There’s obviously still an audience for Easyworld’s Ben Folds-meets-Radiohead melancholia but, sadly, this territory is already overcrowded?Placebo, Subcircus (remember them?), JJ72, even (at a pinch) Muse have all ploughed a not dissimilar furrow. On the plus side, Easyworld have David “Faultline” Kosten at the controls. Kosten, whose own album corralled Michael Stipe, Wayne Coyne and Chris Martin (on two songs that easily better the half-arsed bland-out of A Rush Of Blood To The Head), has a reputation for working with proper singers, and the appeal of Dav Ford’s lightly crumpled falsetto is obvious. Fragile, etherised songs like “You Have Been Here” work best?here the pervading (and, it must be said, predictable) sense of disquiet is beguiling rather than overplayed. Elsewhere, unfortunately, Ford’s undoubted songwriting ability gets a little lost in the general tastefulness. Perhaps this kind of thing has become the new MOR.

Strangely, female gang of four Electrelane have proven to be ahead of the game, their debut Rock It To The Moon pre-empting the jagged rhythm-flinging of The Rapture, Hot Hot Heat and Franz Ferdinand. Recorded in Chicago with Steve Albini, their newie brings in vocals, Verity Susman droning in English, French, German and Spanish while the minimalist grooves grow ever tighter. There’s a neat PIL-like strut to “On Parade”, while “Birds” blossoms into cheeky Verlaine-ish guitar. The stunning set-piece, however, is “The Valleys”, a Siegfried Sassoon poem crooned by a full choir while the band berate the beat. It’s extraordinary. And powerful.

Apart from soundtrack work?notably, Peter Fonda’s Outlaw Blues from 1977?John Oates has never recorded a studio album, unlike his partner Daryl Hall, who is onto his fourth. He’s ridiculed for being the original Andrew Ridgeley, and for rocking the moustachioed waiter look (actually, he’s clean-shaven on Phunk Shui’s appalling cheapo sleeve), yet Oates was responsible for some of the best songs on their fabulous mid-’70s records Abandoned Luncheonette, War Babies and Daryl Hall John Oates. This is mostly efficient self-penned funk-lite and acoustic soul, with covers of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and “Electric Ladyland”, wherein Hendrix’s psychedelic edges get smoothed into ersatz oblivion.

The debut album from Rich Machin and Ian Glover is a magisterial affair full of haunting, cinematic keyboards and noir ambience. The opening track, “Cabin Fever”, sets the tone?instantly recalling a post-acid house Tangerine Dream, or one of John Carpenter’s analogue synth scores. The best tracks find them teaming up with Spain vocalist Josh Haden, who brings his unique brand of wasted melancholia along for the ride. “Rumblefish”, in particular, is desolate as hell. Cry me a river.

There’s nothing quite like a life-threatening illness to refocus a person’s vision. Post-ME, pianist Keith Jarrett (together with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette) exudes a joyous attitude not always evident in the ‘standards’ trio’s past performances.

Recorded at last year’s Antibes Jazz Festival during appalling weather conditions, spirited romps through “Scrapple For The Apple” and “Autumn Leaves”/”Up For It”, plus a poignantly thoughtful “My Funny Valentine” mark this out as a complete triumph in the face of all manner of adversity.

At just 24, Oregon-born Weaver is some piece of work: a stony wisdom gleaned from years of touring every Stateside fleapit imaginable, seasoned by road trips with Alejandro Escovedo, Greg Brown and the late Dave Van Ronk. In particular, the Brown connection has proved catalytic. The lugubrious lowan sang on Weaver’s debut, El Camino Blues, while Brown stalwarts Bo Ramsey (guitar) and Dave Moore (electric harp/accordion) fleshed out Living In The Ground (2003), recorded in one five-hour spurt.

Living…illustrates Weaver’s fascination with the darker corners of people’s lives, peppered with itinerant drifters caught in rainstorms and jailbirds on the lam. Against a frantic backdrop, his bleached-bone delivery conjures nightmare visions of Tom Waits’ psychotic half-brother gunning a jalopy to hell. Townes Van Zandt’s “2 Girls” is a highlight.

