Like Damien Jurado or David Ackles, Toronto’s Rutledge is a master of gothic understatement. This wintry debut?shrouded in slow-tempo melancholy?is slyly addictive. Against spare backdrops of folk-country guitars, mandolin, piano and the odd banjo, Rutledge sounds weathered beyond his twentysomething years. An array of talent is on hand, not least of which is the reclusive Mary Margaret O’Hara (woefully underused on just one track, “A Letter To Heather”). Otherwise, Rutledge judges the balance perfectly.

Three years ago, Skyscraper National Park heralded the arrival of Hayden Desser as heir to the mumbling miserablism of Smog’s Bill Callahan. Like the latter, Toronto-born Hayden’s nagging melodies and deadpan delivery occupy their own peculiar kingdom. His fourth LP finds him applying sonic bluster to the usual sad-slow creep. “Hollywood Ending”, for example, is a raucous tale of being caught up in a blockbuster outside his front door. Longtime collaborator Howie Beck is on board, too, though it’s the Elliott Smith-like “Home by Saturday” that steals the show: a ragged tumble of guitars, waft of steel and those exquisitely crumbled vocals.

Already Uncut-endorsed via two fine LPs as head of wistful country types Horse Stories, Burke’s solo debut finds him in intimate, hushed repose. His acoustic guitar fingering is highly expressive, be it woven into delicate sound webs on the love-torn “Cigarettes”, delving into the country-blues of “Long Face” or lighting up “Which Train’s She On?” with flashes of slide. Burke’s voice remains his crowning glory, though, wringing nuance from the simplest of melodies. Both the folksy “Stop Me” and “30 Seconds”?with dovetailed banjo/guitar leads?are up in Jeff Buckley territory. Some feat.

Monochrome minimalists go Technicolor, with startling results Anyone familiar with 2002’s Everybody Makes Mistakes could be forgiven for thinking they’d stumbled on the wrong band here. If that album was austere?a kind of aural porcelain?then Shearwater’s third is a riot of movement and colour. They remain, in parts, as sombre-still as American Music Club, but now add more than a dash of Spirit Of Eden-Talk Talk and a whole heap of ’70s FM pop. Soft-rock chamber music, if you will. The magnificent “Whipping Boy”, for instance, with echo-sodden vocal over knotty banjo riff, sounds like The Moody Blues doing Doc Boggs. It’s a colossal leap of ambition for this most curious of bands.

Shearwater were formed in Austin, Texas four years ago. Frontman Jonathan Meiburg and cohort Will Robinson Sheff also play in Okkervil River, though Meiburg takes keyboard duties in the latter while Sheff is its lead singer. The same duo in two different roles in two different bands. Here, they’re joined by drummer/vibraphonist Thor Harris and upright-bassist Kim Burke.

Meiburg’s vocal quiver brings a trembling tension to Winged Life that never lets up. There’s a shining intellect at work here, too. So easy is it to lose yourself in opener “A Hush”, uncoiling from hypnotic guitar spiral into glistening epic, that you nearly miss the fact it’s narrated by a dead man, fresh from being pulled skyward “on a thousand wings”.

The protagonist of “(I’ve Got A) Right To Cry”is laid up in hospital, a mess of tubes, tortured by the drone of machines “singing to themselves in a language that no one can read”. There’s a wounding sense of loss, of memories set to fade, throughout. “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine”articulates the ache of being alone while everyone else settles into familial domesticity. “The World In 1984″hoves into view over gorgeous, spare piano. Like Devendra Banhart or Iron & Wine, Shearwater are capable of emotional resonance through the most brittle of arrangements. Stunning.

Those who remember him from ’80s country-rock duo Foster & Lloyd, or from his guest slots with Marshall Crenshaw and Steve Earle, will know Lloyd as an expert at country and power-pop fusions similar to Pat Buchanan. The 15 tracks here include collaborations with Poco’s Rusty Young, Peter Case and Beth Nielsen Chapman?whose “Dancing With The Past”symbolises the twangy country/tangy rhythms on offer. Essentially, though, this is a class solo disc with some perfectly executed bittersweet pieces like “Me Against Me”and “Kissed Your Sister”to lengthen the summer.

