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.

The idea music might be governed by national boundaries is mostly nonsense (how to explain the popularity of Morrissey in Mexico?), but there is something otherworldly about the debut from 26-year-old Ornelius Mugison, who hails from the alien landscapes of Iceland. Lonely Mountain conjures heaving tectonic plates and deep, isolating snow drifts, and reveals an ear fine-tuned to the sonic periphery. His glitch electro has a pastoral bent and is set against warm grooves for a sinister pop twist. The gloriously unhinged “I’m On Fire” suggests Tom Waits remixed by Four Tet, and “Poke A Pal” even recalls Jeff Buckley’s dramatic sensuality. A dark and delicate yet full-bodied delight.

Remember when you first heard Chris Bell’s I Am The Cosmos and realised it may have been Bell, not Alex Chilton, who was responsible for that early Big Star sound? More than any of Edwyn Collins’ solo albums, You Can Make It If You Boogie captures the soulful jangle?imagine the Velvets produced by Thom Bell?of Orange Juice’s debut album. Kirk’s last musical venture was in 1985 with Memphis, but the sunny sadness of “Get On Board” and tenderness of “Western Pier” will melt the years away. “Liggin’ Round Again” has the luscious urgency of “Felicity”, OJ’s debut single, which Kirk revisits here, encouragingly the only weak moment on a Lazarus job to rival the latest Dexys comeback.

In the summer of 2000, before Norah Jones made the zillion-selling Come Away With Me, Peter Malick invited the then-unknown singer to record with his equally obscure blues-rock band. The release of that material now may be cynical?repeating one of the six songs to pad the ‘album’ out to a meagre 30 minutes?but the music itself is not half bad. Away from her folk-jazz setting, Jones sounds as ballsy as a young Bonnie Raitt, and her cover of Dylan’s “Heart Of Mine” is outstanding. There’s a certain snobbery towards Jones, based on nothing more than her mass popularity. Too bad, as this is further proof she’s the real deal.

Those familiar with Brett and Rennie Sparks will be aware that?in the transition from 1998’s Through The Trees to 2000’s In The Air?they began nailing their sound in earnest, sharpening the details in Rennie’s imagery and Brett’s delivery. If 2001’s Twilight established Brett as the link between George Jones and the Harry Smith-fired worlds of Clarence Ashley and Dock Boggs, this one seals it further. And lyrically, Rennie provides their most thematically coherent work to date, ripping at “the veil between this world and the next”. Set against black dirt hills, dark valleys and red mountains at dusk, these are tales of shadows climbing Wal-Mart walls, lovers lost in cities, beckoned by unseen voices, spiritual gateways at the bottom of the garden and whispers from the cogs of Xerox machines.

Singing Bones is a beautiful record. Brett’s doleful Texan burr carries all the weight, heave and belly-scratch of centuries, cushioned by pedal-steel, mariachi guitar or sulky bass. “24-Hour Store”?a tale of “sleepless and lost” shoppers oblivious to the crying ghosts dancing in their midst?sets a soulful baritone against trembly musical saw, like a worried wind. “The Bottomless Hole” (inspired by Kelly Harrell’s 1927 ditch-digging ode “My Name Is John Johanna”) is a deep-bowelled bluegrass workout; “Dry Bones” (reworking Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s 1928 version) a Southern Baptist hymnal; “Whitehaven” a stringed cinerama; “The Song Of A Hundred Toads” classic clickety-clack country.

An exquisitely-wrung meditation suggesting the living and dead are forever intertwined and shadows in the corner are never simply shadows, Singing Bones is Beetlejuice as imagined by Edgar Allan Poe.

“I’ll probably play live until the day I die,” wrote Jeff Buckley in the press release for the “Live At Sin-e” EP, “…to do something that will just fly away is kind of special. Every time somebody tells you they love you, that ‘I love you’ flies away, and you wait until the next one.”