By contrast, the less self-conscious Hollerin’…(2002) allows Weaver the freedom to draw out each narrative and explore different textures. Folksy and naked, “Blood” is typical: voice like pebbles sloshing in a bucket; strangled harmonica; fiddle and squeezebox; boot-heel beat on an empty juke-joint floor. “Woodpecker Song” finds him stuck in a ditch, scrambling his own vocal with manic anti-harmonies. Besides the wonderfully rhythmic storytelling, what’s special is his mood-setting ingenuity. Impotent childhood fantasy “Those Semis Sounded Like Thunder” is soundtracked by what sounds like an angry lawnmower; “Horse Hair And Hay” by a creepy rocking chair beat. Like Merle Haggard shooting tequila with Johnny Dowd. Pungent stuff.

There have been some revelatory moments in home entertainment these past few years. Jim Carrey on the penultimate episode of The Larry Sanders Show. Chris Cunningham’s videos for Aphex Twin’s “Come To Daddy” and “Windowlicker”. The Avalanches’ “Since I Left You” and The Flaming Lips’ “Race For The Prize”. Way up there is “Try Again”, the 2000 single by the late Aaliyah, a record so striking in its construction and arrangement it sounded as though it had been assembled by an alien race of super-advanced dance scientists.

Turns out it was actually a producer from Virginia Beach called Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley. Timbaland had been cutting groundbreaking records before the acid squelch of “Try Again”, notably with Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott and Aaliyah herself, but it’s really been since the turn of the decade that his outlandish trademarks?the stuttering, bass-heavy bounce-beats, high-register synth-bursts and pizzicato strings?have become de rigueur, only fellow Virginia Beach natives The Neptunes rivalling him for sheer ubiquity in the world of hip hop and R&B.

It’s either a sign of his brilliance or of the paucity of rival talent that Timbaland was invited to lend his skills to all four of the above key releases. It’s a measure of the extent to which his radical ideas have been absorbed into the mainstream that little of his current output has that crucial shock-of-the-new. “Hold On”, a track from his third album with rapper Melvin “Magoo” Barcliff, features the plaint, “I’ve seen the world become a product of a revolution that we begun.” True, Timbaland is suffering as much from a dearth of inspiration as he is from the rest of the R&B fraternity mimicking his inventions. But this is a tiresome display of stop-start rhythms and sonic tricks hardly enlivened by the mundane boasts of Magoo. “We tapped into the old school,” Mosley announces on the press release, a bizarre claim from such a forward-looking producer, but he’s right, it does all sound a bit 1995.

This Is Not A Test, the fifth LP from Missy Elliott, sees Timbaland once again at the controls. Talk about the law of diminishing returns. Her first team-up with Mosley, 1997’s Supa Dupa Fly, had a seismic impact on the urban scene. As recently as her third, 2001’s Miss E…So Addictive, she hit a mid-career peak with a dazzling pr

Actually, “singer-songwriter” is too limiting a catch-all for this young Australian, who makes his debut foray here. Shame he’s called M Craft?M Liquid would be better for a musician with such a loose regard for generic convention. “On The 389” is bossa nova with a hint of noise. “Dragonfly” is a sun-dappled acoustic reverie that melts into moonlit dreampop with an electronic undertow. “Sweets” recalls Neil Young’s “Out On The Weekend”, only with female backing vocals and fuzz guitar interrupting the pastoral idyll. And “Come To My Senses” charts the hitherto unexplored territory between Sergio Mendes and DJ Shadow. Tantalising stuff.

Jolie Holland must have wondered if she’d done the right thing when she quit the Be Good Tanyas. Having co-founded the group, she left before their debut album and has spent the last three years sitting in San Francisco watching them become the new champions of roots music. Catalpa, her solo debut, perhaps explains her decision. She must have thought the Tanyas’ pared-down acoustics were overblown, for her own debut is like a field recording, full of hiss and crackle as she sings her spooky fairy tales over an acoustic guitar, accompanied occasionally by a muted banjo and meandering harmonica. And therein, of course, lies its back-porch appeal.

