This was unexpected. On this album, Sylvian essentially improvises eight songs as he goes along, and is mostly alone, emotionally naked. Throughout, a grievous if unspecified sense of loss is expressed (encapsulated in the 14-minute title track). Astonishingly and brilliantly, three tracks find him working with improv guitar god Derek Bailey, whose gnarled pluckings are given a startling new environment in which to flourish (“The Good Son”). “Late Night Shopping” is a blissful ode to non-existence, while Sylvian’s musings on life, love and death are beautifully resolved by the coda “A Fire In The Forest”, where Christian Fennesz’ electronics encourage Sylvian to reconnect with the world. An extremely moving and potentially radical record.

Making things difficult, or at least obtuse, has been a code of honour to Davey Henderson for longer than is decent to mention. Penetrate the multiple misspellings of “Carnivorous” on the sleeve, ignore the faulty track listing and there’s plenty, as ever, to stimulate among the six remixes of “Pong Fat Six”, originally co-written with The Pop Group’s Gareth Sager.

The estimable Future Pilot AKA and various other Henderson peers dismantle the evidently toxic original in different ways, though steam-powered electro and cosmic jazz remain the vague constants. Best-in-show rosette, though, goes to Bill Wells and Norman Blake, who salvage something skittish, glitchy and implausibly delicate out of the carnage.

Their music’s been all over the soundtracks of the preposterously piss-poor movies Matrix Reloaded and Tomb Raider, but we won’t hold that against them. Now consisting of just Jon Fugler and Mike Bryant, Fluke return with Puppy?four years in the making, and a more muscular take on the band’s customarily linear techno-groove. “Another Kind Of Blues”, with its swoops and vistas, is especially pulsating, while “YKK” is the fragment of a soundtrack to some unmade film distinctly better than those to which Fluke have actually lent their work.

“Bastard child of a randy AM radio and an insatiable eight-track cassette player,” explain The Slaughter Rule directors Andrew and Alex Smith in the sleevenotes, “this soundtrack was conceived on a Montana two-lane blacktop, in the back seat of a faded red ’74 Valiant.” While the US twins scouted for their movie’s soul via road trips to west Texas, Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt founder Jay Farrar’s music acted as constant companion and stoker of imaginations. Commissioning him for the score seemed sensible.

Anyone familiar with Farrar’s elegiac recent release Terroir Blues (reviewed in the last Uncut) will be heartened to know his contributions here tap into the same spirit: mood-setting country-blues instrumentals and sombre meditations. Like Ry Cooder’s work on Paris, Texas, he manages to define terrain both emotional and physical via economical use of notes and accents. In between, there are superb moments from Vic Chesnutt (“Rank Stranger”), Malcolm Holcombe (“Killing The Blues”) and Freakwater (“When I Stop Dreaming”), alongside the more familiar (Ryan Adams’ “To Be Young”) and the obscure (Uncle Tupelo’s 1993 reading of Gram Parsons’ “Blue Eyes”). And while The Pernice Brothers’ closing version of “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?” nearly makes off with the silverware, it’s Farrar’s intricate acoustic picking and occasional smotherings of distortion that lace up the spine.

From the same ’96 sessions that produced Dowd’s startling debut Wrong Side Of Memphis, these four-track recordings are the overspill. You’ll find (slightly) more sanitised versions of some on Pictures From Life’s Other Side (1999) and last year’s The Pawnbroker’s Wife, but these?in JD speak?are “the original bad seeds”. It’s mostly slow-stealth swamp blues, rendered fearsome and moving by his scowling delivery, sounding forever snagged on a barbed wire fence. The additional vocals of (regular staple) Kim Sherwood-Caso add to the wracked creepiness of the title track, while on “Rolling And Tumbling Trilogy” Dowd comes on like the bastard spawn of Aleister Crowley.

Arguably (though there’s no debate among the voices in this listener’s head) the best album of 2001, Asleep In The Back must have been a tough (and tender) act to follow. Partly because the Lancashire-based band had around 10 years to write, record and re-record that debut, navigating a route through various music biz mazes. Required to deliver a follow-up with unaccustomed haste after gold discs, rave reviews and sold-out US tours, Elbow initially froze. “It was like rolling a boulder up a hill”, Guy Garvey’s said. They took a break, reflected, reconvened. Then they got it so very right.

