Their first album without guitarist Rob Hotchkiss hasn’t brought much change to Train’s unadventurous sonic template. Frontman Pat Monahan still writes songs that manage to sound both prosaic and pompous. How does he do that? Rhyming “lazy” and “Patrick Swayze” on “All American Girl” helps, striking petulant frat-rock poses on the title track reinforces the impression, and the windy mock-thoughtful anthem “Your Every Colour” seals the deal. Passengers for Dullsville please form an orderly queue.

A former member of Adult Rodeo, US-born/Berlin-based Kristin “Kevin Blechdom” Erickson’s debut solo album is a humorous, idiosyncratic exploration of womanhood that blends elements of Flaming Lips-style psychedelic whimsy with the more aggressive electro-punk attitude typical of the Chicks On Speed label. This spontaneous, schizophrenic, at times incoherent album of banjo-driven laptop pop includes a delightfully tuneless rendition of Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer”, and comes with a fantastic hand-illustrated fold-out song sheet.

Few contemporary bands understand psychedelia’s weird mix of weightlessness and heaviosity better than Bardo Pond. Now onto their sixth album, they definitely improve with age, cutting back on the feedback murk that made their early work bracing but impenetrable. Isobel Sollenberger’s forlorn folk vocals, or her flute playing, lead the band through stark, funereal-paced reveries and onwards to grinding stoner-rock drones. Striving a little hard for cosmic resonance, perhaps, but On The Ellipse remains an excellent soundtrack for contemplating the patterns of your mildewed Turkish rug.

Comparisons are unfair. But when eldest son sounds so like father, Ziggy Marley rather invites it. Recorded in Hollywood with various Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dragonfly represents the total Americanisation of reggae. “I Get Out” borrows the riff from “Get Up Stand Up” and sounds like Matchbox Twenty messing around with a reggae rhythm during a soundcheck. “Looking” could be something Eagle-Eye Cherry might have recorded for a Bob Marley tribute. “Lost am I in my memories of my forefathers’ legacy,” Ziggy sings on “Shalom Salaam”. Quite.

As a kind of Vaudevillian busker for the post-rock cabal, multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Jacobsen is quite a phenomenon, often playing four things at once in his live shows. Unfortunately; much of the novelty is lost in the transition to CD. Lovely trinkets like “Walking To Weston’s” and “Blue Bellow” suggest a kind of sea-shanty systems music, but much here is too quirky to withstand repeat listens, even when Jacobsen drops the one-man band schtick and transforms himself into a doo wop group.

Newly energised by US/UK activities in the Gulf, Chumbawamba have chosen to re-record their 1998 album archiving the folk music of struggle. Starting with “The Cutty Wren”, written at the time of the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381, this largely a cappella album covers material relating to the Diggers, the Luddite Rebellion, the Chartist movement and the First World War, and comes (nearly) up to date with the 1984-5 miners’ strike. Sweetly sung and simply produced, these songs have a caustic political edge sadly missing from most of contemporary music.

On paper, this is a pretty good idea. Given the poise of Radiohead’s best work, one imagines they’d stand up well to this kind of treatment, but this collection of 15 reinterpretations falls short of being anything more than a curiosity. The six-string discord of songs like “Airbag” and “Subterranean Homesick Alien” is translated clumsily and unimaginatively, and O’Riley’s habit of replicating Thom Yorke’s vocal lines soon grates, having an alchemy-in-reverse effect of turning even the most affecting compositions into muzak. A spurious attempt at bestowing classical gravitas upon an already respectable oeuvre, then. Stick to the originals.

Saloon ended 2002 with their track “Girls Are The New Boys” voted No 1 in John Peel’s Festive 50. This second album features even more potential vote-winners. While reliant on Stereolab’s Kraut-Parisian sound, Saloon’s masterful blending of mournful folk violins and nocturnal acoustics casts a woozy atmospheric shadow. “Qu

One of the most credible rock theories currently doing the rounds in student JCRs and pubs nationwide goes like this: 2003 equals 1983. The evidence? Intense young men like Interpol are busy mining the drizzly sounds of Factory Records for inspiration, Coldplay are palling around with Ian McCulloch and bands like The Rapture are attempting to recreate the poppers-blasted atmos of New York’s legendary punk-funk melting pot The Paradise Garage. Even psychobilly?formerly the least cool music ever made?is back in the shape of Brighton oddballs The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, with their brothel creepers, twangy guitars and quiffs.

Parisian Marc Nguyen’s (right) first album does much to bolster this hypothesis. Halfway through Again is a track called “Where”, propelled by a half-inched Stephen Morris drum rumble that makes it sound like a New Order outtake. Closer “Colder” even sounds like Cabaret Voltaire. Like Kraftwerk or Ladytron, Nguyen specialises in giving definition to the ghosts in the machine, providing them with a soundtrack constructed from a sleek Eurodisco pulse, minimal techno and echoey dub noises. “Shiny Star” references Philip Glass-type modern classical, “Crazy Love” utilises flickery Morricone spy theme guitars and elsewhere the spirits of Sly & Robbie, Massive Attack and Autechre dance by.

Yet Colder are not as chilly a proposition as you’d expect. Nguyen’s music has a European froideur, but there’s a warmth and humanity to it. He manages to give heart even to the bits of his record that sound like they could be soundtracking a Eurostar advert, weaving in samples of street noise, infotainment babble and party chatter. Like all good electronic music, Colder get the balance between surface and feeling just right.

