Rigby wowed plenty with her 1996 debut, Diary Of A Mod Housewife, which featured Hal Hartley’s favourite son Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. Rigby’s literate, punchy songs are enhanced this time by country nouveau and power-pop types Ken Coomer, Duane Jarvis and Will Kimbrough, keeping her up to speed with everyone from the No Depression crew to lifestylers like Rolling Stone regulars. Standouts include US radio hit “Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?” and “Break-up Boots”, which figure Amy as a bard of relationship mess. She’s obviously aiming higher than clique status, too, as country cat Todd Snider guests on the title cut. Those Nashville suits better watch out.

On the back of the undervalued Soft Cell reunion album Cruelty Without Beauty comes this live double, shaved from their European tour. Opening with the bubbling “Memorabilia”, Almond and Ball then focus on newer material before launching into a savage onslaught of stabs and scars from The Art Of Falling Apart. The second half is crowd-pleaser time, and this crowd is certainly pleased. “Torch” burns with yearning, “Tainted Love” keeps the weekenders happy, “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” remains the best poem of self-loathing anti-romanticism not written by Philip Larkin. Absinthe to the Pet Shop Boys’ vanilla.

It could have been a catastrophe, right enough. Belle & Sebastian meet Trevor Horn: Tigermilk meets “Two Tribes”? Chalk meets cheese, more like.

But in a year that began with Horn frogmarching nymph-lesbian duo Tatu to No 1, is it so strange he should end it in cahoots with a band as similarly outside the pop norm as these fey lairds of indie? Ought we really be surprised that Belle And Sebastian, sad sensitive observers of “The Loneliness Of A Middle Distance Runner”, would find a kindred spirit in the man responsible for The Buggles’ ‘faded film star’ tearjerker “Elstree”? Of course not.

Horn’s influence is surprisingly subtle, merely emphasising the band’s playful idiosyncrasies (working titles for this album included “Wanker’s Forest”, “Nazi Sinatra” and “The Six Guns Of Henry The Arse”). Hence its dozen tracks, one of which shares its name with former Catchphrase host “Roy Walker”, heave with mischievous appropriation. “Wrapped Up In Books” shamelessly pulls the rug from under Sir Cliff’s “In The Country”, while distinct outlines of Jackie Lee’s “Rupert”, Costello, Magazine and Adam And The Ants are elsewhere?so no wonder another working title was “If You’re Going To Be Hung For Stealing A Horse You Might As Well Shag It”. Lo and behold, they do just that on the outstanding “I’m A Cuckoo”, embezzling the dual guitar harmonics of “The Boys Are Back In Town” and then namedropping Thin Lizzy in the cheekiest rhyming couplet of the new millennium so far.

Such larceny would be that and nothing more if it weren’t for the songwriting chops of Stuart Murdoch and Stevie Jackson. From “Lord Anthony”, the saga of a bullied posh kid with transvestite yearnings, to laments for relationships soured by the humdrum couch-potatoism of cheap vino and I Love The ’90s-type telly, it’s by far the strongest collection of songs the band have ever assembled. If they entered the ring with Horn as talented greenhorns, by the final fade of the epic new romantic finale “Stay Loose”, they exit as accomplished pop epicures. A catastrophe in name only.

The backing tracks for Down Beat were recorded in just two days by a formidable ensemble, live and often improvised, and the range of material here is extraordinary, from some humorously mellow sax variations on the theme to The Waltons to the jazz-streaked, curiously-truncated “Kalimba”, which rolls out with the thunder of John Coltrane. Although his fellow Llamas loan him some instruments, that’s where the debt to his band ends. The best moments are often the gentlest, such as “You Said You’d Built Some Wings”?imagine if Miles Davis and Gil Evans had got together to orchestrate the band in Trumpton.

Though less hook-stuffed than its wonderful predecessor, the Brothers’ third LP carries the same air of power pop soured by disappointment, like someone’s just topped off their vanilla sundae with a turd. With youngest sibling James finally joining Christiaan and Justin in the studio, their big-hair ambitions are evident on the absurdly catchy “A Funny Ol’ Kind Of Music” and the colossal “Mrs Moriarty” (very ’80s), although the mid-tempo swell of “I’ve Been Waiting” is more representative of the whole. Intriguingly, they head for fresh pastures in the latter half, culminating in the soft orchestral psych of “Bitten By Snakes”.