Produced by Ben Hillier, demoed in a church on the Isle Of Mull then recorded in Liverpool, Cast Of Thousands is as challenging and emotionally turbulent as its predecessor, yet faithful to its foundation feel. It’ll make you cry, laugh and freak in the same parts of your body. It’s human where Radiohead are impenetrable, but complex where Coldplay are banal. Somehow my notes include the phrases Kes, Kafka, Hendrix and WB Yeats. One of us is on something, and lo, their something is honest and good.

“Ribcage” sets the tone(s), matching “Newborn” for ambition. The incredibly twisty melody shouldn’t stay in your brain but does, Garvey warring against clich

The reissue of Cantrell’s 2000 debut is timely following the critical success of last year’s When The Roses Bloom Again, and a major US tour with Elvis Costello. John Peel deemed this his “favourite record of the last 10 years and possibly my life”, while Costello describes her sound as “if Kitty Wells made Rubber Soul”. Nashville-bred, NYC-based Cantrell is steeped in country and bluegrass, but brings a strident grace all her own. Set atop guitars both acoustic and twangy?and soft squeals of steel?her voice is cut-glass pure. Like Wells and the McGarrigle sisters before her, she forgoes the traditional hick-in-throat approach for a sound like crushed ice slowly melting.

Finding themselves in implausible possession of a Billboard Top 30 hit with a “Submarine” remix, Cranes continue their single-minded, 13-year-long quest for those resolutely uncommercial, abstractly beautiful and inexplicably affecting chords, patterns and sighs they do so splendidly.

Recorded in those well-known Italian cities of Rome, Ancona, er, Amsterdam, Vienna, and, um, Portsmouth, Live In Italy begins with chilly suggestion and climaxes in white-hot emoting. Atmospheres which make your hair stand on end and your spine turn to the shape of that snazzy Guggenheim building in Bilb

How quaint. The Raveonettes recall that crepuscular time in the mid-’80s when The Jesus & Mary Chain and their disciples relocated rock’n’ roll classicism and girl-group pop into a shower of feedback. It remains a seductive formula, though one that pales very quickly. For all their grasp of the iconography, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo’s tales of leather gangs and boys called Johnny are sexless. And while Chain Gang Of Love only lasts 33 minutes (not much longer than January’s mini album), it still outstays its welcome.

Stalked by onehelluva shadow, at least LMP’s trying to dodge it her own way. Initially offered a deal in her teens, the ex-Mrs Jacko has waited til 35 to make her debut. The pedigree’s not bad?Eric (Tori Amos) Rosse and Capitol Records president Andrew Slater produce?but too much end product is lame. If power ballads, mid-tempo rawk and Joan Jett/Cher tonsils pull your chain, this is for you. Though she deserves credit for down-playing the King’s Daughter card, there’s little to get excited about here.

Too many young bands come out of their bedrooms before they’re ready. No such accusation can be levelled at Nottingham quartet Finlay. It’s three years since their first single, and since then they’ve been crafting a debut of clever, spiky lo-fi post-rock on which the influence of late period Damon Albarn, early Mogwai, Lou Barlow and Pavement is clear. Yes, Finlay, you can come out now. It sounds like you’re just about ready.

Taking their name from the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, Paul Noonan’s band construct literate love songs that are the polar opposites of stadium rock. They’ve also retained their Celtic personality without paying lip service to the new Irish movement. Noonan’s imagery takes nursery ideas and spins them into adult problems on “Snakes And Snakes” and “Alphabet Soup”. Elsewhere there are developed sensual ideas at play. “West Of Her Spine” and “I’ll See Your Heart And Raise You Mine” match strong melody to a level of intrigue befitting inhabitants of Joyce’s Dublin.

Robert Pollard’s discography runs past 30 albums now, but his prodigious gift for psych-revivalist songwriting continues to flourish. As usual, there’s evidence he may have spent longer on the song titles than the songs themselves?”Of Mites And Men” must have been particularly satisfying. And as with the past few GBV albums, it seems The Who and their sturdy power chords currently take precedence in his pantheon of inspirations. Strange, though, that we yearned for Pollard to treat his songs properly when he tossed them off as lo-fi sketches, but now they arrive as crafted, completed stadium anthems, that faint whiff of underachievement remains.

Long gone are the days when a James Brown album would have funkateers quivering in anticipation. But considering Brown’s recent legal and personal woes, his third collaboration in a row with producer/writer Derrick Monk is an impressively taut mission statement. Monk skilfully retraces JB’s illustrious past (eg. the “King Heroin” riff on “Send Her Back”) without labouring the point. Whether duetting feistily with Tomi Rae or laying down the law on the excellent “Killing Is Out, School Is In”, James is in unrepentant voice. A much better showing from a 70-year-old than we could reasonably expect.

