At last! A genuinely refreshing US import free from the baggage of garage-rock or CBGB’s. Like a no-wave Carpenters, bro and sis Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger seem fit to burst with pop hooks, bonkers lyrics about asthma attacks and snagglepusses, and all manner of weird and wonderful rhythms from punk to ragtime. Whiffs of early Fall (“Crystal Clear”), Velvets (“Leaky Tunnel” owes much to “European Son”) and a tangible Magnetic Fields kookiness aside, this may well be the most exhilarating debut of the year.

The quartet with possibly the finest name in the history of rock are quietly building a fervent following, lionised in the US for their staunch indie principles. I couldn’t give a toss if they’re sodomising corporate Lucifer: this is a record of rare beauty and poise, miles away from the ‘underground’ clich

After a serious swimming pool accident nearly disabled drummer Neil Primrose, Travis took six months off before ditching producer Nigel Godrich and reconvening for DIY sessions at a makeshift Mull studio towards the end of last year. And credit where it’s due:after the mega-selling The Man Who (1999) and The Invisible Band (2001), they’ve chosen to kick a little rather than safely tread water. Thing is, while singer Fran Healy opts for a more delicate delivery over the usual chain-rattling sorrowfests down rainy promenades?and guitars are eased aside for dabs of piano and softly-pattering drums?the tunes, for all their airiness, just won’t stick.

LFO first made an impact in 1990 with their eponymous single, their skinny electro-blips helping to define the then-fledgling Warp sound. Since then they’ve slimmed down to one member, Mark Bell, who’s spent the last seven years working with Depeche Mode and Bj

Buddy Guy made his name as a fiery damn-right-I’ve-got-the-blues electric guitarist of the Chicago old school. But on Blues Singer, he turns off the Marshall amp, picks up an acoustic guitar and?as the title suggests?puts the spotlight firmly on his voice. Accompanied by an unplugged trio that includes Jim Keltner on beautifully understated drums and Dylan’s immaculate upright-bass player Tony Garnier, Guy sounds simply magnificent, whether he’s high and haunting on “Hard Time Killing Floor” or deep and sonorous on “Crawlin’ King Snake”. Eric Clapton and BB King also guest on what is undoubtedly the blues album of the year.

Eighteen tracks: one intro and 17 new songs by 16 different artists, with at least 15 possible futures of pop: this compilation finds The Neptunes so far ahead of everybody else’s game it’s laughable.

At least 50 per cent of the contents of Now 58 are here, including Busta Rhymes’ brilliantly minimalist “Light Your Ass On Fire”, the lunatic Ludacris hijacked by a Sousa marching band (“It Wasn’t Us”), Snoop Dogg finally mutating into George Clinton (“It Blows My Mind”), Kelis smooching with Nas (“Popular Thug”) and new act Fam-Lay reinventing hip hop yet again (“Rock N’Roll”). This is berserk, this is brilliant, this is now.

The Strokes landed in 2001 with an idea so simple it felt revolutionary. They would tunnel to the very heart of a song and deliver just its tuneful, passionate core. Musical frills and conceptual self-indulgence were eschewed in favour of lean, devotional compositions. The reference points were plain for all, but a fierce and throaty delivery dominated. And while the songs on Is This It were all very short, they were also uncommonly good.

Room On Fire doesn’t mess with that winning formula. There are once again 11 concise, usually thrilling songs filled with bewilderment, romance and a sense of climactic payback. The influences are harder to trace and the tone is more uniform?these songs sound like a batch rather than postcards sent from different eras?but The Strokes have been smart enough to hone the original blueprint rather than enlarge their brief. There are no strings. There is no dance element. Producer Gordon Raphael has instead busied himself with beefing up the thrusting guitars, while Julian Casablancas has matured into an anomaly: a white rock singer with the rich, emotional timbre of soul.

His remarkable performance enlivens even the album’s most underwhelming passages. “Automatic Stop” and “Between Love And Hate” sound as undernourished as early-’80s British indie missionaries (specifically the Postcard label, home to Josef K and Orange Juice), yet Casablancas’ performance imbues each with a visceral longing. On the album’s highlights, the sweetly-pitched soul swing of “Under Control” (an unquestionable hit) and “Reptilia” (a frothy descendant of “Take It Or Leave It”), his voice cracks with a pleading melancholy that’s irresistible. The sound throughout is of a man breaking his heart to tell you the truth.