Much of The Pixies’appeal depended on Santiago’s explosive, expressive guitar-playing. It’s put to good use here, too. With Linda Mallari’s soaring voice (think a less mewling Natalie Merchant), the pair have concocted a snappy, tuneful set of streamlined power pop, cheerleader doo-wop and girl-group stomp. Inevitably, there are mischievous nods to The Pixies (“You Are The One”steals from “Wave Of Mutilation”), but this is more frothy fun than amp-blowing heaviness.

Hailing from Hawthorne, CA, dios peddle a nice line in blissed-out pop that may have something to do with the fact that their hometown’s most famous sons are The Beach Boys. Yet they owe as much to early-’70s Neil Young, and it’s no coincidence that the one cover on this appealing debut is “Birds”from After The Gold Rush. It fits in perfectly with the strummed acoustics, loping rhythms and plaintive vocals from Joel Morales, spliced with bursts of extraneous off-kilter noise in the style of Grandaddy or Wilco. Rather fine.

It’s a measure of dancehall’s emergence as an international phenomenon that Moses “Beenie Man”Davis’third album for Virgin abandons the hip hop crossovers that filled Art And Life and Tropical Storm. There’s no need to mediate this music any more, in the wake of Sean Paul’s superstardom. Hence Beenie Man’s exclusive use of Jamaican producers on Back To Basics. Mainly, this is brilliant pop music: thrusting, crass and immediate on one level; but also genuinely fearless with its squelching and stabbing electronic productions. Intensely sexual, too?though Beenie’s insistence on asserting his celebrated heterosexuality (he styles himself the “Grindacologist”here) can grate. At least feisty appearances by female MC Ms Thing, especially on the fabulous “Dude”single, leaven the machismo a little.

In the early ’90s, My Bloody Valentine’s influence was everywhere, suggesting a new dawn for guitar pop. But a growing attachment to rock classicism derailed many a nascent shoegazing band. The Radio Dept. recall that giddy moment before sounding like the Stones was considered revelatory. Only these Swedes re-tweak the formula, sounding, if anything, better than Ride, Slowdive, Lush, Boo Radleys et al. Besides FX-driven dream pop, The Radio Dept. are also in reach of New Order and their brutally ascending rushes. The frazzled velocity of “Why Won’t You Talk About It?”, “Against The Tide”and “Ewan”are powered by some kind of internal momentum rather than lumpen muscle.

Glistening opener “Too Soon”and the lovely “Slottet, #2″make cheap, whirring Casios sound quite beautiful. What’s remarkable is that this album was recorded on a portable home studio. Yet the condensed hiss of a C90 only complements their bleached-out sound. It’s doubtful whether the mournful drone of, say, “Keen On Boys”and Johan Duncanson’s wan vocals would have been so effective with the clinical precision of digital equipment.

The Radio Dept. aren’t just interested in constructing sonic Taj Mahals. Their fuzzy contours perfectly express lovesickness and heartache. “It’s Been Eight Years”and “1995”see Duncanson re-experiencing the ecstatic anguish of a failed relationship, almost relishing the pain of loss. Best is the closing “Lost And Found”. With its lump-in-the-throat refrain of “I’ll see you someday”, the neon-lit melancholia of Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation is effectively distilled into four woozy minutes. A distant cousin, in fact, of The Jesus & Mary Chain’s prettier, tender moments.

Too often, Brave Captain has indulged rather than harnessed Carr’s creativity, with eclectic sound collages merely papering over poor material. Once again, Carr wrestles the rock canon (Dylan touches, “Eleanor Rigby”strings) with spluttering tech beats and chewy dub. A few songs are better this time, notably the lovely title track and the dewy-eyed, Wilson-tainted “Big Black Pigpile”. As ever, though, Carr’s ambitions outrun his abilities (the neo-rap on “Flow Machines”), and he still sounds tentative even when attempting to be bold.