It’s rather a backhanded compliment to describe them as the best independent band in the Czech Republic, but The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa have been making an indelible if modest mark outside their homeland since ’93. Then they were an ambient pop concern, but have now moved into decidedly more experimental territory. Slowthinking sets Kateina Winterova’s fetchingly fragile tones against the subtle, glitchy backdrops of Jan Muchow, with double bass, cello, saxes and trombone adding texture. Mostly, the effect is of Bj

Over its 72 expansive minutes, rock’n’roll is not reimagined as some complex alien form. The landscapes it describes are American, laid out under vast blue skies. The emotions it touches are familiarly human: a little awkward and brave, a little poignant and self-deprecating.” To all the people I’ve loved, don’t think poor of me,” pleads Jim James on the final “One In The Same”, and it seems like he’s been here forever.

The reason being, perhaps, that My Morning Jacket’s frequently awesome music fits so easily into the pantheon. Sure, new ways of negotiating music are essential. But when a band come along with such a firm handle on the transformative powers of long hair and electric guitars, it seems churlish to ask for more. It’s hard to remember the last time a band grappled so confidently with the elements of this music, who knew precisely how to balance the sounds of longing and abandon.

It’s tough, too, believing that James and his four accomplices have bettered their second album, 2001’s At Dawn (reissued earlier this year on Wichita). But, It Still Moves ups the ante, giving James’ elegiac songs the kind of muscle his band display live. Only one song here comes in at under five minutes, and a few stray well over seven, sounding as if the band are so lost in the music that they have no idea how to end them.

Unusually, it’s a welcome self-indulgence. As the lovely “Steam Engine” keens away into the twilight, or “Mahgeeta” barrels towards the border, you want My Morning Jacket to keep going indefinitely. Like many of their contemporaries, their model remains Neil Young: “Master Plan” and “Run Thru”, in particular, suggest James may have spent a year or two listening to nothing but “Cortez The Killer” and “Like A Hurricane”. His falsetto doesn’t wobble like some Young disciples, though, having instead a resilience and flexibility that’s just as reminiscent of early rock romantics like Roy Orbison and Gene Pitney. And his band’s ragged virtuosity often touches on territory last owned by Lynyrd Skynyrd or The Allman Brothers.

But It Still Moves is much more than a homage to old ways. It’s a record of passion and richness, with a hoard of memorable songs, that demands to be treated as the equal of its inspirations. An album birthed by the classics, then, that we should probably get used to treating as one.

Ever since the scud mountain boys shot their way into our consciousness like the eponymous missile via their Sub Pop discs (still available as Massachusetts and The Early Year), those with a penchant for the baroque side of power pop have asked: why aren’t more people getting this?

Subsequent releases, either as Joe Pernice or The Pernice Brothers, put weight behind the rhetoric. Albums like, check, Chappaquiddick Skyline, Big Tobacco, Overcome By Happiness and 2001’s heart-stopping The World Won’t End (wake up, Morrissey fans, this one’s for you) lead towards this latest burst of fireworks in the fog.

Joe Pernice and his band are as clever as their university credentials suggest, but their musical road map is gloriously confused. “The Weakest Shade Of Blue” and the immaculate “Water Ban” (“There’s a mark on me, of love songs burning up in effigy”) give the lie to any lazy idea that the Pernice clan are Americana. They’re just as redolent of Stealers Wheel, New Order or Mozzer as anything depending on a pedal-steel guitar. Besides, Pernice’s Anglophile tendency is no perversion.

As the writer and the singer?and what a wrapped-in-velvet voice Joe has?Pernice takes the major credits on “Baby In Two” and the spooky “Blinded By The Stars”. The layered guitars and minimally crisp rhythms are due in part to Peyton Pinkerton’s Fender lead, a sound described as “like racing downhill in a shopping carriage”.

Despite the wit, dark green moods are everywhere. The flickering TV light behind “Judy”, the desperation of “How To Live Alone” and the cinemascopic “Number Two” are all songwriting of the highest calibre; resonant in appeal, packed with lucid imagery and pillow-stuffed with harmony and melody. This one will get you through the summer, until the last swallow leaves town.

Borne of the San Diego coffee shop scene, Mraz has an irrepressibly sunny disposition, even when his heart’s breaking. Throw in featherweight melodies and spurious ethnic splashes and you have a combination of exceptionally limited charm. There are overweening vocals, prosaic settings and a new low for the bleeding heart brigade on “Absolutely Zero”. Gruesome.