Comprising shows from July 19 and August 17, 1993 (the second show scheduled after Columbia deemed the first session unusable?Jeff was audibly nervous) these recordings were intended to furnish Jeff’s first release for Columbia. For him, they also signalled the end of his exploratory, comparatively carefree ‘caf

Yet another in the unfairly long list of extraordinary records released by Rough Trade recently (Hidden Cameras, Adam Green, Belle And Sebastian, The Fiery Furnaces). SOS JFK is one of those records that’s naggingly reminiscent of other things, but also feels if it sprang fully formed from some other place where the air is purer, utterly devoid of influence. Andy Bar’s rattling strum is like a sparser, more raw version of Mazzy Star guitarist David Roback’s but Josephine Foster’s voice has a glassy, alien quality that recalls Hugo Largos Mimi Goese or Shirley Collins, and there are moments of airy, unhinged beauty worthy of Mary Margaret O’Hara. The point in “Mary” when Foster’s harp comes in is heart-stopping. Her words are bewitching, too, mixing religious imagery and child-like simplicity like the poet Stevie Smith.

Following solo records from both frontman Neil Halstead and bassist Rachel Goswell, and the faux-Americana of their third album, 2000’s Excuses For Travellers, Mojave 3 have found a more successful formula. Spoon And Rafter offers gentle, hymnal folk-rock, and is frequently utterly mesmerising. Much of the album is entirely acoustic, with only the layered “Billoddity” building to a robust climax. Halstead’s voice is understated throughout, adding a fragile loveliness to “She’s All Up Above” and “Starlite #1”, while the ethereal, piano-led “Hard To Miss You” is as beautiful as anything by Mercury Rev.

Almost 20 years ago, Terry Allen wrote a bunch of angry but moving songs about the Vietnam War for the film Amerasia. Now they finally get a CD release. It’s a long way from his usual funny/heartbreaking songs about life in Texas, as Thai musicians join his Panhandle Mystery Band to create a fascinating commentary on the brutality of ‘Nam. It all seems horribly prescient as the US embarks on a fresh round of global ‘adventures’, and makes the hope of the closing “Let Freedom Ring” seem particularly poignant and misplaced.

Scottish bands either tend towards sleazoid drone-rock or elegant songcraft. The Pearlfishers are more Brill Building than CBGB’s?as with ’80s forebears Danny Wilson and Hue & Cry, the spectres of Bacharach and Goffin/King (though not Phil Spector) loom large over these sophisticated vignettes, enhanced as they are by flugelhorns, cellos and violas. Even a post-Brill writer like Todd Rundgren is eulogised here on “Todd Is God”, all piano curlicues, “I Saw The Light” guitar and an arrangement worthy of a US TV sitcom theme. Vocalist/multi-instrumentalist David Scott could be a monstrously successful bespoke tunesmith for talentless boy band members

Like Aphex Twin, Luke Vibert hails from Cornwall and has recorded under a variety of pseudonyms (including Wagon Christ, Plug and Amen Andrews) for various labels, including Ninja Tune, Rephlex, Mo’Wax and Planet Mu. Unlike the Twin, Vibert’s abstract electro usually radiates an approachable warmth, and this new album for Warp is no exception. YosepH is equal parts eerie introspection (“Liptones”) and industrialised funk (“NokTup”) with a queasy undertow courtesy of Vibert’s collection of vintage analogue synths.

Manchester’s I Am Kloot made their debut with “Titanic”, a seven-inch charmer released on tiny local imprint Ugly Man in a brown paper sleeve. Such are the inauspicious beginnings of greatness.

Although “classic pop” is often simply shorthand for the trite and tested, I Am Kloot is clearly deserving of the description. Vocalist Johnny Bramwell?equal parts John Lennon and Kitchens Of Distinction’s Patrick Fitzgerald?delivers pithily poetic, subtly sensual songs with admirably understated help, be it on the breezy, jazz-toned “A Strange Arrangement Of Colour” or the spooked and ominously urgent “Cuckoo”. Downbeat yet hugely uplifting, touching yet utterly unsentimental, I Am Kloot is about as good as this guitar/bass/drums thing gets.

Laptop’s third album is a synthetic joy from beginning to end. Continuing in the arch electropop vein of Opening Credits and The Old Me Vs The New You, Jesse Hartman’s latest illustrates his ability to transcend simple ’80s pastiche armed with a world-weary baritone and a clutch of untouchably sexy tunes. With deadpan voiceover and deluded romanticism, the Oakey-cokey melodrama of “Let Yourself Go” is both funny and moving, while “Back In The Picture” and “Testimonial #6” display lurching, Bowie-esque brilliance. Oh, and the title track is perhaps the best warning against pop ambition you’ll ever hear.