He snaps the album shut with a barked “I’ll be right back” on the “Last Nite”-a-like “I Can’t Win”, and it’s a promise he needs to fulfill. Room On Fire leaves the impression of a bridging album between two exciting places. It will not conquer new hearts and minds. It will not be a staple in bars in rural outposts. Rather, it is well described by its title. It is an album to set minds aflame in bedrooms at night, an album that clears the air before dawn. What they wake up with next is, perhaps, more interesting.

Cannily playing on the fact that “fanny” means something rather different in Britain, NYC songwriters and producers Matt Goias and Fancy have teamed up with three young girls from Brooklyn to deliver a perky selection of electro-rap that’s as instantly addictive as it is disposable. Recalling the old-school likes of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam and (especially) Mantronix, Fannypack deliver booty-bouncing, bass-heavy, feverishly scratched thrills which may be cheap but certainly deliver. Standouts are the hyperactive title track and comic single “Cameltoe”, on which the girls discuss the peculiarly female phenomenon of what they call the “frontal wedgie”. Formulaic, perhaps, but damn funky.

Set fire to anything. Set fire to the air,” urged John Cale at the beginning of Music For A New Society. That 1982 masterpiece was the evisceration of a man whose fractured psyche was mirrored perfectly by songs arranged in jagged, improvisatory style; a knife held at the throat of sweetness. Now he reappears with his first album of songs for seven years, and his finest album in any genre for over two decades. In its harnessing of new technology in the service of aesthetic extremism, Hobosapiens may well constitute the most radical music of his entire career.

This spring’s taster, 5 Tracks, was the first sign that Cale, who for the last two years has been mastering Pro Tools technology in his Greenwich Village studio, was ready to stun us again; but not even that was preparation for this onslaught. Touching on geopolitics, dictators and Armageddon, pairing melody and dissonance, rhythm and rupture, this album’s only parallel in contemporary music is Scott Walker’s Tilt (1995). It’s both more and less extreme, however: in tilting at the mainstream, the spleen and vision of Hobosapiens seem all the more audacious.

Aided by co-producer Nick Franglen, one half of bucolic chill-out specialists Lemon Jelly, Cale?with one remarkable exception?does not ‘go dance’ on this record, and the electronic burrs and savagely witty samples are a world away from Lemon Jelly’s primary-coloured, Camberwick Green version of house music. Cale, ever eager for the new, devours the latest technology but crucially also understands it exists to service emotion and/or experiment. (In contrast, Cale’s 1985 album Artificial Intelligence sags under the weight of midi technology, its contemporary innovation.)

The first sounds you hear are those of a repeated, unresolved synth chord, like a tolling bell, followed by breakbeats. You might think, idly, you’re listening to The Blue Nile when Cale’s unmistakable Welsh baritone looms into view. Listen to what he’s singing: “Heroes turning on a spit/The lovers unable to resolve a prehistoric bitch.” It’s about the war, of course, and there’s even a sideswipe at Blair (“Stating the obvious/A monkey and his grinder/But on a different plane”). And even The Blue Nile could never have conceived the Cecil Taylor-ish freeform piano which destabilises the song at its fade.

The two tracks that follow (“Reading My Mind” and “Things”) are comparatively light-hearted, but the relevance of “Things” (whose “the things you do in Denver when you’re dead” refrain nods to the late Warren Zevon) becomes more dramatically apparent later in the album, when the song returns in a radically different form. It’s as if Cale is deliberately contrasting the twin poles of his muse: singalong pop and pop abstracted, each highlighting the other.

Gradually, the sky darkens. “Look Horizon” finds Cale “on the beach in Zanzibar”, awaiting extinction. Soon, a guitar careers in as he watches the “land of the Pharaoh” being decimated (“The broken amulets of history strewn in the pits”). “Magritte”, an awestruck homage to the painter which prompts some of Cale’s most mellifluous singing, includes a divine moment at 2:22 when he sings “Pinned to the edges of vision” and switches to falsetto. You might say he’s doing Radiohead better than Radiohead.

