In recent years, a number of groups have attempted to explore the immersive, ambient properties of heavy metal. Godflesh and Scorn discovered parallels between metal and dub, while Earth forged a warped psychedelic ambience out of feedback and amp abuse. Olympia, Washington’s Growing are another band thundering on the fringes of this experimental tradition. Songs begin as isolationist drift before bursting into riffs so heavy they’re practically static. These slowly unfolding harmonic drones may often recall the scorched-earth Neil Young of Arc-Weld and Dead Man, but Growing are charting a wide-open Americana entirely their own.

Underground hip hop has manoeuvred itself into a dead-end these past few months, chiefly thanks to the ubiquity of the overly-quirky Anticon collective. Chicago’s Diverse, though, offer a timely antidote, with a flow as direct and battle-hardened as that of his mainstream rivals, and the imagination to hire a couple of outstanding producers. Prefuse 73 and RJD2 are best known for their leftfield instrumentals (the former choppy and micro-detailed; the latter rockier), but here they dice beats and juggle guitar loops without ever smothering the performance of Diverse. Cannibal Ox’s Vast Aire and the undervalued Jean Grae (daughter of South African jazz pianist Dollar Brand) donate a few verses, and other producers include Tortoise’s Jeff Parker. Still, this is Diverse’s triumph, a rapper notable for his connections, but never over-shadowed by them.

There’s something novel about this concept: the soundtrack of a book. While the realistic word for it is probably “cross-marketing”, the hapless dreamers among us can ponder: are we supposed to listen to the relevant song while reading Hornby’s chapter on it? Even if we don’t possess posh headphones like the pretty model on the sleeve (entirely inappropriate unless the album is also a bottle of conditioner), are we to aim for a music-literature ‘synergy’ experience? I’ve just tried skimming Little Dorrit while headbanging to lggy and, frankly, it doesn’t work. So let’s just assume this is?as the author’s sleevenotes suggest?”a compilation tape. Listen to these songs, enjoy them, spread the word, and keep them to yourself, all at the same time. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.” While there are nice songs here, and dreary ones, it’d be hard to keep them secret?many are eulogised by Uncut every month, and sometimes you expect Jools Holland to waddle in from camera left to post-ironically holler, “Wasn’t that marvellous?” On the plus side, this may introduce the likes of Paul Westerberg, Mark Mulcahy and The Bible to the biggest audience they’ve ever enjoyed.

There’s no doubting The Nickster’s sincerity. Let’s face it, you’d have to be sincere to have Jackson Browne and Richard and Linda Thompson in there. The aroma of worthy middle-aged blokedom is slightly offset by the stark Ani DiFranco and The Avalanches’ “Frontier Psychiatrist”. The pinnacles are obvious, but pinnacles nonetheless?Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”, The Velvelettes’ “Needle In A Haystack”, even Rod rumbling through Dylan’s “Mama, You Been On My Mind”. There are up-to-muster contributions from Rufus Wainwright, Ben Folds Five and Teenage Fanclub, and the best’s saved for last with Patti Smith’s immortal “Pissing In A River”. Which, in context, serves as an act of noble subversion.

Faithful to its own highs.

Often tagged as “the Australian Belle & Sebastian”, Sodastream are a less demonstrably poppy proposition. They’re actually less interesting when they essay perky than when wallowing in the warm melancholy of “Chorus Line”, subtly shaded with double bass and steel guitar. Singer Karl Smith lets rip on “Constant Ships”, as if touching the raw nerve of profound grief. Music whose lack of sophistication is both vice and virtue.

As befits a man whose debut album appeared to be about birdwatching, David “Minotaur Shock” Edwards is not one to rush things. Two years after Chiff-Chaffs & Willow Warblers, Rinse is more an act of prevarication than a follow-up, collecting Edwards’ early EPs in one handy bundle. Essentially, he operates in the same area as Four Tet?prettified electronica augmented by vague guitars, melancholy pianos and music boxes, the odd sheep. There’s that same impulse to create something rustic out of circuitry, though Edwards is, if anything, more whimsical:the outstanding “Motoring Britain” takes Neu! on a detour of B-roads in a Hillman Minx.

In the early ’70s Lee was the best country picker in London, and a pioneer of early British country-rock with Heads, Hands And Feet. Then he took over from James Burton in Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band. On Heartbreak Hill, he pays tribute to the lady with a collection of songs from her repertoire. He’s accompanied by Nashville’s finest, yet the focus always remains the brilliant guitar work of the “skinny, half-gypsy Englishman whose blistering solos and passion for American music knocked us off our feet,” as Emmylou puts it in her liner note. Meanwhile, can anyone explain the lack of a Heads, Hands And Feet best-of.

