Readers bewitched by David Sylvian's Blemish will have noticed the key contributions of veteran contrarian guitarist Derek Bailey, and here he's simultaneously pushing the boundaries of improv and going back to its roots. Presenting a never more unlikely instrumentation of bass saxophone (Tony Bevan), clarinet (Alex Ward), dictaphone (THF Drenching) and, if you will, bricks for drums (Sonic Pleasure), this incredible record sounds like a collision between Test Dept's determinism and the Bonzo Dog Band's mischief. Drenching's dictaphone squeals and cackles like a virtual saxophone. A highlight is the 17-minute "Charity Singles Ball", wherein Bailey's guitar seems to join previously unimaginable dots between Charlie Christian and The Edge before the band's closing collective screams threaten to demolish the speakers. Brilliant.

One of alternative Nashville's most potent female singer-songwriters, Kate Campbell sets her own songs aside on Twang On A Wire to pay tribute to a dozen pioneers from country music's senior sorority. Backed by a fine band that includes Uncut favourites Jeff Finlin and Will Kimbrough, she runs through a dozen great songs made famous by the likes of Lynn Anderson ("Rose Garden"), Tanya Tucker ("Would You Lay With Me In A Field Of Stone"), Jeannie C Riley ("Harper Valley PTA") and Dolly Parton ("Down From Dover"). The lusher Nashville pop sound of the originals is replaced by a more stripped-down, alt.country feel to make Twang On A Wire an unexpected delight.

In New Zealand, where she grew up, the 26-year-old Bic Runga is bigger than Madonna, breaks bread with the Prime Minister, and felt compelled to leave the peninsula and move to Paris because she got sick of seeing herself in the papers. Her debut album, 1998's Drive, was the biggest-selling in NZ history (Crowded who?). Beautiful Collision, the follow-up, has already trounced it, having spent 52 weeks at No 1. The only thing stopping Runga from repeating this success elsewhere thus far has been, as she puts it, "the paralysing distance" between her homeland and the rest of the world. Now that she's in Europe, well, watch out Dido. Don't worry, Runga is only superficially Dido-esque. Despite being one of the loveliest collections of songs in recent memory, there are no facile quandaries about "bf" here. Through nuance and shade, you can tell Runga reads more Elizabeth Smart than Helen Fielding. Backstage at a Blondie gig in London, she took exception to something this reviewer said and whacked him about the head. Would Dido do that? Probably not. Beautiful Collision is lovely, but it's a loveliness that, at a guess, conceals trauma and neurosis. Radio 2 will love it. So will xfm. Even "A Day Like That" and "Honest Goodbyes", which are in waltz time. Runga describes the record as "whimsical", but there is something unsettling about these fragrant reveries. They catch you off guard. Think of them as the missing link between Julee Cruise and Julie Andrews. It's like being sung to by the girl in the attic. Songs such as "She Left On A Monday" and "Counting The Days" are deceptively, delicately cutting. They're not lullabies, they're lullabites. Runga wrote all the music and words on Beautiful Collision, produced and arranged it all, played everything from piano and guitar to drums and dobro. Only Coldplay's engineer, Michael Brauer, and the odd stray male like Neil Finn (vocals on "Something Good" and "Listening For The Weather") and Joey Waronker (occasional "drum sounds") shatter the mood of solitary female yearning. In fact, the only real sorethumb moment is the grunge-lite of "Good Morning Baby", a duet with Dan Wilson of Semisonic. The rest is unashamedly, exquisitely MOR-ish. These kisses feel like hits.

As 50 per cent of Smith & Mighty, he was?along with Massive Attack and Portishead?responsible for 'the Bristol sound', a brooding blend of hip hop-primed beats and noir-ish, textured soundscapes. Smith is a pioneer of what later became trip hop, but his solo effort is much more than the coffee-table accessory that might suggest. Its roots lie in dub, drum'n'bass and ragga, encompassing both the smoothly urgent, deep house of "Living In Unity" and "Great Escape", where measured orchestral sweetness seeps through a monstrously baffled bass.

It's finally time to forget if not forgive that hideous voicebox on "Show Me The Way". Now a resident of Cincinnati, Peter Frampton has made a self-produced album of roots-based, gimmick-free American-influenced rock. From the lovely minor chord acoustics of "Not Forgotten" to the blues shuffle of "Flying Without Wings" via the lo-fi lullaby of "Mia Rose", the tone is warm and engaging. Even the version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" can be excused?George was an old friend, and Frampton played on All Things Must Pass. Mind you, it's still salutary to remember that punk's annus mirabilis was also the year in which we somehow bought 16 million copies of Frampton Comes Alive.

