Close to the edge (1972) remains an untarnished pinnacle of ’70s tech-flash, its mammoth title track beginning with a ferocious flourish to rival the most adventurous of post-hardcore ensembles before introducing elements of cosmic funk, Beach Boys harmony and monolithic organ grandeur. Its much-derided 1974 double-disc follow-up Tales Of Topographic Oceans remains a real curate’s egg. “The Revealing Science Of God” is sublime, but the album as a whole lacks the tight structure and focus of its predecessor. Then 1974’s Relayer saw drummer Alan White and Swiss-born keyboardist Patrick Moraz replace the disillusioned Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman. Moraz introduced a hefty dose of fusion, but by 1977’s Going For The One Wakeman was back on board and a more concise Yes emerged, reining their excesses into a sporadically engaging Euro-rock best illustrated by Jon Anderson’s joyful and triumphant “Wonderous Stories”.

Listen up Strokes/Vines/Hives:garage stomp has never been better than this. Period. Just back from the cleaners, The Sonics’ freshly remastered sides for Etiquette (1964/65) are just as punishing 40 years on. Frontman Gerry Roslie still sounds seconds from a coronary on classics “Witch”, “Psycho” and “Strychnine”, and guitarist Larry Parypa delivers paint-stripping riffs with all the subtlety of a stud bull crashing the Royal Doulton factory. Savage, brutal and fearless.

In 1969, Palance was filming in Nashville, and fell in with an emerging singer-songwriter: Kris Kristofferson. When Palance mentioned he’d toyed with making a country record himself, Kristofferson introduced him to local legend Buddy Killen, who’d started out playing bass with Hank Williams and hit the commercial motherlode recording Roger Miller. Intrigued, Killen rounded up the cream of the Tennessee capital’s session men?like Dylan veterans Kenneth Buttrey, Charlie McCoy and Pete Drake?and unloaded two barrels of Nashville sound, cutting 11 tracks with Palance.

Trainspotting and kitsch appeal aside, though, is the record any good? Well, in places, better than good. Often, Palance resorts to the actor’s standby of talking through a tune, and standards like “My Elusive Dreams” and “Green, Green Grass Of Home” are regular Nashville-machine saccharine. Elsewhere, though, it’s the real deal. A version of Red Lane’s chaingang murder ballad “Blackjack County Chains” stings: Cool Hand Luke remade as low-budget revenge flick, with a score by Lee Hazelwood. Palance’s self-penned, self-mocking “The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived” is mordant novelty in the area of “Big Bad John”, but he outdoes that with “Goodbye Lucy”, a deceptively sugary, late-night singalong, narrated from the perspective of a desperate, deadbeat serial adulterer whose days of swinging are long behind him.

The opener, a superb, crystal-clear cover of Lane’s rolling rover’s anthem “Brother River”, is the undoubted highlight, Palance’s resigned, from-the-bar-room-floor voice caught midway between Cash and Kristofferson on a song with the sweep of the big country, tumbling along on light, silvery pedal-steel. “Dancing Like Children” is something else again: apprehensive psycho-melodrama such as wouldn’t seem out of place on Scott 3, Killen conjuring an insidious atmosphere while Palance whispers memories of long-gone love, the whole thing sickly sweet as dying flowers.

It’s this track that best mirrors the eerie beauty of the album’s cover: Palance’s reptilian features?part-sculpted by surgeons after a bomber he was piloting crashed during World War II?caught in a stark, midnight mugshot. Like a rhinestone vampire.

A kind of country companion to the Stills/Bloomfield/Kooper Super Session (without the tedious blues riffing), Muleskinner was a bluegrass supergroup stumbled upon by chance. Invited onto LATV alongside Bill Monroe, the quintet (ex-Byrd Clarence White, Richard Greene, Peter Rowan, Bill Keith and David Grisman) were left centre stage when Monroe’s bus conked out en route. The result was a one-off deal with Warners. The musicianship is impeccable (White’s Telecaster often defying belief), full of fevered mountain fiddles, brass-bell banjo and mandolin. A landmark ensemble jam.

Inspired by The Mothers Of Invention, Hendrix, the space programme, the hippie scene, haystacks of dope and huge vats of acid, George Clinton’s Funkadelic confounded both white and black audiences by their insistence on playing free rock, exposing a segregationist confusion in the supposedly freed minds of ’60s audiences. Of course, sheer sweet fatback soul coursed often unnoticed through Funkadelic’s veins?this was rock invading funk, and funk invading rock. In today’s resegregated era, this sounds as wild as ever, from the clarion call of “Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow” to the blazing guitar sustained throughout “Maggot Brain”. Glorious.

Post-punk art strumpet Mercier Descloux has been so completely forgotten you could almost take her for the latest darling to squeeze the vogue for late-’70s/early-’80s NY. Yet she is the real thing?a Parisian who shared a SoHo loft with Patti Smith, gigged like a putative Peaches and recorded a handful of LPs for Ze and Polydor between 1978 and 1986.