Stephin Merritt, whose piquant playfulness with The Magnetic Fields has seen him described as this generation’s Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, may not be quite ready for that league?not just yet. But his sanguine voice, shrewd words and mauve melodies do mark him out as a songwriter of genuine, um, merit. Here he colours Peter Hedges’ new film with five new songs and five drawn from his albums with the Fields and The 6ths. There are clever couplets and wry winks, but the melancholy is authentic. Of the new stuff, “All I Want To Know” and “One April Day” will linger longest, while “Stray With Me” (what a knowing title!) is so arch it touches its toes.

Like everyone, I’m prone to enthuse how utterly electric the jiggling phenomenon known as Beyonc

A four-piece comprising just two guitars, bass and drums, Explosions In The Sky seek to capture, examine and elongate moments of high emotion, awe and desolation through playing which rises in cascades of manna and static, then ebbs to a subdued and pensive pulse. Unlike notional peers Godspeed! You Black Emperor, they deliberately limit their sonic options by not deploying strings, synths or samples. This purity, though, gives the music a particular aliveness. Listening to The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place is not unlike watching the motions of some great white underwater organism. Explosions are part of the extremely fertile Texas scene which also threw up the extraordinary Lift To Experience (the bands are friends), whose debut album, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, was Uncut’s Album Of The Month back in July 2001 (Take 50).

There are just five tracks here, each of which seeks to capture the mood invoked by their titles. The high tides and clashing sound waves of opener “First Breath After Coma” conjure the onslaught of ambivalent feelings that come as consciousness returns. The silvery, urgent writhing of “The Only Moment We Were Alone” could be a transcription of the blurry black-and-white photo of a decisive moment seized, the unspoken possibilities of a few seconds extrapolated.

“Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean” was inspired by the harrowing fate of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, whose crew perished, stranded on the sea bed in 2000. An anxious key change seems to signify the realisation of their tragedy, and there’s a disturbing sense throughout of the last gasps of life bubbling away in the horrible quiet of their tomb. Yet it’s also a strangely magnificent and defiant piece, a requiem perhaps. “Memorial” twines slowly and vertically, panning back to reveal something quite monumental.

Profoundly romantic closer “Your Hand In Mine” captures the impulse of this overwhelming music?an affirmation of love and connectivity in a world which sometimes seems to fight against these things. A formidable demonstration of what can still be done with guitars.

The late Tupac Shakur won’t lie down, or be allowed to. This documentary (just released in the US) is struggling to get a UK release, but the album’s an impressive mix of grave-robbing and creative necrophilia. Over a foundation of greatest hits, there are three new tracks. Eminem produces “Runnin’ (Dying To Live)”, which fuses 2Pac and Biggle, while the 8 Mile animal himself raps on “One Day At A Time”. 50 Cent tackles “The Realist Killaz”; there’s actually a crackle, a frisson, to setting him up against the sainted 2Pac, and the track makes great street theatre. There’s nothing to match “Lose Yourself”, but it’s intense and itchy.

One suspects that Brooklynite Jason Forrest chose the pseudonym Donna Summer to cause as much trouble and confusion as possible. His six tracks on this heroically noisy split album are virtuoso plunderphonica, where myriad samples are squished to oblivion. Summer’s hyperactivity has an obvious parallel with Kid 606, but his party trick is to sling florid ’70s guitar solos into the hard disc grinder. It’s tremendous stuff, which slightly overshadows the pieces by Ove-Naxx (aka Tokyo splattercore aficionado Isao Sano). Naxx is an avant-junglist in the vein of DJ Scud, but it’s a measure of Summer’s multifarious brutality that, in this company, he sounds relatively staid.

Born out of Williamsburg’s vibrant underground scene in 2000?and sounding not unlike the soundtrack to a painfully hip party there, Vic Thrill’s debut is a fizzing cocktail of world music polyrhythms, camp theatrics and techno wizardry. The influence of Ziggy is evident throughout, but there are also strains of the kitsch disco of Pizzicato 5, the murky pop of The Frogs and snatches of the Happy Mondays and Underworld. Incessant and uptempo for much of the time, it is unmistakably danceable. As if entirely worn out, the record closes with the Grandaddy-esque “Zero Odds”. Perhaps it’s intended to soothe tired souls prepared to do it all over again.