Astrid Williamson has a deliriously half-awake crease in her voice, and the ability to vault effortlessly from woody, resonant low notes into an often heart-stoppingly delicate high range. The album she made with her band Goya Dress?produced by John Cale, no less?was an overlooked trove of dark, subversive and gloriously adult pop music. Indeed, single “Glorious” (about, among other things, giving head) should have been a hit of some sort. The solo debut that followed had its moments, but was very much the sound of an artist unsure of what her label wanted from her. Now, oddly, despite setting up on her own, she seems to have forgotten herself: these new songs?bland, lyrically banal?wouldn’t be out of place on a Dido album. There’s a market there, for sure?but little magic. A shame.

Originally a concept piece (and shelved novel) about the dusty transients of a fictional old motel, this follow-up to 2001’s The American Scene was whittled down from over 100 songs by Terry Miles. Still tuned to early-’70s soft-rock radio, feathery melodies are shaded by sluggish beats. Charlie Hase’s hypnotic drifts of steel and the contrast between Miles’ melancholy croon and girlfriend Kelly Haigh’s airy lightness. Where the Burritos meet The Beatles and Rundgren shares a porch light with Neil Young.

Iain Archer has spent a decade knocking around the diaspora of British indie rock since leaving Northern Ireland in the early ’90s. There were a couple of early solo LPs in singer-songwriter vein and a liaison with the Glasgow-based Reindeer Section/Snow Patrol collective, but Flood The Tanks represents his coming of age. Lovely tunes such as “Not Yourself” and “Boy Boy Boy” recall the melodic facility of Yo La Tengo. But Archer’s lyrical twists make even the sweetest tune disquieting. Despite the often dark subject matter, the songs brim with an unshakeable belief in the resilience of the human spirit. Unassuming, but gripping in its own quiet way.

Sixteen-year-old Joss Stone is one of those freaks that pop and nature conspire to throw up from time to time. The abnormally attentive may have spotted her a few years ago, singing Donna Summer’s “On The Radio” on a BBC show called Star For A Night, a talent contest closer in spirit to Opportunity Knocks than the high-pressure cynicism of Pop Idol.

Stone’s reward for winning was a host of good contacts, which eventually brought her to Miami’s Hit Factory studios and the patronage of ’70s soul legend Betty Wright. Wright produced much of The Soul Sessions, helping select the largely obscure nuggets that make up the track listing and assembling a band of fellow Miami veterans like Timmy Thomas and Latimore to back up Stone. The reason why such historically pungent treatment was accorded a middle-class 16-year-old is apparent from the start of “The Chokin’ Kind”, a gospel-tinged retread of Harlan Howard’s country song which opens The Soul Sessions. Stone’s voice is huge and not a little unnerving. She has all the signifiers of deep soul experience: the husky, rich timbre; the confident testifying; the honeyed transitions. But the ruefulness, grime and pain?or at least a simulacrum of pain?aren’t there. It’s not problematic so much as weird, with Stone sounding like an ing

Radical archaeologist, dowser, occultist and idol of Julian Cope’s, TC Lethbridge (1901-1971) and his enquiring mind provide the inspiration for this sprawling project fronted by one Welbourn Tekh (ex-Sinking Ships). Cope produces and sings occasionally, but Disc One is dominated by prog-punk/Krautrock jams steered by his associates Doggen Foster and Kevin Bales (the best of which, “Pertaining To The Stars”, betrays their other jobs as guitarist and drummer in Spiritualized). It’s a lively, sporadically levitating business, though Tekh’s declamatory vocals can be hard work. Disc Two, meanwhile, features venerable author Colin Wilson’s meditations on Lethbridge, set to distant ambient wobble. Fascinating, but it’s hard to imagine making many return visits to this lovingly assembled shrine.

With ace previous LPs Guest Host and The Naked Dutch Painter, Stew pitched himself as a boho-Sondheim with the melodic chops of Bacharach and the withering wit of Randy Newman. Ditching those records’ surreal blasts of Weimar cabaret and creepy, Love-like pop for a more linear approach, this ‘2 am kinda record’ is warmer and less pessimistic. The pithy social critique of “LA Arteest Cafe” and “Kingdom Of Drink” is a joy.