Brad were always the lesser of honey-voiced Seattle crooner Shawn Smith’s trio of bands, being less rockin’ than Satchel and less audaciously experimental than Pigeonhed. However, since most everything Smith touches verges on heartbreaking genius, such distinctions mean little, and with this third album Brad have produced a minor masterpiece.

Mellow marvels such as “Brothers And Sisters” and “Takin’ It Easy” recall the effortless FM stylings of Abandoned Luncheonette-era Hall & Oates, while “Revolution” and “All Is One” suggest a familiarity with that same duo’s 1974 distorto-soul oddity War Babies. “Never Let Each Other Down” is something else entirely, featuring Smith bathed in richly emotional hues which showcase that gorgeously fragile and dignified voice to devastating effect.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll rejoice that Lewis Taylor isn’t the only artist out there doing this kind of thing.

Even when he was singing about supermodels with perfect skin circa 1984, Lloyd Cole always sounded like a man standing by the door with a notebook. These days he’s happily ensconced in New England, as opposed to Old Blighty, and sings lines like, “Just another bunch of would-be desperadoes/Failing to pace themselves against the grain.” Age hasn’t withered Cole’s cynicism at the music business modus operandi, it’s just given him a more world-weary sense of distance and disbelief.

Significantly, Cole replaced his Commotions with a band called the Negatives?very New York?and adopted a darker persona, one that’s happier to linger in those shadows again. If we put aside the Negatives’ 1999 disc, and a demos and rarities set from 2001 called Etc, this is actually Lloyd’s first solo record in eight years.

Mid-life crises seem to have been dealt with, however, replaced by mid-life wisdom. Much as he loves Lou Reed’s Berlin, echoing its moods several times during songs like “Today I’m Not So Sure”, “Cutting Out” and “My Other Life”, Cole’s too self-analytical to sink into self-pity. A career hypochondriac, he still deals with his malaise by using the aspirin of melody and lyric in the title track.

Refreshingly downbeat, like the criminally unknown Christian Gibbs, Cole has decided to pursue his troubadour folk and country-ish direction here. Guitars are plangent, while lap-steel, muted strings and pianos filter through, and even the songs about faux modern pop, drug abuse and wasted love don’t veer into dreary melancholy.

A cover of Nick Cave’s “People Ain’t No Good” simply fits in rather than standing out, mainly because Music In A Foreign Language doesn’t require a dictionary. It’s a modest proposal from someone who never wanted to be on-message.

With Tricky, David Holmes, Bond man David Arnold and Queens Of The Stone Age’s Mark Lanegan lining up to hail Topley Bird’s coming-out party, the lady’s credentials aren’t in doubt. The mystery gal of trip hop acquits herself admirably, summoning the damaged frazzle of Macy Gray on “Lying” and rejoicing in the flighty funk and sizzling strings of the Holmes-directed “Too Tough To Die”.

Impressive, but she may have been better served with an album that concentrated her talents. An overload of genre hopping and exotic finery swamps whatever attracted all the heavyweight talent to her in the first place.

James Rutledge?aka Pedro?will soon be ubiquitous. Alongside stints with Twisted Nerve’s D.O.T., he’s collaborated with The Pastels and Kevin Shields on the soundtrack for The Last Great Wilderness.

Pedro?a name inspired by the lead character in Alex Cox’s 1992 movie Highway Patrolman?asserts his programming talents with authority. A backbone of hip hop beats and stuttering electro map out rustic guitar pickings, flailing jazz and even sweeping classical flourishes. Rutledge’s dextrous electronic patchwork can be masterful, though his melodic direction needs a sturdier anchoring. A name, however, to be conjured with.

LSK

Garage aficionados may find it hard to dislike a band with a keyboardist called Age Of Danger, and this third album by The Deadly Snakes amply repays the hunch. A rattling sextet from Toronto, the Snakes go for a fuller and more soulful sound than the bony minimalism of their Detroit brethren.

It’s a neat move: Ode To Joy swings from keg-party japes to tongue-in-cheek testifying and variously recalls The Animals, Panther Burns and Rocket From The Crypt without ever sounding too crippled by its antecedents.

Jason Pierce may have been the architect but Spiritualized guitarist Mark Refoy was the labourer who gave 1992’s Laser Guided Melodies its luminous sparkle.

A decade on, Transcendental finds him still floating amid Velvet Underground crescendos and twinkling, richly romantic space rock (“Everything And Anything”). Graphic novel guru Alan Moore also makes a surprising cameo, reciting Edmund Blunden’s poem “Clare’s Ghost”. A far-flung branch on the Spacemen 3/Spiritualized family tree definitely worth investigating.

He’s renowned as one of the kings of the punk rock riff but, even before he joined the Buzzcocks back in 1976, Diggle was a fully-paid-up scooter boy. The evidence is here?12 tracks of Rickenbacker power chords, folky acoustics and choruses that duck-walk down Carnaby Street like a wind-up Paul Weller doll. “Something In Your Mind” alone proves Diggle is a gifted songwriter with passions that can’t be sated within the Buzzcocks’ punk-pop remit, making this an entirely creditable solo diversion.