Vinicius Cantuaria was something of a star in Brazil, yet the local music industry drove him to flee to New York. Once there, he was quickly adopted by the Knitting Factory crowd and has played often with David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, Laurie Anderson and other avant suspects. Yet where VC really shines is on his own albums, which find him blending a subtle mosaic of sounds rooted in bossa nova.

Rooted but not locked?Horse And Fish finds the guitarist mixing electronica, Chet Baker jazz licks, Afro-Brazilian rhythms, his own consistently enquiring guitar and murmured Portuguese vocals to make music quite unlike anyone else. Cantuaria’s a quiet innovator, and Horse And Fish repays frequent listening.

Dr John, alias Mac Rebennack, aka Dr John Creaux, trading as the Nite Tripper, is no stranger to the Babylonian riddles of New Orleans. This Big Easy native has never been one to cause a local hurricane, but he’s always blown his storm warnings in a weird way. A medicine man with an innate knowledge of the voodoo cultures of Louisiana, as Rebennack approaches his seventh decade he’s still dispensing the knowledge without sounding drily academic.

So what’s up, Doc? Plenty. Grand funk, slippery R&B, gumbo groove and French Quarter jazz are staples of his armoury again, yet he also chases down draughts of lifeblood like a Garden District dweller in an Anne Rice vampire novel. Having paid homage to Duke “Elegant” Ellington and rubbed shoulders with younger British types Supergrass, Paul Weller and Spiritualized on his last two discs, this musical polymath sets his sights on a sequence of 18 pieces whose roots spread out forever.

Aided by Stewart Levine of Crusaders fame and various musicologists such as Martin Kaelin, Nicholas Payton and the Quezerque dynasty, the album opens in Sunday church mode with the baroque litany of “Quatra Parishe”, before returning “When The Saints Go Marchin’ In” to its spiritual rather than vaudevillian setting.

“Marie Laveau”, an account of the Witch Queen of New Orleans, bears out Rebennack’s dictum that “music is to be played with, not just played.” As a battery of percussionists?including Earl Palmer, Herman Ernest III and Smokey Johnson?all summon the spirits, they are answered by the Mardi Gras Indians, Meter man Cyril Neville and Walter Wolfman Johnson’s greasy guitar solo. The pure fonque of “Life is A One Way Ticket” and the neat twists and turns of “Such A Much”, featuring fellow veteran Willie Nelson, both loom large, but there’s good stuff everywhere thanks to guests like Randy Newman, Mavis Staples, BB King and Dave Bartholomew.

Ambitious in scope, Dr John’s N’Awlinz cannot be digested at one sitting. This is a banquet of bluesiana; a lifetime of sounds. If you love New Orleans music, he’ll take you there. Magnificent.

For the best part of a decade, Daniel Smith has been taking a sledgehammer to the strangely secular conceit of Christian music as happy-clappy God-bothering. As musical leader of the Danielson Famile?a Smithfest of siblings aged between 12 and 21?he handed in 1995’s debut album A Prayer For Every Hour for his final thesis at Rutgers University. Their first gig was his degree final (he got an A). The songs were unnerving: strident evocations of faith shredded by discordant guitars, abrupt stammers and Smith’s spasmic castrato. Klaus Nomi fronting the Shaggs, maybe, or Tiny Tim getting down with early Pixies. Lyrically, it was hardly Sir Cliff either: the Lord punishing Smith by demanding push-ups, or turning up unannounced as guest DJ at a funeral. Other albums tracked the same vein, often attracting cult producers and engineers like Steve Albini.

Brother Is To Son, however, is a whole new beast. Under the Brother Danielson banner (though the Famile, including wife Elin, father Lenny and mate Sufjan Stevens add back-up), the solo Smith seems sharper and more attuned to his own peculiar frequency. Indeed, at times it’s almost unbearably candid, an unflinching examination of his devotion both to homestead and to God. In this respect, the ebb tides of the music?delicate and brutal, sometimes faltering to a slow swell before crashing on through?make perfect sense. It’s the soundtrack to doubt and reaffirmation.