Possibly reacting against his deification by the new garage rock elite, Billy Childish seems to have slowed down his work rate of late. Roughly a hundred albums into his career, 1914 is only his first of 2003, though the time away seems to have been spent cultivating his moustache rather than plotting any vast aesthetic shift. Twelve tracks of the same old crotchety, valve-driven rock'n'roll, then, often with the same old tunes (the everfaithful "Troubled Mind" crops up this time as "All My Feelings Denied"). The hit rate isn't quite as high as last year's essential Steady The Buffs. But still, Childish's memorials to teenage girlfriends, and his tireless efforts to expose the modern world as an iniquitous sham ("Hedge strimmers are bogus!"), mark him out as one of Britain's most energetic and cherishable nostalgists.

Frustrated after failed business negotiations pushed the release of their American Whip album back into 2004, boy-girl duo Joy Zipper entered a New York studio with indie legend Kramer (Shimmydisc proprietor, producer of Galaxie 500 and many others) and knocked out this 21-minute mini album in a couple of days. Gratifyingly, their bad feelings didn't erupt into a maelstrom of punky catharsis. Rather, they've produced a chugging, grungey three-chord pop of rare intimacy and warmth. Of the six tracks here, two ("Gun Control" and "Check Out My New Jesus") are reworkings of old songs, the other four being split between Vincent Cafiso and Tabitha Tindale. All of them are marked by a brave, embattled innocence.

Guess something's going right in rock's resurrection when we can cite reference points like The Gun Club and Crime & The City Solution without being dragged out to the paddock and shot. As The Duke Spirit are a London five-piece with a female frontperson in Liela Moss, these comparisons highlight their willingness to delve beneath the predictable: co-produced by Simon Raymonde, who we're legally obliged to describe as "former Cocteau Twin", this six-track debut mini album isn't afraid to let a mood build, a groove grind up and down, a darkness descend. Echoing, scrawling white blues, with plenty of messed-up love, crystal-clear hate, whisky rants and horny demons.

As DJ Spooky, Paul D Miller has helped elevate the status of the turntable from humble DJ tool to an instrument in its own right. His scratch skills may be dazzling, but he's equally drawn to John Cage and Sun Ra as Kool Herc, Prince Paul and Grandmaster Flash. An almost academic approach to slipmat arts has seen him work with everyone from Scanner to Thurston Moore, but here his collaboration with producer Ryan Moore (aka Twilight Circus) results in the anchoring of the former's darkly textured atmospherics by the latter's deep, rootsy dub. It's potent, postmodern magic.

A genuine treasure, Sad Songs... is one of those records that seem to drop out of the sky into your lap to become an instant obsession. It begins with "Cardinal"?autumnal chords and a hazy, strung-out ambience (like Lambchop's Nixon espousing a drifting, eternal grief instead of domestic bliss); a nicotine-burnished voice dispensing harsh advice with epic resignation: "Never look her in the eyes/Never tell the truth/If she knows you're paper/You know she'll have to burn you/Never tell the one you want that you do/Save it for the deathbed/When you know you kept her wanting you. "It's going to be a long, dark night of embattled, bittersweet soul. "Slipping Husband" musters the self-lacerating machismo of Afghan Whigs' "Gentlemen" ("You could have been a legend/But you became a father"); the unbearably aching "90-Mile Water Trail" finds a violent lover captivated by the "target of these hands": "How could your hair have the nerve to dance around like that, blowin'?/How could the air have the nerve to blow your hair around like that?" No one has written the uneasy poetry of self-disgust with such brutality since Mark Eitzel at his best. Singer Matt Berninger must either have some imagination or one hell of a bruised heart. The musicianship lifts Sad Songs... even further into the realm of the extraordinary. Brothers Aaron (who also plays bass) and Bryce Dessner are as capable of Sonic Youth discord as subtle, perfectly judged shading and Padma Newsome (whose superior avant-classical/post-rock group Clogs released a criminally overlooked record this year) contributes some wild, real gone violin. Livid as a bruise, this is brave, desperate and desperately beautiful music.