Her style is new wave yapping meets gamine French chicklet. Debut Press Color is archetypal No Wave disco: all bubblegum-free-jazz-groove (man). Follow-up Mambo Nassua, recorded at Compass Point, plumps for a hotter, Fela Kuti-ish sound. Both irresistible.

Released the same year as Hall & Oates’ Abandoned Luncheonette and like that lost classic produced by Arif Mardin, AWB had sufficient grit to appease the purists, but enough melodic and rhythmic hooks for it to reach No 1 in America. “Pick Up The Pieces”, the attempt to out-funk Ohio Players and their mid-’70s ilk, now sounds as much of a novelty contrivance as Stock Aitken Waterman’s “Roadblock”. But “Person To Person” is authentically Stax-like and “Work To Do” is as Philly-fabulous as The O’Jays. “Nothing You Can Do” is horn-driven and harmony-drenched, “Keeping It To Myself” has the midtempo insistence of an Al Green hit, while “Just Wanna Love You Tonight” is almost in the “She’s Gone” white soul superleague.

On the 25th anniversary of the death of Belgium’s most famous son comes a 40-track double album of the existential Gallic cool that influenced David Bowie, Ray Davies, Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker, among others. Such masterpieces as “Amsterdam”, “Ne Me Quitte Pas” and “Le Moribond” (later reinvented as “Seasons In The Sun”) are all present. But the selling point?and cause of some controversy?is five previously unreleased tracks. A letter from Brel shortly before his death asked for them not to be released. Why is unclear?this blatant disregard of his wishes reveals at least two of them, “L’Amour Est Mort” and “La Cath

Terrific to see the old Track logo resurrected and equally good to hear Ronnie “Plonk” Lane again. In 1973, he boldly left The Faces two years before Rod Stewart to pursue his interest in rural blues, folk and jug band music. To be frank, a single album without the live tracks probably would have sufficed. But there’s no denying the unassuming bonhomie of most of these 36 songs, kazoo solos and all. The hits “How Come” and “The Poacher” are here, but even better are a fantastic version of Derroll Adams’ “Roll On Babe” and Plonk’s own, lovely “Tell Everyone”.

HIS HUGE, MOURNFUL, WOUNDED bear of a voice is so effective and emotive when placed against fresh backdrops that it remains a pity Springsteen doesn’t musically branch out more often. As this three-CD set (there’s also a two-CD version, excluding the rarities disc) tries to fairly represent each of his albums, there’s too much communal air-punching, too little gentle introspection. Too much c’mon everybody, not enough leave me alone everybody. The anthems surge past anonymously, intimate as juggernauts. But when he gets quiet, gets home after crowded nights and faces solitary dawns, he’s an extraordinary artist with a spooky, magical gift:the ghost of Orbison, the patron saint of the wilfully lonely.

A career-spanning retrospective, this obviously contains many absolutely storming songs, while begging you to question the omissions. It’d’ve been braver to offer one of the extended mood-pieces from the second album, or the thrilling, atypical “Candy’s Room”, or the underrated “Secret Garden”. The acoustic albums are given short shrift; allocations roughly tying in with commercial success.

But we’re quibbling against a tidal wave. There’s a preposterous wealth of greatness here. The early songs babble and spit with verbose poetry (“For You”), then hunch and stalk (“4th Of July”), then explode into the crystallised crescendo that was “Born To Run”. “Jungleland” is more exhilaratingly imaginative than most rock messiahs’ entire output. We move through Springsteen’s noble attempts to keep it real while suddenly famous?Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River, Nebraska (and the sublime “Atlantic City”)?before the downswing of the Born In The USA era. On “Tunnel Of Love” the visionary within still breathes (and can document the demise of love-as-hope), but it’s patchy from there. “Streets Of Philadelphia” is a gem, again freeing the great bear from his musical cage. For “The Rising” (to which opus critics were unfathomably generous), he’s back behind safety bars.

The third disc of rarities and lives proves how exciting a soul man he can be when off the four-by-four leash. Fans already owning the greatest hits stuff six times will covet it. Previously unreleased are a nifty “None But The Brave” (a Born In The USA outtake); home recordings of “County Fair” and “Big Payback” (shortly after the Nebraska sessions); and the rocky “From Small Things”. From films, there are “Lift Me Up” (from Limbo), “Dead Man Walking” and the beautiful “Missing” (from The Crossing Guard). There’s the acoustic “Countin’ On A Miracle” (as played at the end of every show on the Rising tour), a jocular “Viva Las Vegas”, and a live “Held Up Without A Gun” from 1980, which burns, hellbent on exhaustion or ascension. Still the standout (ever since The River tour) is an astoundingly in-the-moment live version of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped”. Rarely has anyone made another’s song so their own. It emerges bruised, Bruce-d, not so much a torch ballad as a forest fire, a heart (and larynx) ablaze. The wordy babbling beatnik became The Boss then became understandably cautious, but when he loses himself and lets rip, to this day, thunder and lightning back off warily. Looking again at the track listing, this is a crazily great thing.