Conceived as a black Woodstock in ’72, an act of healing seven years after LA’s Watts district had been all but burned down in race riots to the chanting of “burn, baby, burn”, Wattstax was also, in truth, a masterful idea for a showcase of all the Stax acts of the time. Still, hell of a concert?112,000 people watched seven hours of Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas etc, and a legend was born. As well as the movie, there have been various recorded versions since, but now those lovely people who care even more than you or I about such matters have trawled through the original tapes and compiled a new three-CD set.

To squeeze the juicy stuff in, they’ve made some tough decisions. As most of the music from Hayes and Albert King is available on separate releases, they’ve cut them cruelly. And the absence of Isaac’s storming set, apart from “Shaft”, is a big loss. On the plus side, this means they’re able to extend The Staple Singers’ section and bring in one or two subs. Of which, Louise McCord’s “Better Get A Move On” blisters the paint from the walls.

From a Rev Jesse Jackson-preached intro to some Richard Pryor rants, from The Bar-Kays’ underrated “Son Of Shaft” to David Porter’s plaintive “Can’t See You When I Want To”, this is exhilarating stuff. The well-known songs?Mel & Tim’s “Backfield In Motion”, Carla Thomas’ “B-A-B-Y”, Rufus’ “Funky Chicken”?are fired up by the occasion; The Staples take you there. Frederick Knight (“I’ve Been Lonely For So Long”), William Bell, Johnnie Taylor and Eddie Floyd knock on wood. The gospel is true as an arrow.

Forty-seven tracks from the festival and film, 17 previously unreleased. Hey, sure beats a bunch of stoned hippies sitting around with flowers in their hair. Turn yourself loose.

With the final series of Buffy over (and how could they kill off Anya so glibly? But don’t get me started…), all that’s left to console us sad (in both ways) fanatics is the music from the show, here slickly marketed with sleevenotes by Joss Whedon. Kicking off with The Breeders’ blast at the theme tune, it rolls through the Dandy Warhols, Dashboard Prophets, Aimee Mann, The Devics and Laika. There are score fragments, too, notably Christophe Beck’s “Dead Guys With Bombs”. Poor substitute for the real thing, though I heartily recommend series four of Angel as better than cold turkey.

One man’s admirable determination might well be another’s absurd bloody-mindedness, but whatever their view, no one could ever call Robin Proper-Sheppard a quitter.

As singer-songwriter and guitarist with The God Machine, a power trio who relocated to London from their native San Diego in 1991 and soon made a name for themselves in the underground with their near-apocalyptic live shows, Proper-Sheppard has had his crosses to bear. His band’s mix of heavy and hypnotic, quasi-classical metal and starkly vocalised emotion was never fully understood by his record company, and consequently attracted no more than a cult following. Additionally, on the eve of the release of their second album, 1995’s One Last Laugh In A Place Of Dying, drummer and school friend Jimmy Fernandez died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. Both professionally disillusioned and personally traumatised by this loss, Proper-Sheppard released the album as a mark of respect before withdrawing from writing and performing altogether to concentrate instead on running his own record label, The Flower Shop.

Sophia is his post-God Machine project, now seven years old and with three albums to their credit. The third, People Are Like Seasons sees Proper-Sheppard and the mutable “Sophia collective” shifting away from the acoustic minimalism and mournful, almost morbid beauty of their first two albums towards something rather more tough and meaty. Previous comparisons with Red House Painters, Mark Eitzel and Sparklehorse are no longer exclusively appropriate; it seems of late Proper-Sheppard’s been cranking up the volume on his Joy Division, Mogwai and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club records, too.

Take the beats-driven “Darkness (Another Shade In Your Black)”-whose title now sounds wryly self-aware rather than portentous, as it once might have?which recalls Soundgarden messing with Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. Or the driving “If A Change Is Gonna Come”, where Proper-Sheppard stamps hard on the fuzz pedal and wraps his distorted vocal around the line, “Life’s a bitch?and then you die”, somehow avoiding clich