“Hammers Sitting Still” tries to reconcile the insecurity and frustration of his day job as a carpenter with service to the Almighty, eased by the soothing vocal asides of Elin. “Sweet Sweeps” is eerie: Smith falsetto, a little guitar, taps and scrapes, before woozy harmonies overlap and collide in a flurry of whispers and incantations. It’s a tumbledown spiritual that refuses to be tainted by “the games sweeping the nation’s veins” and where revitalised souls are “brand new brooms”, vessels of God. “Daughters Will Tune You” uncoils slowly from rolling guitar motif to banjo, bells and piano, emerging with the same contented skip as Smog’s “Keep Some Steady Friends Around”. Most striking of all, “Physician Heal Yourself” addresses Jesus directly (“If you can’t heal yourself/How could you fix me?”) before admitting: “I can’t understand the ways of my Lord/When I try and try with my mere mind as a man.”

It’s an often painful stumble through the wilderness, but Smith ultimately emerges invigorated.

You will too.

Lindsay first encroached upon Western consciousness with DNA on the Eno-produced No New York compilation in 1978. Lindsay’s affection for bossa nova, whispery vocals and lumpy technique has made him an odd champion of Brazilian music and helped the likes of Vinicius Cantu

Drifting in like a San Francisco fog, Call And Response’s second album is a magnificent surprise. If their 2001 debut confected a Free Designed, bubblefunk California of the imagination, Winds Take No Shape cruises into more crepuscular territory.

They’re a band of rare harmonies. The players and voices of Carrie Clough and Simone Rubi attain a lunar twilight grace across complex structures. Songs conjure weird confluences: it’s possible to tease out strands of tropicalian bossa nova, Laurel Canyon folk, Vini Reilly, reverbed languor and even Broadcast’s spooked tenderness. You could praise individual moments (“Trapped Under Ice” is a bittersweet frost flower that blooms into radiance) but it’s the overall weave, the daydreamy drift, that impresses. A 40-minute swoon of a record.

Proof that there’s more than one way to skin the electro-punk cat comes in the form of Sheffield newcomers Pink Grease. Their debut album puts welcome top-spin on a genre fixated on Suicide by reviving Devo, adding the glamour and flamboyance of The New York Dolls, Ziggy-era Bowie and Roxy Music, then whipping the lot along with the Glitter Band’s ludicrous stomp. “Fever” is an over-sexed strut through the psychobilly swamplands, but “Serial Heartbreaker” suggests Bryan Ferry joining The Rezillos and “The Nasty Show” is a jabbering, triumphantly rude-worded remake of “Looking Through Gary Gilmour’s Eyes”. Who cares whether or not Pink Grease are ‘for real’ if they throw a party this blindingly good?

The lilting, fragile sounds of this LA four-piece will massage the shoulders of fans of Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, Neil Young and Kevin Shields. When it counts, Marjorie Fair burst into ecstatic guitar abandon, while singer Evan’s feel-my-pain confessionals can be equally therapeutic. They’ve mastered the burning/chilly genre with ease, and if their debut gets a little Lennon-maudlin towards the end (“My Sun Is Setting Over Her Magic” is especially mournful), its many highlights mesmerise. The stunning “Stare” is both melodic and explosive, one of the year’s best singles, while “Waves” is superbly onomatopoeic. A rich harvest.

One doesn’t want to stir up any unpleasant rivalry here, particularly between two such close friends. But, to put it bluntly, The Heat is the album Ryan Adams was trying to make with Rock’n’Roll. This reviewer doesn’t actually believe that Adams’ last record was half as bad as Uncut’s esteemed editor, Allan Jones, made out in his crushing two-star review (Take 79, December 2003). Yet in making a record cut from remarkably similar sonic cloth, Malin has done so with mountains more panache and canyons of conviction.

Not that he’s in any way apeing his buddy. If anything, it seems to be the other way round. Adams produced Malin’s solo debut, 2002’s The Fine Art Of Self Destruction, and noted at the time that his prot

We raved about their eclectic mini album a year ago, and now Secret Machines?the Curtis brothers plus drummer Josh Garza, relocated from Dallas to New York?have honed their tight, tingly sound to produce a more direct yet equally powerful rock beast. In short, it’s like John Bonham playing with Can, or Floyd-meet-Spiritualized with a barely repressed pop consciousness.