This collection spans the past 15 years and features songs covered extensively in the November issue of Uncut (Take 78). There are few surprises, not least the omission of the unloved “Shiny Happy People”. However, the now-common device of a non-chronological arrangement here serves to emphasise both R.E.M.’s consistency and constancy, in quality and recurring themes. The publicity blitz surrounding this album has had the welcome effect of returning to the centre stage a band who have gradually (wllfully?) slid into a twilight zone since the mid-’90s.

Of the two brand new tracks; the jaunty but scabrous “Bad Day”is outdone by “Animal”, In part a pastiche of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, which sees R.E.M. make a pugnacious return to their best traditions?wild, frolicsome, iridescent neo psychedelia. Disc one also contains “All The Right Friends”, a callow offering from the Murmur session’s

It’s the limited edition two-disc set that offers devotees something to tuck in to?a second CD of rarities and B-sides represents a mixed but generally worthwhile package. An acoustic version of “Pop Song’89” is surprisingly effective, lending some timbre and urgency to a track that in its original form was a bit skippy and sing-song. A live version of “Turn You inside Out” sees R.E.M competing scabrously with the resurgent guitar bands of the late. ’80s?pixles Husker Du, etc, “Fretless” is an outtake from Out Of Time, the exclusion of which Buck regrets in The sleevenotes it’s Impassioned (“Don’t talk to me about alone” sparls stipe), but it doesn’t quite go off at the exquisite tangents you hope for from R.E.M

Buck also describes “Chance (Dub)” as an” atrocity it’ certainly disposable, flickering boisterously like an old, short Super-8 film of a party discovered in the attic. “It’s A Free World Baby was first heard in the 1993 film Coneheads, and it’s a pleasant delicately arranged piece with flavours of. Strawberry Fields ields Forever”, An accelerated, funned-up “Drive” doesn’t make any sense and is scant consolation for the original’s omission on the hits disc. A version of “Star Me Kitten” ensues, the lyric intoned with debatable degree of empathy and comprehension by William Burroughs.

A re-recorded, rearrange “Leave” is more lushly cinematic than the version on New Adventures In Hi-Fi. An acoustic “Beat A Drum” from Reveal meanwhile, demonstrates that R.E.M. songs are offen as enhanced when they’re pared down as when they’re embellished “2IN” is Buck’s personal tribute to the late producer lack Nitzsche, and is cheesy but reverential, Finally come two elevating live favourites. “The One I Love”, recorded acoustically in 2001 for a radio show, benefits from a softening of the melody on the part of an older, wiser stipe, while “Country Feedback”, always a favourite of ‘true’ fans, is rendered here in all its half-spoken, ragged glory, pure spilt essence of R.E.M.

Plenty here, then, for the uninitated (ie, the clueless Coldplay fans) who need in introduction to R.P.M. as well as the hiding faithful.

Formed around the original Ants, Bow Wow Wow were often dismissed as a cheap and nasty imitation of Adam’s tribal formula. If anything, they were bolder, singing about tape piracy (“C30, C60, C90, Go!”) and satanism (“Prince Of Darkness”) while their Burundi-Drummers-meets-Ennio-Morricone interface often left the Ants trailing. The somewhat dubious exploitation of teenage singer Annabella Lu Win aside (itself predictive of today’s media perviness in the age of t.A.t.U.), this double CD shows them to be a great deal more imaginative than their ’80s two-hit wonder status might suggest.

If you like the brutalist proto-electro of German duo Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft, you’ll love Liaisons Dangereuses, whose one and only album, mixed in legendary producer Conny Plank’s studio in June 1981, finally makes it onto CD. This primitive electronic body music, performed by Chrislo Haas (ex-DAF), barked in Spanish, French and German by Beate Bartel (from Mania D) and with shrieks courtesy of Krishna Goineau, would have featured alongside Soft Cell’s “Memorabilia” and Japan’s “Art Of Parties” in all the best clubs that summer, but my God if it doesn’t totally chime with today’s electroclash, especially Miss Kittin and The Hacker’s pervy synth-pop and Felix Da Housecat’s Kittenz And Thee Glitz.

Liaisons’ “Peut Etre…Pas” appears on A Secret History and Serie Noire 2. The latter makes connections between early-’80s and early-’00s underground dance, from Savage Process to Green Velvet, but also includes examples of micro-genres in between:punk-funk, dub-rock, Hi-NRG, new beat, acid house and EBM.

A Secret History sees Throbbing Gristle rub up alongside Visage, Telex, Riuchi Sakamoto… Oh, and Paul McCartney’s “Temporary Secretary”.