“Caravan” is one of the album’s two great set-pieces, Cale “slipping away from Planet Earth”, spreading before us a panorama of the whole burning planet, from the Norfolk Broads to Niagara Falls; a more grievous echo of the journey from Reykjavik to Phnom Penn made by the protagonist of “Sanities” (from Music For A New Society). “Bicycle”?the nearest he gets to ‘going dance’?ought to be Cale’s first hit single. Lemon Jelly’s usual Ealing Studios-goes-house approach is usefully subverted here, not merely by the breathless “do do do do” refrain, but in its eventual overwhelming by a cacophony of sheep noises, giggling women (“ponce!”) and Cale’s trademark Rottweiler guitar.

There is no such easy humour in the coming avalanche. Without warning, a crashing piano chord shoves us into “Twilight Zone”, where Cale plays the role of the doomed tyrant, holed up in his bunker in the South of France, demanding the destruction of everything, like the Michael Stipe of “World Leader Pretend” but even more barbed (“The milk of human kindness has curdled in your cup”). Eventually, over a choir of demented Beach Boys vocal harmonies, Cale starts to scream orders?”Give up the ghost! Bring out your dead! Get on with your work! Kick out the jams!”

You would think this track was Cale at his most nihilistic (though, in fact, this is the violence of someone who really gives a shit), but it pales in intensity beside the near-demonic “Letter From Abroad”. Inspired by journalist Saira Shah’s television documentary about the Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan, and written before 9/11, it sees Cale reach new peaks of rage. Powered by an avant-R&B groove (imagine current Cale favourites The Beta Band covering Blackstreet’s “No Diggety”), Cale narrates the countdown to Year Zero (“In a few hours the heat will hang over town/As the north-east monsoon comes rolling in”). Screaming viola and guitar take over as he intones: “They’re cutting their heads off in the soccer fields/Stretching their necks in the goal.” A distant voice of doom booms out over a Ligeti choir. The track fades to the sound of a marching band playing “Land Of Hope And Glory”. Britain has long since surrendered.

The second version of “Things” (“Things (X)”?”Things” multiplied by an unknown factor) emerges from the wreckage, the stench of decay evident everywhere. No more singalong pop as Cale slurs and sneers “Keep your gun in your pocket and your tongue in your mouth” over ugly guitar and a piano’s death throes.

The record ends with a love song of sorts: “Over Her Head”?though it’s a strange kind of love song that begins with the words, “She sees flames in the kitchen/It’s a vision of hell,” or concludes, “She loves everybody/She’ll even love me.” By the closing viola squall, hope seems out of reach. Or perhaps it’s the bruised hope of a realist (‘What’s the best I can actually expect?’).

Hobosapiens isn’t quite Cale’s masterpiece; that title still belongs to Music For A New Society. But it is music whose scope, erudition and vitriol (to borrow a phrase from the poet Adrienne Rich: “My visionary anger cleansing my sight”) makes everything else in this year of exceptional musical timidity seem puny. Anger without apology; ideology without either dilution or dogma; a perfect synthesis of medium and message: Cale has (re)discovered the ability to rage correctly, and he’s needed now more than ever.

Lavishly and lovingly repackaged with the input of the band themselves, these reissues include expanded sleeve art, extensive booklets, new photos and bonus tracks, ensuring that the work of the newest of the ’80s romantics finally gets the treatment it deserves. Japan’s key album, 1981’s Tin Drum, is now made doubly indispensable by the inclusion of the imperishable original 12-inch mix of “The Art Of Parties”, while 1980’s Gentlemen Take Polaroids features the Boards Of Canada-anticipating “The Experience Of Swimming”. Sadly, the extra tracks on Sylvian’s solo albums are few and inessential (mainly dreary new age instrumentals). Nonetheless, anyone spellbound by Sylvian’s recent, astonishing Blemish are hereby advised to work their way backwards.

