on ? no one is blamed, and the music isn’t sufficiently strong to change anyone’s mind or move anyone’s heart.

Restless souls, these Thrills. As five Dublin dreamers, they penned a debut album? 2003’s half-million-selling So Much For The City?full of surf-folk snapshots from the month’s holiday they once had in San Diego. Given more Venice Beach-time, they’ve now produced a second effort besotted with the desolation and romance of inner-city Ireland. Out are drowsy Pacific resorts, sand in hair and Las Vegas as vampiric metaphor for love. In are “Faded Beauty Queens”, drunken kebab shop punch-ups, bad sex and wasted lives. Seems the grass has never looked greener back home.

As front-runners of a gaggle of California-infatuated bands from this side of the Atlantic (HAL, Thirteen Senses, Ambershades), however, The Thrills sensibly don’t stray too far musically from their debut’s evocations of Neil Young skimming pebbles with The Beach Boys. Van Dyke Parks guests here, alongside Peter Buck. Opener “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” threatens a new Britpop direction for 20 seconds, then the Wild West piano tinkles, the five-part harmonies descend like it’s raining Pet Sounds and Conor Deasey’s croak woos us once again.

Bolder and brassier than before, …Bohemia is also painfully bittersweet. The guilt of the LA tan shines through on “You Can’t Fool Old Friends With Limousines”, while “Found My Rosebud” and “The Irish Keep Gate-Crashing” smack of the poolside revelation that There’s No Place Like Home. Yet even when treading through broken bottles in Temple Bar at chucking out time (as on “Saturday Night”), there’s a charming naivety to The Thrills that is forever Malibu.

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”