Awkwardly funky, they’re not averse to nine-minute epics (the suspenseful opener “First Wave Intact”, or the closing title track) but manage to fuse garage meatiness with stadium-spraying scale. It’s all about the riffs, which insistently seduce and bully you until you’re leaping around your living room like a Kiss fan with a brain. Potent postmodern blues.

Despite the impressive cast list?Gillian Welch, Kim Richey, B

Aaron Fletcher and Paul Butler could be the Isle Of Wight’s answer to Steely Dan. Super-smart aural designers, well versed in vinyl history, the duo made their debut album, 2003’s Sunshine Hit Me, in a shed. Now they benefit from immersion in Abbey Road studios.

The glorious US Charlatans-styled “Wash In The Rain” is destined to be a TV loop theme, and there are irresistible catches everywhere else. Fletcher’s lyrical skill and Butler’s bewildering range of bespoke vocals allow The Bees room to stretch. “Go Karts” and “The Start” manage to suggest echoes of Pink Floyd, The Young Rascals and Smokey Robinson with no apparent contradictions. As satisfying as it is stylish, this already sounds like a great summer guitar album?one that combines English pastoral moods with south-coast psychedelia.

When New Zealand four-piece The Datsuns first emerged, it was with their hearts on their denim sleeves. The greasy licks and sexual energy of their eponymous 2002 debut album marked them out as in thrall to AC/DC, which made their adoption by the garage rock fraternity somewhat puzzling. Classic rock, however, rightly steamrollers over such distinctions, and on their follow-up The Datsuns seem even more firmly entrenched in blues-rooted heavy rock territory.

John Paul Jones produces, but they move from ZZTop-styled boogie (“Messin’ Around”) to the bourbon-stained blues of Chris Bailey (“What I’ve Lost”), diverting via “Hong Kong Fury” for some light relief. A less full-tilt affair than their first effort, then, but no less fun.

The Concretes’ sophomore effort blends fizzy girl-pop with Mazzy Star’s stoned drawl, topped off with a swooning horn section and all liberally sprinkled with magic dust. “Say Something New” sets the template:slightly woozy melodies held together with gaffer tape, Victoria Bergsman’s voice sounding like she’s just woken up. “New Friend” has its chorus filched from U2’s “One” but is no worse for that, with Ulrik Karlsson’s closing trumpet solo a perfect counterpoint to Lisa Milberg’s minimalist drumming. “Seems Fine”?the most uptempo number on the record?sounds like Dexys recording for the Sarah label. “Diana Ross” is an adorable tribute to the Motown queen complete with “Love Hangover” references, while “Lovin’ Kind” is possessed of a tipsy, off-kilter beauty. The best thing to come out of Sweden for a while?apart from porn.

When Seattle’s legendary ’60s noiseniks The Sonics refused to reform for a local garage-band fest in June 2000, Minus 5’s Scott McCaughey made the next best thing: an all-star tribute band. Roping in three-quarters of Mudhoney, along with Monkeywrench’s Tom Price and Girl Trouble’s Bill Henderson, The New Strychnines went down a firestorm. Now comes the album: 16 prime slices of Sonics brawn (“The Witch”,”Boss Hoss”, “Psycho” et al) delivered with suitably murderous aplomb. A blast maybe but, better still, track down the real thing: Big Beat’s magnificent Psycho-Sonic reissue.

In August 1995, I travelled to LA to interview Brian Wilson. After 1988’s Brian Wilson and its unreleased 1990 follow-up Sweet Insanity, both collaborations with the Machiavellian therapist Eugene Landy, Wilson had been quiet for much of the decade. Now, though, he was comparatively healthy, newly remarried and tentatively promoting two new LPs: a turn as guest vocalist on Van Dyke Parks’voluptuous, nostalgic Orange Crate Art; and I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, a tasteful revisiting of some Beach Boys highlights, steered by Don and David Was.