It’s been a long crawl back to credibility for prog titans Yes, but things seem to be shifting in their favour of late. There’s a new wave of young bands emerging, unafraid to wear their prog influences on their sleeves (The Mars Volta, Cave In, Beecher) and the old sods themselves are attracting ‘celebrity’ plaudits (The Flaming Lips, PiL’s Keith Levene, Vincent Gallo). This is as it should be?contrary to post-punk dogma, Yes were never a joyless listen. The 21 tracks on The Ultimate Yes (including the sublime “Roundabout” and “And You And I”) burst with insane creativity, absorbing jazz, pop, classical and R&B with far-reaching ambition and energy in abundance. The Remixes project could easily have been dreadful, but Virgil Howe’s sympathetic reworkings are surprisingly effective, occasionally recalling the work of Air and ambient drum’n’bass maestro LTJ Bukem. Nicely done.

Ochs was as influential as Dylan in crafting the Village folk-protest legend. But while Bob went on to superstardom, Phil wouldn’t budge from the barricades. He remained loyal to the idea of turning the news of the hour into the music of the times, long after it became unfashionable. His career, already blighted by writer’s block, depression and alcoholism, ended with his suicide in 1976.

As this timely compilation reminds us, however, Ochs’ best songs sound like they’ve been torn from the morning’s headlines?anti-war classics like “White Boots Marching In A Yellow Land” and “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” (both included here) and “Here’s To The State Of Mississippi”, one of the bravest protest songs ever written (sadly absent).

He could also be windily allegorical (“The Crucifixion” makes “Gates Of Eden” sound as blunt as Billy Bragg), and the often bafflingly inappropriate arrangements make a lot of tracks here sound dated. Which is unfair, because the important things Ochs had to say remain entirely timeless.

For those who didn’t catch Radio 4 first time around, either out of confusion at the moniker or scepticism at the sudden chic embrace of any NY dudes with guitars slung around their necks, here’s a second chance. Like The Rapture, Radio 4 are essentially retro, revisiting the choppy, politically agitated aggression of Gang Of Four, particularly on “Start A Fire”, a passionate pricking of Aids consciousness. Also included here are two new tracks, “Caroline” and live fave “Sink So Low”, as well as several remixes, the best being Mark Stewart and Adrian Sherwood’s high radiation-level treatment of “Struggle”.

For those about to shag, this album salutes you. Musical Massage was originally released in 1976 and composed by Ware in downtime while recording Marvin Gaye’s classic I Want You?an album Ware had originally written for himself. Musical Massage is the album he made to replace it, and Ware claims Gaye was hungry to claim it for himself, too. It’s not hard to see why: this is silky, yearning soul with a comical leg-over obsession. Ware’s mellifluous croon lacks some of Gaye’s precious drama, but is nevertheless persuasive enough a flashback to one of the cocaine soul era’s defining moments.

It is perhaps too coloured by soul and disco to be considered by purists a reggae masterpiece. Yet Hurts So Good is up there in the Trojan label’s all-time top five LPs. Issued two years after its title track single went Top 10 in the UK, it’s an outstanding ’70s pop album. Her voice is pure caramelised bliss, whether singing rocksteady Elvis (“In The Ghetto”) or reinventing Shirley & Company’s “Shame Shame Shame” as a contagious skank-boogie. Just listen to her devastatingly poignant rendition of Wilson Pickett’s “If You Need Me”?an absolute must.

Before the sex pistols there was New York’s Lower East Side: trash aesthetes with short hair and kinky vixens in B-movie stilettos. Kids with minor drug habits and slim volumes of symbolist verse. Pre-punk ‘punk’ was Gotham’s reaction to smug denim California and prog-pomp stadium blow-out. The new Bowery Bop was about immaculate posing, street-corner nihilism. It was railroad-apartment art-rock out of the Velvets, Stooges, Dolls, with a side order of Nuggets garage psychedelics. Patti Smith was the tomboy boho icon (hairy armpits, Rimbaud fixation); The Ramones the inner-suburban denim’n’leather drongos peddling cartoon ramalama. By contrast, Television were cool and arty, monkish Apollos to Patti’s distaff Dionysus.

Tom Verlaine (n