The singer with Donegal favourites Clannad, Moya Brennan once duetted with Bono on the hit “In A Lifetime”. She’s also Enya’s sister, and you can’t blame her for wanting a piece of the same lucrative elevator soundtrack market. Two Horizons is her fifth solo album and its pseudo-Celtic currency involves whispered, floating vocals that we’re meant to describe as “ethereal”. Banal would be a better word. The lyrics?and these days, of course, the woman we once knew as Maire O’Bhraonain sings in English rather than Gaelic?are similarly intended to be mysterious and profound. Instead, they’re merely clich

David Byrne is best known for his work with Talking Heads, Eno, a smash hit last year with X-Press 2, and his label, Luaka Bop. It’s less well-known that he co-wrote the score for The Last Emperor (despite the fact it won him an Oscar) and has worked with theatre experimentalist Robert Wilson. And if you took a straw poll, how many people would know he was born in Dumbarton, Scotland?

All this is relevant because he’s scored the much-discussed David Mackenzie film Young Adam, based on a novel by cult Scottish beatnik (there’s three words you don’t often find in succession) author Alexander Trocchi. Grim, grimy and, well, Scottish, it’s said to be dark and raw. Tragically, it stars talentless, mollycoddled oaf Ewan McGregor, but then you can’t have everything. After returning to Scotland to write the music, Byrne has gone for authenticity by recording his score with an ensemble of Glaswegian musicians drawn from such indie enclaves as Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian, The Delgados and The Reindeer Section. And an impressively restrained, classy, low-flame-simmering job they make of it.

Until Byrne comes in, late on, with a muted warble on “Speechless”, this is an instrumental mood piece, possibly justifying use of the oversubscribed word “ambient”. It begins, and you think it’s just an ongoing background warble. But it builds with real guile and grace, and from the halfway point it’s as mournfully elegant as anything in the soundtrack genre this year. Tracks like “Warm Sheets”, “Dirty Hair” and “Ineluctable” are half-awake and wholly lovely. “At its best,” Byrne’s said, “it almost invisibly blends with background sounds…the docks, the plates, the dishes, the sex. Maybe it’s not even noticeable as ‘music’…”But it is, and after its spookily tentative openings, the violins and delicately gathering rhythms start making sense. Sincere and beautiful.

Given that it’s 30 years since the last Stooges album, Raw Power, and even longer since the formation of the original Psychedelic Stooges in 1967, you’d imagine that a reunion with Ron and Scott Asheton would be no more than an opportunity to compare bus passes. Fact is, Iggy’s full-tilt house style has lasted a lot better than expected. By simply shaking on the spot, the Iguana’s method?a mixture of ham, hilarity and heavy metal?comes back into fashion on a regular basis.

The Ashetons aren’t the only accomplices on this complex, double-length disc. (Now-)ageing delinquents Green Day chip in with a brace of tracks, the Berkeley-born “Private Hell” and “Supermarket”, while bratty, big-shorted nu-metal pups Sum 41 helped shape the first single “Little Know It All”. But if that implies Pop is craving hipness by association, rest assured the music is as powerfully singular as ever. Skull Ring throbs with ferocious intent before ending in a state called “Nervous Exhaustion”.

“Little Electric Chair” is an astonishingly fierce opener. The first of four tracks to feature the Ashetons, it has the whiplash frenzy of “Search And Destroy” or “Shake Appeal”, all sizzling energy, joyous “wooh!”s and muffled hand claps. Of the other Stooges compositions, the title track has the primeval, pummelling attack of “Raw Power”, while “Loser” and “Dead Rock Star” thrash and flail quite nicely, thank you. Ron’s incendiary buzzsaw guitar and Scott’s none-too-geriatric drum tattoo retain that portrait-in-the-attic quality that will make initiates insist, “This hasn’t dated a jot.”

Even so, attention will inevitably drift towards the album’s more eccentric cuts. Peaches and Ig’s “Rock Show” (itself a riposte to Peaches’ Kitty Yo release of the same name) grabs a slice of the electroclash action. It’s probably too XXX for daytime consumption but otherwise sounds like a hit?potentially Pop’s first taste of mainstream success since his days hanging out with David Bowie. Balancing the back-of-the-cranium production values Iggy espouses, there are some great pastiches. “Here Comes The Summer” is an obvious homage to Jim Morrison and “Sugarbabe”, pure Idiot-era motorik noir, contains an almost perfect impersonation of Bowie (who stole the voice from Iggy first time ’round). Sweetest of all is a solo acoustic version of “Till Wrong Feels Right”, loosely based on a country blues by Mississippi Fred McDowell. Given a foul-mouthed slant, Iggy bemoans the “piece of shit” he is force-fed by rock TV and radio. Despite a hint of ho-humbug and, perhaps, biting the hand that feeds him, he’s got a point, and if someone’s gotta right to moan then it’s one of the few surviving progenitors, and he does it with more aplomb than most.