As the trip progressed, however, it became apparent that Wilson’s most exciting current project lay elsewhere. A visit to the offices of musician, producer and label exec Andy Paley revealed that the two men had been working on a batch of material that sounded like Wilson’s best work in years. Unlike their ’80s-tainted collaborations on Brian Wilson, the new songs referenced early-’60s rock’n’roll, Pet Sounds-era balladry and the slightly unnerving infantilism of The Beach Boys Love You. Wilson’s relationship with the Boys, he claimed, had finally been terminated. This was the music which inspired him now.

After the interview, Wilson’s manager David Leaf advised that his client was subject to dramatic changes of mind. And within months he had one?rejoining, for a brief and abortive session, his old band. It was not until 1998, though, that a solo album emerged. Imagination featured none of the Paley material and, thanks to producer/co-writer Joe Thomas, was cursed with a cloying, synthetic sound which did the handful of decent new songs few favours.

Brian Wilson’s recording career appeared to have ended. In its place, over the past three years, he has reinvented himself as an unlikely road warrior, constantly touring with his Wondermints-centred band and meticulously recreating Pet Sounds and Smile for awe-struck crowds. New songs, though, have been scarce. In rare interviews, Wilson has complained of writer’s block, and most of the unreleased tracks played at his gigs?”Soul Searchin'”, “Desert Drive”?have dated from those mid-’90s Paley sessions.

The appearance of a brand new album, then, comes as a surprise. Here are 13 previously unreleased Wilson originals in a Peter Blake sleeve, produced by Wilson, artfully played by his touring band, arranged with deliberate references to ’60s-era Beach Boys and punctuated by lavish a cappella harmonies that hark back to Smile’s divine “Our Prayer”.

The track listing, however, will seem strangely familiar to Wilson scholars with useful bootleg collections. Gettin’In Over My Head may feature all new recordings, but only five songs are authentically new. Four come from the 1995 Paley sessions, three originally figured on Sweet Insanity, and one?”City Blues”?reportedly dates from the early ’80s.

As such, the album often feels like a re-upholstered compendium of solo Brian. Consequently, there are some tremendous songs here, especially the title track co-written with Paley, which recaptures the lush, tremulous romance of Pet Sounds (“I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”, perhaps), right down to the bass saxophone and harmonica trim.

Wilson’s voice is stronger and steadier than on the original demos, so he can carry off a whimsical fantasia like “Saturday Morning In The City” with confidence, or sound uncharacteristically gutsy on the fine “Desert Drive”.

A couple of the Sweet Insanity remakes?”Make A Wish” and “Rainbow Eyes”?are a little odd, chiefly because Wilson’s cracked, chatty songwriting style of the time (Eugene Landy, interestingly, doesn’t get co-songwriting credits) sits awkwardly with the chamber arrangements. “Don’t Let Her Know She’s An Angel”, though, is lovely: a classically shy ballad that benefits from the grandeur bestowed upon it.

Other songs are more problematic. After a wonderful a cappella start, “How Could We Still Be Dancin'” finds Elton John taking charge for a cousin of “Crocodile Rock”, with Wilson a marginalised figure. “City Blues” is similarly compromised, blighted by a guitar line from Eric Clapton that sounds crude and belligerent in Wilson’s spectral company. Wilson’s unearthly grasp of melody and harmony doesn’t bend easily to the requirements of more linear talents.

“A Friend Like You”, a spectacularly mawkish duet with Paul McCartney, is an unlikely exception. Designed as a chummy variant on “Ebony & Ivory”, it’s redeemed by an exceptionally pretty Wilson tune which even McCartney at his most unctuous cannot ruin. The jaunty “You’ve Touched Me”is great, too, exactly relocating the point in the mid-’60s (circa the Today album and, strikingly, “Little Saint Nick”) when his songwriting began to blossom. Finally, there’s “The Waltz”, a baroque and ribald piece of high school hokum written with Van Dyke Parks, who understands better than most that Wilson, even at 61, is more convincing as a juvenile lead than a sentimental veteran.

