The appropriately named Greg Trooper is one of the foot soldiers of the Americana army. His rootsy songs have been covered by the likes of Steve Earle and Rosanne Cash in different campaigns, but he's never going to make it to the rank of general. Yet serving in the ranks is a dignified profession, and Trooper at the very least deserves an honourable mention in dispatches for Floating, an album of fetching melodies and intelligent lyrics. And he should win a Purple Heart for "Muhammad Ali"?Earle claims in his sleevenotes that he's already planning a cover version of the song.

While The White Stripes remain King and Queen of post-Stooges Detroit punk, the bands playing in their shadows have virtues, too. Though The Go at first seem content to run the gamut of Anglo-American trash-rock influences (Bolan on track 1, The Faces on track 2...), with arresting pastiche lyrics ("What happened in your early life? Got laid when you were too young?"), they eventually pummel through to a place of their own. "He's Been Lyin'", especially, with its sexily menacing "Gimme Shelter"intro, jumpy beats, phased, clanging guitars and "Babybabybabybaby"boiling climax, is worth the ticket.

Since their split in May '94, Uncle Tupelo's reputation as America's foremost alt.country pioneers grows ever more unshakeable. Though their tenet was a simple one?that country, punk and rock all tapped into identical emotions; that Buck Owens and The Minutemen weren't mutually exclusive?it often appeared a solitary light in a landscape prowling with Nirvanas and Pearl Jams. With the late-'90's Americana boom, however, the band finally began taking belated bows. This reissue of their 1993 swan song still sounds spectacular. If cracks were starting to form, there's little sign here. After the spare beauty of the Peter Buck-produced March 16-20 1992, Anodyne stuck to its live-in-the-studio formula to fashion a near-perfect mash of scything rock and bruise-black honky-tonk. Farrar's lugubrious lead-off ("Slate") remains its crowning glory, but this record is studded with rare booty. Tweedy's wildly fiddlin'"Acuff-Rose"is both a celebration of tradition and a reminder of old-guard ubiquity, while "New Madrid" is a clear marker for all roads Wilco. And while the sleep-blurred title track and pounding "Chickamauga"offer up both sides of the Farrar coin, two key Tupelo influences are present in Texan legend Doug Sahm's "Give Me Back The Key To My Heart"(Sahm himself on guitar/vocals) and Waylon Jennings'"Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?"(Joe Ely sharing vocals). The latter, its baton clearly awaiting its next palm, seems entirely appropriate.

Following the attention heaped upon 2002's lovely I'm Coming Home, Norway's most famous ex-postman Thomas Hansen began to wilt, preferring to "hide behind the beer". Straightened out and under the wing of producer Mark Nevers (Lambchop), Hey Harmony is the product of a frantic's week recording in Nashville, spotlighting the 26-year-old's Anglophilia and US country-folk leanings. Sort of Neil Young and Donovan tripping at The Wicker Man's solstice fest. "45 Seconds"could be Robert Wyatt playing with greasy guitars; "New Apartment"is a new take on flying the nest ("So I made a dinner for myself/And put on a record with The Hives"), and closer "Institution"is the most moving thing I've heard all year.

Having met at Leicester Music College in 1998 and formed early last year, The Havenots are Sophia Marshall and Liam Dullingham, two young pups (20 and 22) whose smoke-weary delivery belies their tender years. Informed by Gram/Emmylou, Gillian Welch/David Rawlings and Uncle Tupelo, this is gentle smoulder for the most part, all languid, punt-down-the-river melodies and mountain-air acoustic guitars (courtesy of Samuel Harvey). The tunes may need work to snag in the memory, but the voices are spectacular: Dullingham's lazy drawl already likened to "Ryan Adams on smack"; Marshall's classically-trained larynx somewhere between Emmylou and Hope Sandoval. Heartening stuff.

Modesto is a town in Northern California where, Grandaddy would have us believe, very little happens. It is here that the five members of this exceptional band have lived all their lives, here that they party, fight, skate, and make records at the house of songwriter Jason Lytle. Like many small-town boys, they're ambivalent about their home: bored and irritated by it, yet somehow unable to break free. It's a common enough story, rendered weird when one considers Grandaddy are an internationally acclaimed rock band, kindred spirits of The Flaming Lips, whose music respects and transcends American traditions. Most would assume their second album, 2000's The Sophtware Slump?a marvellous concept project that used decaying technology as a metaphor for a ruined relationship?had provided the band with a means of escape. Nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth. Much of Sumday presents Lytle as a man in stasis, the guy "who lost the go in the go-for-it". "We're all collapsed and futureless,"he sings in "El Caminos In The West". "I'm On Standby", he pithily names another song. A bit young for a mid-life crisis, but the band carry it well. Perversely, Sumday is compact where Sophtware Slump sprawled. No nine-minute epics?the 12 songs are compressed and insidious, often oddly reminiscent of Tom Petty or ELO had they grown up with a penchant for Giant Sand records and junkshop synths. It's a compelling psychological study set to lovely tunes, a document of a man torn between torpor and achievement. And a man whose paralysis and uncertainty can be traced back to that critical failed relationship, if the tremulous cosmic yawn of "Yeah Is What We Had" is anything to go by. Somewhere in the anonymous suburbs of Modesto, an uncommonly potent muse must be hiding out, waiting for the band's inevitable return home.