To all but the obsessive, Julian Cope has appeared lost to rock these past few years. Since the unsuccessful release of Interpreter in 1996, he has been far more prominent as a Neolithic scholar, scourge of the Roman Empire and cheerleader for Odin, as a mischievous shit-stirrer in the cloisters of academe. In fact, Cope has been simultaneously burrowing deep into the avant-rock underground, building a bolthole for himself and a global cabal of psychedelic refuseniks. Where once his tastes seemed stuck in 1971 with Blue Cheer and Amon D

Yep, it is a groan-inducing name (inspired by a visit to a Soho sex shop which stocked edible ladies’ apparel) but Myracle Brah overcome initial preconceptions with an album that returns them to the sweet and sour terrain of their debut Life On Planet Eartsnop, and avoids the culde sac power pop of last album Bleeder. MB mainman Andy Bopp keeps the New England trio at full melodic throttle during “Climbing On A Star” and the cross-wired “Hole In My Head”, so while they remain a classy tribute band, we can forgive them.

Still barely known here, Ndegeocello was the first signing to Madonna’s Maverick label. Comfort Woman is, loosely, her Let’s Get It On?a sensual, sumptuous overload. Much of the LP sounds hazily familiar?not just in its summation of elements from her previous work, but in its subtle nods to earlier black musics. “Body” layers half-whispered entreaties over a keyboard riff reminiscent of early-’70s Stevie W; the gentle sway of “Liliquoi Moon” erupts into choppy, Princely guitar histrionics, and “Love Song#3”, which seethes in a kind of fraught torpor, is like a narcotised Prince ballad. Sometimes, the combination of emotional/sexual imperatives and intoxicating languor even recalls Imagination’s delirious “Body Talk”. Ndegeocello’s unshowy voice flutters among swirling, dubby soundscapes that value mood and texture over actual tunes. At its least inspired, it’s worthy stodge; at its best, it’s a blissful surge.

Bear with me on this one: one listen to Cyndi’s heartrending cover of Prince’s “When U Were Mine” from her ’83 debut She’s So Unusual should convince you?she is simply pop’s most undervalued singer. After two decades of patchy material, she’s hit what’s often seen as the last refuge of the scoundrel (hello, Rod) and made a mixed bag of pop and jazz standards. While the world doesn’t need another version of “Unchained Melody”, her tremulous, beaten-black-and-blue take on “Walk On By” could have come straight off Laura Nyro’s New York Tendaberry?high praise indeed. Unfortunately there’s also the Tony Bennett duet (“Makin’ Whoopee”) and a near-unlistenable romp through “On The Sunny Side Of The Street”. Was it too much to hope she might push out to the wracked limits of her remarkable voice and make a bleak torch song classic?

The difference between Burch and most of his Nashville neighbours is pretty simple. “To others,” he tells Uncut, “making music is simply work. To me, it’s a matter of life and death.” Fitting, then, that Fool For Love?his fifth album?is the album of his life. Deceptively easy on the ear, he’s cut back on instrumental clutter to create the intimate mood of a perpetually moonstruck gypsy, clip-clopping to the classic rhythm of American country and rock’n’roll. Part-Everlys, part-Orbison, Burch wears these wonderful songs like a second hide, slipping effortlessly into honky-tonk, old-time swing and lonesome folk. The sort of record you wish more people made, rather than the lone stoking of a dying art. But then again, to sound this simple?this wise?is anything but straightforward. Since fetching up in Nashville via Indiana in the early ’90s, Burch has daubed fresh colour onto a rapidly greying honky-tonk scene, forming the WPA Ballclub with steel guitarist Paul Niehaus (also a Lambchop card-carrier) and stealing the attentions of Chet Atkins, Cowboy Jack Clement and the late Bill Monroe, alongside guest spots on LPs by Vic Chesnutt, Josh Rouse and The Pine Valley Cosmonauts. And it’s this easy straddling of the traditional and new that makes him unique. More Gene Autry than Woody Guthrie, Burch’s voice is pitch-perfect for gunslinger balladry, while the spare arrangements (exquisitely realised by various WPA backers) are firmly rooted in the now.

Opener “Lovesick Blues Boy” could be Marty Robbins pining over a gentle horsebeat canter. The stunning “Time To Cry” is a dollop of Roy Orbison over warm acoustic guitar. “Sparks Fly Out” is country-skiffle, Burch’s overdubbed harmonies sweet as primetime Don’n’Phil. Elsewhere, the Hawaiian steel strum of classic doughboy swinger, “If You’re Gonna Love Me”, is offset by the softly spartan “Deserted Love” and “Like Railroad Steel”, in which Burch keens and flexes his voice like a wind-ruffled willow.