Sure, it flags here and there, but Skull Ring is Iggy’s most sustained assault since the Instinct/Brick By Brick double whammy. He did the reflective, midlife crisis thing on 1999’s Avenue B. Now it’s senile dementia all the way. Fine by us. Just one thing: why didn’t they call it “The Three Stooges”?

Yes, it sounds lovely. What else would you expect? Head Llama Sean O’Hagan (already sainted for being one half of Microdisney alongside Cathal Coughlan) has unimpeachably good taste, and the parp of trombone and scrape of strings in the service of classic Tin Pan Alley and Wilsonesque chord progressions is never a bad thing. The delicate chamber pop of Beet, Maize & Corn is inarguably easy on the ear, but short on real emotional pull and, it has to be said (again), Hagan’s thin, winsome voice smacks of resolutely indie underachievement. Still, this is the kind of record you feel awful about being beastly to.

Given the parlous state of contemporary jazz singing (Diana Krall? Elvis, how could you?), Lea DeLaria, a butch dyke from St Louis with a dirty mouth and a deliciously wicked sense of humour, is all the more remarkable. Growing up with jazz in her veins, she was previously best known as a comic (she’s also been a Broadway star), but singing is clearly her vocation. With wildly classy back-up that proves the high regard she’s held in by the jazz fraternity, she recasts Patti Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot” (intoxicating), Blondie’s “Call Me” (wildly sensuous), Neil Young’s “Philadelphia” (understated and heart-rending), Jane’s Addiction’s “Been Caught Stealing” (a riot) and others in the most supremely intelligent display of interpretive singing in jazz for years. Essential.

While major labels scour Detroit in search of the next White Stripes, it’s hard to imagine any of them investing in the scene’s grandee, Mick Collins. Though he prototyped the Motor City Sound with The Gories in the late ’80s, Collins is still resolutely underground. This third Dirtbombs LP is typically entertaining: fuzzy, thrashy rock’n’soul with nods to T. Rex. But the fact this collection of originals is inferior to 2001’s Ultraglide In Black (a covers album) reveals his songwriting has never matched his energy. “Stuck In Thee Garage” at least proves he knows his niche.

A couple of years back, Joe Pernice bent my ear about Cunningham being the freshest blast of pop air he’d heard in aeons. On his fifth album?with Pernice’s eulogising sleevenotes?it’s easy to see why. Though his early-’90s career was kickstarted by ex-Housemartin Stan Cullimore, 1998’s beautiful Homeless House was the first inkling of star-on-the-up. Happy-Go-Unlucky comes similarly draped in velvety pop smarts, though this time fuller and tonally richer. Set atop woodwinds, gently dipping strings, stabbing pianos and reedy guitars, JC’s voice owes as much to McCartney as contemporaries Kevin Tihista and Richard Davies, with arrangements worthy of Curt Boettcher. A latterday chaser to Emitt Rhodes’ eponymous 1970 debut.

Alternately soothing and savage, punctuating a blistering hardcore assault with contemplative quiet, it’s fitting that Envy’s domestic debut should be brought to us by Scotland’s leading exponents of the soft/loud dynamic. Like Mogwai, this Japanese sextet understand that taking things down a notch or two ultimately makes it all the more intense when raging guitars and thunderous drums then blast everything back into the red. Ditto screaming your lungs out like the weight of the world is stuck in your throat. Active for over 11 years now, Envy, like Mogwai and US contemporaries Isis and Converge, put method in their maelstrom with explosive results.

The 21-year-old Fretwell may lag behind fellow Manc Damon Gough in terms of musical adventurousness but is thankfully still tender and tuneful enough to avoid the fist-munchingly dull quagmire of Tom McRae tedium. “Water Blue” and “Thank You” (so good it gets a reprise) skip with heel-scuffing optimism, while the instrumental “Theme For David Monster” showcases his intuitive ear for a melancholy melody. Just six tracks in under 20 minutes, but it still augurs well for Fretwell’s future.