These are undeniably fine songs, and there’s a sense that, finally, Wilson has been allowed to judiciously reference his past rather than try to modernise that tender, intricate and unique sound. Whether many people want to hear new songs from Wilson, however good they may be, is another matter entirely. Gettin’ In Over My Head is a valuable addition to his catalogue: the most consistent and sympathetically constructed solo album he’s made. But I suspect its primary role will be to act as a kind of overture for the belated release of Smile, as proof that Wilson, Parks and this wonderful band currently function effectively in the studio as well as on stage. When everyone knows you’ve virtually completed the motherlode of pop, even the best comeback albums can feel a little like short change.

Irascible, outspoken and prodigiously talented, Martin is the original ‘rebel rouser’ of bluegrass. Yet he remains puzzlingly under-celebrated. Released to coincide with George Goehl’s fascinating film documentary about Martin (The King Of Bluegrass), Don’t Cry To Me is a storming collection of live classics spanning 1954-2001, 10 of which are previously unreleased. Still gigging at 77, he’s considered by many to be the greatest lead singer/guitarist that Bill Monroe ever had (and undoubtedly the finest bluegrasser never to become member of the Grand Ole Opry) as well as a progressive musical pioneer.

Born in Sneedville, Tennessee, Martin collared Monroe backstage at the Opry in 1949, burst into a rendition of the murder ballad “Poor Ellen Smith” (an incredible 1965 version is included here) and landed the gig with the latter’s Bluegrass Boys right there. Together with Monroe for five years, Martin’s bullish fretwork injected an urgency that sharpened the band like an arrowhead, whilst his astonishing tenor?complementing Monroe’s lead?helped initiate the archetypal “High Lonesome Sound”. By the time he’d formed The Sunny Mountain Boys and signed to Decca, his radical style was well defined?impeccable harmonies, demanding musicianship (Martin only accepted the best from himself, and the same went for his sometimes exasperated charges) and the unheard-of use of snare drums.

These songs crackle with typical Martin static: abrasive, dextrous, wholehearted, but never indulgent. As a vocalist, he’s in the same bracket as his old friend and collaborator Ralph Stanley?a hint of fatalism, tough delivery. Cold comfort for the soul. The later recordings (“Free Born Man”, “Brakeman’s Blues”) are almost miraculous in their power and range. Frailty?even approaching the age of 80?was never in the Martin handbook. Sadly, he was recently diagnosed with bladder cancer and is currently recovering from chemotherapy. We wish him well. The legacy is immense.

Last year’s Hey Harmony cemented Thomas Hansen’s reputation, but the ex-postman and Norwegian Third Division footballer has dismissed it as the work of a man who’d “lost himself somewhere on the road, together with alcohol and marijuana.” On this fourth opus, he’s wrested control from the demons and emerges bolder, though perhaps less darkly alluring. The finest moments remain wondrous, though: “Silence Break Your Heart”‘s spookily ethereal undertow; the strained vocal kink of “Waltzing Around Insane”. Somewhere between Elliott Smith, Mark Kozelek and early Neil Young.

Trouble has a habit of providing an overture to the release of Wilco albums. In 2002, you’ll recall, Wilco’s former label Reprise rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as too uncommercial and sold the masters to the band for $50,000, who then streamed them on their website, signed a new deal with Nonesuch (like Reprise, a Warners subsidiary) and found themselves in the US Top 20. Once perceived as the quintessential alt.country act, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco emerged from the fracas as rueful, empowered popularisers of the avant-garde, after a fashion.

This time, A Ghost Is Born, Wilco’s fifth album, has been briefly delayed thanks to Tweedy putting himself into rehab to treat an addiction to painkillers. For years, it’s transpired, he has been poleaxed by migraine headaches, and their effects reportedly disrupted the recording sessions for A Ghost Is Born. His dependency, official channels suggest, stems from attempts to control this debilitating condition.

It’s tempting to scour the album for evidence of Tweedy’s problems. As ever, his lyrics are more allusive than direct, and the resigned timbre of his voice continues to evoke despondency when the words suggest something quite different. “I’ve been puking,” he notes during “Company In My Back”, while “Wishful Thinking” asks, “Is any song worth singing if it doesn’t help?” Can the music of Wilco?rich, inventive, diverse, volatile?be a palliative to Tweedy’s pain? Is his increasing love of drone, which culminates in the vast minimalist hum of “Less Than You Think”, a way of musically transcribing the engulfing presence of a headache?