For his 15th album, Ely took a bunch of human-drama newspaper clippings and decided to weave a short story collection where the protagonists' defining thread is escape: from the past, present, themselves. And it works a treat. Ely's twang is the sonic thread binding these lost souls to the earth, while the brawny guitars of longtime cohorts David Grissom and Rob Gjersoe provide unfussy ballast, and fellow Flatlander Butch Hancock gets two writing credits. "A Flood On Our Hands" and "That's Why I Love You Like I Do" tap into the same classic Ely balladry as 1978's Honky Tonk Masquerade.

The idea of three Brooklyn scenesters making overdriven Appalachian folk is so preposterous as to be quite appealing?if nothing else, it ridicules the cult of authenticity that continues to dog 'roots' music. Stitches operates at a fractionally less deranged speed than The Boggs' 2002 debut, but still resembles the early Pogues had the latter studied Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music rather than their Irish heritage. Jason Friedman sings as if he has a mouthful of loose teeth, but his songwriting is definitely improving. A clutch of the songs here?notably ruminatory single "The Ark"?are memorable for more than the impious way they attack tradition.

Lyrics Born is one of the founding members of the Californian hip hop brotherhood who trade collectively under the Quannum logo and who spent the late 1990s trying to make hip hop a little more wholesome. They weren't entirely successful, even if they did release a couple of decent singles. Later That Day is Lyrics Born's first solo attempt at righting the world of rap, but it simply underlines that in hip hop the devil really has all the best tunes. Where the best hip hop is fresh and inventive, this is a painfully self-conscious and retro set. There are so many stylistic nods to the early days of hip hop that it's like a rap version of Ocean Colour Scene, and it seems Lyrics Born has nothing to say beyond drippy hippie platitudes. As relevant to modern urban living as tweed.

The Creatures project always gave Budgie a chance to shine and this, based on a fearsomely powerful session he shared with Taiko drum master Leonard Eto, is no exception. He dominates the opening part of the album with his savage beats, Siouxsie relegated to the odd "Yeah!" and "Hai!" Thankfully, they're careful not to enter Cozy Powell territory, and soon they're blending traditional Japanese instrumentation with minimalist industrial atmospheres to create the breathy erotica of "Tourniquet", the spectral, fatalistic "Further Nearer" and the twee, purposefully comic "Godzilla". It certainly won't be everyone's cup of green tea, but Budgie is outstanding here, with Siouxsie occasionally matching him.

There's enough about the 22-20s to make you want to hate them before hearing them. Fresh-faced ex-public schoolboys signed on the back of a three-track demo after an intense bidding war, and whose seven-track debut live (!) album ends on a cover of Slim Harpo's "King Bee". Oh goodness, let us count the ways... except, this is quite excellent stuff. Recorded at various venues earlier this year, this mini feast unveils a trio whose love of groovy 1960s Chess blues has been reflected through the metallic, grey lens of their upbringing in lonely Lincoln. Singer/guitarist Martin Trimble writes songs of a singeing romantic vindictiveness (witness the acid bite of "Such A Fool" and "22 Days") and the rhythm section of drummer James Irving and bassist Glen Bartup power things along with the repetitive swing of Hendrix's Experience. We await their studio debut with some anticipation.

Matt Hales, assisted by his TV actress wife, his brother, and co-producer Jacknife Lee, follows up his so-so top-selling Volkswagen-ad-boosted debut with?crikey!?an absolute corker. "Brighter Than Sunshine" is an extraordinarily euphoric, exquisite song which would bring a statue to tears of happiness: there hasn't been a better believe-in-the-healing-power-of-love ballad this year, even from the hand of Ed Harcourt. The remaining songs-crafted, clever, cut-glass-can't match it, but the embrace of "Easier To Lie" and the pathos of "Good Goodnight" come impressively close. Far from the one-hit wonder we thought, Aqualung could?even if marketed as the new Coldplay?be the next Burt Bacharach.

Gentle as petals and confetti, this. Clearly enamoured with all things 1960s?symphonic pop, girl singers, movie soundtracks and Ossie Clark floral print dresses, that end of the market?Isobel Campbell's string-laden first record under her own name makes for breezy easy listening. Not a million miles away from her work with Belle And Sebastian and The Gentle Waves, it's saved from twee tedium by Campbell's sumptuous orchestrations and sly wit. You'll find it impossible not to fall for the swooning strings and haunting, widescreen melancholia of "There Is No Greater Gold", for instance, or the chi-chi charm of "Johnny Come Home". Quite beautiful.