Eddi Reader got "spooked" by Robert Burns one January night singing "My Love's Like A Red Red Rose" to a bunch of drunks in a Glasgow bar. The experience sent her off in search of Scotland's national bard, and the result is an album of 11 enticing arrangements of his 200-year-old lyrics, among which "Red Red Rose" and "Auld Lang Syne" will be familiar, but most will not. The accompaniment by leading Scottish folk musicians and the Royal National Scottish Orchestra is sympathetic, and Reader's lovely vocals render Burns' words far more comprehensible than on the page.

However authentic their fervour, 16 Horsepower often appear cripplingly in thrall to Nick Cave's old Southern gothic routine. David Eugene Edwards' second solo album is most effective when he stretches out a little, expanding his malign little songs into ghostly, creaking atmospheric pieces. The results are thematically consistent, if undeniably effective. "Animalitos", a vast meditation on Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" that features a murder of crows on backing vocals, is the highlight, though "White Bird" (Roxy Music crossed with The Screaming Trees, weirdly) definitely runs it close. The chill-out album as rethought by Flannery O'Connor, perhaps.

Clem Snide grow ever more hushed and pastoral with each album. Songwriter Eef Barzelay recently became a father, and all traces of his Big Apple cynicism have given way to gurgling smiles and lullabies. "There's nothing to be scared of," he murmurs as he hits the soft spot on "Strong Enough". Vulnerability and innocence reign, and the lamb will soon lie down on Broadway. All that's missing from this mush is a cover of "Puff The Magic Dragon". Deeply disappointing after the triumphs of Your Favorite Music and The Ghost Of Fashion.

This is probably the most accessible of Lightning Bolt's three albums, though in relative terms it makes The White Stripes seem like Westlife. Brian Gibson's bass manages to cover all the necessary functions of free-rock-metal guitar?imagine a cross between the Boredoms and Slayer?while Brian Chippendale's drums are restless but always manage to nail the rhythm when required. Vocals are indistinct ("All the world's in flames") but the music is purposeful and powerful, never more so than on the terrible grandeur of the climactic "30,000 Monkies" with its endless crescendi, and the floundering "Duel In The Deep".

Over the years, Steely Dan's melodic profile has grown lower, more bluesy and plangent, less endowed with hook potential, more elusive and understated. The multi-Grammy-winning Two Against Nature (2000) was rich in this parsimony and surely one of the obliquest statements ever to be named an Album Of The Year. Everything Must Go, its successor, is even more Desert Chic in its blending-into-the-background refusal to grab the melodic higher ground, to give us something to sing along with. Everything's in the attitude, and we soon find that this is somewhat rarefied: "We could rent a paranymphic glider/My hypothetical friend/And we could sail/'Til the bending end." Although there are tracks which impress at first listen?the mordant "Things I Miss The Most", the enigmatically swinging "Green Book", the mischievous "Lunch With Gina", and the fatalistic title (and closing) track?there is nothing here which knocks you for six like "Gaslighting Abbie" or "Jack Of Speed". In its melodic sparseness and proclivity for the blues, Everything Must Go most resembles Donald Fagen's 1993 solo album Kamakiriad; indeed, "Blues Beach" and the chorus line "Drop me off in Groovetime" from "Slang Of Ages" both sound like outtakes from that least compelling of all Steely Dan products. There's a slight tiredness about the new album. It's too laid back to grab the attention, which must scan closer for clues. One of the standard fixtures of the Steely Dan method since 1974's Pretzel Logic has been the use of endless line-ups of auxiliary musicians in search of the perfect realisation of every separate song. This has always worked beautifully, and it's surprising to find that Everything Must Go uses the same basic pool of musicians for all nine tracks. Possibly this retreat from the benefits of internal rivalry has produced a comparative slackening in creative tension. Certainly the overall mood of the album is relaxed beyond the usual. An edge of fiery emphasis is missing. That said, the prevailing standards of composition and performance remain high, while Fagen (left, above) and Walter Becker (right) convincingly handle most of the solos themselves. Perhaps one expects too much. Perhaps this one's a slow burner. Perhaps, on the other hand, Everything Must Go lacks the last ounce of ambition. Comfortable business as usual on the Dan trail, the album feels like a stepping stone between more major statements. Compared to Two Against Nature, it lacks both variety and intensity of focus on the unusual. The downbeat ending comes effectively, but nothing spectacular enough has happened before it for the dying fall to register to the full. "Is it over already?" is the somewhat disappointed response. Steely Dan are too acute to make even a slightly duff album, so don't run away with the idea that this one's no good. Just prepare not to be totally floored this time round.