These are questions that, currently, remain the business of Tweedy and his doctors. In the meantime, a gentler study of this marvellous record initially suggests it’s a lot more easy-going than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The backdrop of static and laptop interference that made YHF at once warm and alien has gone?though that album’s inspired mixer, Jim O’Rourke, has been promoted to co-producer. The electronic texturing to A Ghost Is Born is comparatively discreet, leaving the band more space to manoeuvre. It’s an organic, intuitive record on which Wilco sound wonderfully free of constraints.

Part of this is down to the absence of Jay Bennett, Tweedy’s co-songwriter, who left acrimoniously towards the end of the recording of YHF. The departure of the relatively conservative Bennett, you’d imagine, would allow Tweedy to navigate a course further into leftfield American music. It’s a surprise, then, to discover that Wilco’s first post-Bennett album begins in straightforward fashion. “At Least That’s What You Said” is a pensive ballad in which Tweedy and pianist Mikael Jorgensen quietly circle each other. After two minutes, however, Tweedy launches into an exhilarating guitar solo. For a minute or two, it broadly follows the Neil Young template?weighty, sloppy, lashed with feedback. But as it progresses, Tweedy starts taking more risks, unleashing pointillist skrees of noise, recreating the radio friction of YHF by manually attacking his guitar. It’s thrilling to hear and sounds enormously liberating, too.

“I felt a lot freer,” Tweedy said before he entered rehab. “I was actually inhibited about my playing for many years, so I think there was some effort to let it all hang out.” The results are spectacular. A Ghost Is Born takes a fairly orthodox rock set-up and applies a new expressive flourish. “I’m A Wheel” might revisit the Stones fetish Tweedy showed on 1996’s Being There, but the jutting riffs are oddly punctuated, diverting the song’s energies into cunning new directions.

The guitar heroics reach their peak early, on the third track; “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, the best thing Tweedy has ever done. Jorgensen, bassist John Stirratt and drummer Glenn Kotche establish a pulsing motorik rhythm clearly derived from Neu!, only for Tweedy to assail it with increasingly deranged guitar solos. Again and again he sprays notes everywhere, as reminiscent of Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and free jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock as Neil Young, before reconfiguring them into an exultant refrain. This goes on, fearlessly, for over 10 minutes.

It’s not, though, the longest song on A Ghost Is Born. That honour lies with “Less Than You Think”, another sketchy ballad that dissolves into a 15-minute harmonious drone (inspired, Stirratt confirms, by minimalist composer Terry Riley). More than ever, Wilco are disdainful here of a conventional canon to draw from. In the world of A Ghost Is Born, Sharrock and Riley are just as accessible as The Band: Jorgensen, originally recruited as an electronic manipulator, favours an ambling, soulful piano technique that’s hugely informed by Richard Manuel.

Increasingly, too, Tweedy has a knack of allying his sonic innovations to his lyrical concerns. So, on YHF, the theme was communication breakdown, whether it be garbled, encoded radio signals used as texturing, or lyrics which described long-distance misunderstandings. On A Ghost Is Born, he remains a great writer of songs (“Muzzle Of Bees”, especially) which portray love as fundamentally constant, but assailed by ambiguities, very human glitches. And in common with the album’s questing, untethered sound, Tweedy continually sings of escape and liberation. Or, at least, of an invigorating struggle to be free. You could ascribe this to the departure from Reprise or Bennett’s absence, but more likely it’s a general relief that success has excused Wilco the pressure to compromise. “It’s good to be alone!” he exclaims on “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, and it’s tough to resist his enthusiasm for this passionate, unmediated, adventurous but always profoundly human music.

By the end, in the ramshackle singalong of “The Late Greats”, Tweedy claims, “The best songs will never get sung/The best life never leaves your lungs.” The finest music, he implies, is that which comes and goes in an instant, that is so elusive and impulsive it can never be properly captured. For A Ghost Is Born feels like a band learning to be spontaneous and unencumbered, and coming up with their most engaging album yet. The best songs might never be quite voiced but, on this form, Wilco are getting closer and closer to their essence.