There can’t be many better ways of reviving a flagging solo career than recruiting Mercury Rev as your backing band. Heather Nova’s fifth studio album started at home in Bermuda, where she recorded vocals and guitar for a new set of songs in the Caribbean sunshine. Then she took herself off to the Rev’s studio retreat, halfway up a snow-covered Woodstock mountain, where they added their uniquely weird soundtrack, sounding every bit as magnificent as they did on Deserter’s Songs and All Is Dream. Hard to tell how Nova’s songs and voice would have sounded without them. But the result is, predictably, her best album yet.

Now on her third album fronting The Distillers, Brody Armstrong should be sick of the Courtney Love comparisons, and those who base them on her recent trading-up of rock star partners?Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme replacing Rancid’s Tim Armstrong?and some murky concept of punk treachery may be on morally unsteady ground. Armstrong, though, can’t hide her artistic debt to Love: that scarifying rasp, the gory anatomical metaphors, and, most importantly, a knack for converting the punk du jour into ultra-commercial rock. Coral Fang is at once punchy and overwrought, and blessed with some extremely good, if slightly monotonous, tunes. Armstrong would do well, though, to temper her Hole obsession: surely her appearance on the forthcoming Love solo album must be the final act of fealty required?

After winning a Grammy for the marvellous I Am Shelby Lynne, making the wildly over-produced Love, Shelby and falling out with her record company, the aptly-titled Identity Crisis was recorded at home and at her own expense: a smart move.

Full of emotionally potent songs sung in that sultry, just-behind-the-beat drawl, this is the album Lynne should’ve made after I Am…”Telephone”boats the same easy swing that made “Thought It Would Be Easier” a classic. “10 Rocks” is a gospel-tinged country boogie on which she sounds like a modern-day Wanda Jackson. Then there’s “Lonesome”, which puts you in mind of a female Charlie Rich, and the bluesy echoes of Tony Joe White on “Evil Man”. It’s magnificent. Love Shelby? On this form, of course.

Four months ago, Uncut gave a four-star review to an album called Concussion by Matthew Ryan, which included a duet with Lucinda Williams and came with a personal endorsement from Steve Earle that he was “one of the best songwriters I’ve seen come out of Nashville”. Now comes another album, Happiness, while a completely different record, called Regret Over The Wires, is being simultaneously released in America.

So what’s going on? To compound the confusion, in July, we included a track from Concussion on the free CD that comes with this magazine and mistakenly described it as Ryan’s debut. In fact, Concussion turns out to have been his third album. Released in America back in 2001, it took two years to find a label here, and so Britain is now playing catch-up.

Happiness is not exactly a new album either, but a compilation of two Internet-only Ryan releases called Dissent From The Living Room and Hopeless To Hopeful, which Ryan recorded on a four-track in between making Concussion and Regret Over The Wires, which should appear here some time next year. Which in total makes six albums in the six years since Ryan made his debut back in 1997, with May Day, at the age of 25. Got all that?

If not, never mind. Just go out and buy Happiness. Spare and stripped, musically its spirit lies somewhere between Leonard Cohen’s debut and Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, with bursts of feedback for added grit.

But what makes Happiness more than just another sad troubadour record is the positively Dylanesque viciousness of Ryan’s rage. “With a fucker like you, tell me, who needs enemies?”, he rails on “fd29yrblues”.

On “Veteran’s Day” he broadens his wrath to take on the politicians who “pull the triggers” but “never carry the guns”. On “The Ballad Of So And So”, it’s the shallowness of the music industry that draws his ire: “I gotta lay it down false ’cause the truth don’t sell.” Frankly, he makes Eminem sound like a wuss.

Unkle’s first album was controversial, mainly because the gap between the hype (the album evinced epoch-making genius) and the reality (the album was, er, a bit patchy) was so huge, it seemed to swallow James Lavelle’s Mo Wax empire whole. Main collaborator DJ Shadow having deserted, Lavelle’s new partner is the unknown Richard File, which doesn’t bode well. A drawn-out intro heralds a lush but unthrilling album, criminally wasting the talents of Jarvis Cocker and Brian Eno (“I Need Something Stronger”) and 10cc’s Graham Gouldman (vocal arrangement on “In A State”) while having the nerve to sample Black Sabbath’s majestic “Changes” (“Back And Forth”). Eminently dispensable.