For his third album as Blue States, Sussex-born Andy Dragazis is joined full-time by singer/guitarist Chris Carr and drummer Jon Chandler, and The Soundings eschews the soft-focus soundscapes of its predecessors in favour of gliding, minor chord-driven songs which fall somewhere between Talk Talk and the Bunnymen. Opener “Across The Wire”sets the tone with its refrain of “Under the grey skies”, while the autumnal guitar of “For A Lifetime”and “The Last Blast”riff on Strange Times-era Chameleons. Closer “Sad Song”is a starburst of horns, a widescreen, symphonic climax that leaves you in little doubt they’re on their way to glory.

A glitchy West Country contemporary of Aphex Twin and

If the Scissor Sisters are New York’s retro-homage to ’70s chart cheese, and The Strokes are the city’s retro-homage to its own garage-punk heritage, The Mooney Suzuki are NYC’s retro-homage to America’s spandex pop-metal scene. Some indication of their priorities is the strictly apolitical slant of “Shake That Bush Again”, while “Primitive Condition”actually celebrates its protagonist’s tumescent stupidity. Even Spinal Tap would struggle to come up with anthems as crass as “Loose’n’Juicy”, “Hot Sugar”, “Naked Lady”and “Messin’In The Dressin’Room”.

After singing on Elbow’s second album last year, Cathy Davey’s first solo album teams her with Elbow/Blur producer Ben Hillier, who avoids presenting her as just another female singer-songwriter. Rather, he’s cut an adventurous rock record with obvious parallels to both Think Tank and Cast Of Thousands. It’s a setting perfectly suited to Davey’s barbed lyrics and unusual voice, which veers from the Amy Winehouse-style “Swing It”to the girlish Avril Lavigne-like “Come Over”, via an obvious Kate Bush influence.

A Scandinavian duo in their mid-20s, singer Susanna Wallumr

We always refused to think it was over, and indeed it wasn’t?even if not quite everyone is here. The first fraternal recording from the Finns in nine years isn’t quite a Crowded House reunion, as there’s no Nick Seymour or Paul Hester. But with producer Mitchell Froom back in the saddle for the first time since 1991’s sainted Woodface album, it’s as near as dammit.

Recorded in Los Angeles at leisure (unlike 1995’s Finn, which was squeezed in between the final Crowded House sessions and solo projects, and was done and dusted inside four weeks), Everyone Is Here represents a masterclass in mature songcraft. Lyrically, the mood is reflective, concerning lessons learnt and experiences endured, with more than a whiff of nostalgia. It’s typified by “Disembodied Voices”, which finds Tim poignantly recalling his New Zealand childhood with Neil, “talking with my brother 40 years ago”.

Melodically, they’re still in thrall to their classic ’60s pop influences, although they’ve come up with more winning hooks than the likes of McGuinn and McCartney have managed in years. Not that this is totally obvious on first hearing, which suggests a collection of tunes that are pleasant rather than memorable. But the melodies are insidious: by the third or fourth play, the likes of “Won’t Give In”, “Nothing Wrong With You”and “A Life Between Us”have buried themselves deep in your brain, while Tony Visconti’s sumptuous string arrangements on “Homesick”and the utterly lovely “Edible Flowers”also find the sweet spot.

Despite the air of contemplation, there’s plenty of energy, and when backed by such in-demand LA sessioneers as Jon Brion and drummer Matt Chamberlain on cultured but upbeat tracks like “Anything Can Happen”and “All God’s Children”, they almost sound like a rock’n’ roll band. If you ever had to find someone to write a song to save your life, Neil Finn would still be pretty near the top of the list. No worries, mate.

Vini Reilly’s command of the ethereal remains a joy to behold. This, his 16th Durutti album, is as measured and moving as its predecessor, 2003’s Someone Else’s Party. Aside from Jill Taylor’s harmonies on “Shooting” and Gerard Keaney’s lyrics for “The Man Who Knows”, it’s all Vini: inspired guitar-plucking and the gentlest of voices. That it sounds both fluidly organic and intimate (you can hear every fretboard squawk and scratch) is a testament to his unique mapping of the nocturnal spirit.