Something is stirring in country music. Fuelled on the one hand by the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou and on the other by the declining sales of the sugar-coated, production-line mainstream acts, a new, tougher breed of independentminded female country singer is now emerging. Included among their ranks are the likes of Allison Moorer, Kim Richey and Deana Carter, and although none of them are what you'd really call alt.country, they do write their own material and retain an integrity that the likes of Faith Hill, Reba McEntire and the other hollow Nashville divas either lost long ago or never had. Carter's interesting lyrics are sometimes let down by trite pop arrangements. But it's an encouraging step in the right direction.

Contemporaries of BRMC, The Warlocks and Beachwood Sparks (with whom they originally traded members), The Tyde seem more informed by '80s Anglo-suburban pop than anything West Coast. Following on from 2001's much-lauded debut Once (what else?), the drafting of Velvet Crush's Ric Menck on drums/percussion adds liberal splashes of sunshine to singer/songwriter Darren Rademaker's Lloyd Cole-on-Prozac delivery. There's much to admire in the fretwork of Rademaker and Ben Knight, too, joining the dots between Johnny Marr, Roger McGuinn and Felt's Maurice Deebank to underpin the hooks with sun-blonde crispness. "Crystal Canyons" breezes along like The Loft's "Up The Hill And Down The Slope", while "Shortboard City" grafts '70s Quo onto The Kursaal Flyers yet remains cool as hell.

Originally the organist in '80s garage punk legends The Prisoners (whose debut album A Taste Of Pink!, available again on CD with extra tracks, is reviewed on p 123), James Taylor has pursued his obsession with the Hammond organ beyond all reasonable boundaries. Cut virtually live, The Oscillator blasts off with an implausibly dynamic cover of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar", reaching the stratosphere with a set of distorted R&B funk workouts that explode in shards of '60s spy themes, psychedelia and free-form jazz.

Pierle's presumably second-language lyrics of loopy, romantic psychobabble ("I've still got this rage like some stomach ball striking penalty in my goal") don't bare close inspection, although some metaphors are hard to miss ("after 10 days of rain everything's soaking... wet"). But it's her voice?a Bush-like yodel?and arrangements, with co-writer/producer Koen Gisen, which make this stand out. Harmonising lushly with herself on "Once Again", and cross-breeding Blur's "Song 2" with Village Green Kinks on "Sing Song Sally", this is, amid longueurs, pop of great promise.

Their average age may be 23 but The Thrills have old ears. To think that, when vocalist Conor Deasy was in swaddling clothes, his preferred artists, such as Van Dyke Parks and Rick Danko, were the reviled fodder of hoary old hairies who'd wished punk had never happened. Today, such ageist generational markers no longer matter. So let's flake out on a lilo to the sweet sound of The Thrills. This is the best childhood summer holiday you ever had, condensed into 45 minutes of delicately arranged, beautifully performed, big, bright, cheery music. Luckily, beyond the intoxicating yet comforting melodies?an I-Spy book of Americana from the Brian Wilson-ish "Santa Cruz" to "Hollywood Kids" with its Midnight Cowboy-style harmonica snivels?are lyrics of some emotional depth ("Your Love Is Like Las Vegas"?now that's a song title). When Deasy croaks that "it's such a shame when old friends fall out" ("Old Friends, New Lovers") it's genuinely moving. As are the album's numerous calls to escape the humdrum entrapments of everyday life, be it a "One Horse Town", the sentiment of "Just Travelling Through" or the album title itself. So Much For The City indeed. If The Thrills have a trump card, it's that they are heartfelt and passionate enough to turn obvious reference points (Bacharach, Spector, Dylan, Young) into something original. The twangy guitar solo on "Deckchairs And Cigarettes" helps?it will have you dripping on the floor like a 99 in the midday heat. In the words of another great Irish quintet, here comes the summer.

The Eurythmics' 1999 reunion album Peace was an embarrassment, so expectations weren't high for Lennox's first collection of solo, self-written material since 1992's Diva. How wrong we were. And it seems we have to thank pain, suffering and misery for her recovery from writer's block, as the sinuous melodies and dark emotions on Bare were all inspired by the trauma of a break-up. It may not be Blood On The Tracks, but songs like "Loneliness", "The Saddest Song" and "The Hurting Time" (which sounds like it sashayed in from a Sade album) are as potent as the titles suggest. Then, on tracks like "1000 Beautiful Things", Lennox reaches a state of acceptance and hope that, even in the darkest hour, a new dawn awaits. She's still a class act.

Since surfacing from the Detroit underground in 1993, Matthew Smith's outfit have trodden an ever tangential path with infuriating results. Touching all bases from garage rock through prog, psychedelia and beyond requires a deft touch that's often eluded them but, though this record still finds the ground shaking beneath their feet, it's probably their most assured to date. At their best when fusing Spacemen 3 feedback and backwards guitar to West Coast smarts (see "Girl You Have Magic Inside You" and "Desperate Times, Desperate Measures"), there's enough to suggest there's life out there after all.