Prog, at its best, is English music’s epigonic and projected marriage of postmodernism and magic realism. Steve Hackett has spent a quartercentury out of Genesis painstakingly divining how to perfect it.

This is his umpteenth glorious failure. Hackett’s blizzard of textural ideas lacks discipline, the melodic ear remains tinny, but as ever there’s enough contrary cheekiness and blas

Having washed up in the wake of Oasis’success, stadium-filling Welsh pub rockers Stereophonics are clearly only too aware of the shifting temper of the times, hence their reinvention here as keepers of the soul-funk flame. Their fourth album sees them attempt the same move The Charlatans made with their last LP, but less successfully. Kelly Jones’ laryngitic bellow?which makes Rod Stewart sound like a castrato?is applied to Stones-y epics and sub-Weller workouts, both of which strive for rock’n’roll authenticity but ultimately just prove how lacking in soul the trio really are.

Everything Prince Paul (Paul Huston) touches turns to gold. He proved himself as the man behind Stetsasonic, De La Soul and Handsome Boy Modeling School. This good-natured jab at the music industry, which failed to understand his (brilliant) 1999 concept album A Prince Among Thieves, calls on the likes of De La Soul’s Trugoy, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Guru and The Beatnuts. And, of course, it all works. Kokane’s attack on gangsta braggadocio, “So What?”, is excellent. The unknown collaborators are great (particularly W Ellington Felton on the beat-driven blues of “Beautifully Absurd”). Chuck D and Ice T duet on the title track. Even the skits are funny (Chris Rock helps out). All that is good in hip hop is here.

Londoner Helene is as interested in the textures of her songs as their words, making this closer to the haunted soundscapes of The Walkabouts’work with Phill Brown [Talk Talk] than the acoustic singer-songwriting ghetto. Collaborating with Owen Turner of guitar mavericks Magoo, Helene’s breathy voice sits on arrangements including violins, guitars and glockenspiels, at their best conjuring sinuous fairy tale enchantments. Her lyrics, meanwhile, are daydreams of death, disenchantment and vengeance. If “Murder Can be Necessary”is more petulant sneer than felt, fatal impulse, this is still impressive night music.

Faced with pyrotechnics-by-numbers outfits like Mono, no wonder Mogwai left the guitar-pummelling field. But Mono’s bone-crunching post-rock is too derivative to be convincing. The frequent squall-and-calm tricks are predictable, while their bludgeoning attacks are lumpen and drab. It’s often forgotten that white noise aggro needs tension to instill terror, and Mono neither frighten nor create foreboding. Meanwhile, attempts at Slint-style math-rock on “Sabbath”are woefully inadequate. Finally, oddly, apocalyptic hardcore sounds dated.

As vocalist for rap-metal rockers Skunk Anansie, the towering, black, bald and sexually ambiguous Skin became an iconic focus for UK rock during the late ’90s. Her shouty, polemical style was frequently countered by softer, more personally expressive moments, and both sides of her vocal character are exercised on her solo debut. A host of interesting guests appear?David Kosten of Faultline (as producer), Ben Christophers (piano) and film director Mike Figgis (trumpet on “You’ve Made Your Bed”)?but Skin somehow sounds too big for her new role, and a strained adventurousness results.

Obscenely underrated, Sheffield’s Spearmint continue to plough their lonely furrow through crafted, crystalline songs which marry the bile of Buzzcocks and the beauty of Bacharach. Wit and wordplay abound, but all sentiments are genuine as (male) singer Shirley Lee analyses post-relationship survivor guilt, the true value of worldly goods, how books match up to people and why no one likes to buy roses from those in-your-face hawkers at restaurants. Impressive in detail, this white-soul smartness climaxes in riotous applause. Rightly.

The monumental sense of expectation which hangs over any new Radiohead album must be as daunting for the band as it is for fans and critics. As the world’s most creatively ambitious mainstream rock stars, they have set their standards so high that some kind of mythic fall seems inevitable. By aligning themselves defiantly against the anti-intellectual parochialism of Britpop and retro-garage rock, the Oxford quintet have risked alienating friends and foes alike. Perversity, virtuosity and emotional clout have carried them through two desiccated post-rock albums, but the critical consensus seems to be one of patient expectation for a return to the left-field guitar heroics of 1997’s OK Computer.

Deep, broad and sprawling, Hail To The Thief is not that album. But for all its muddied textures and sideways lurches, it is a magnificently engaging and expansive work. Neither a classic-rock climbdown nor a completion of the experimental cycle which began with Kid A but an entirely logical and mostly successful fusion of both styles, throwing out some new hybrids in the process. Such as the weary, washed-out plod of “We Suck Young Blood”, which sounds like some bombed-out gospel choir with history’s worst hangover. Or “Myxomatosis”, which vaults into the space-jazz stratosphere on a spiralling cyclotron of treated speedfuzz guitar. Or the electro-whirr of “The Gloaming”, a hissing sci-fi slither fissured with snaps, crackles and pops.

There is no immediately obvious emotional or lyrical focus to Hail To The Thief. Besides that Bush-bashing title, even the opaquely political lyrics of recent albums have been replaced by bilious inner monologues?a cop-out, perhaps, but Thom Yorke is no Noam Chomsky, and his anti-capitalist musings have mostly existed outside music. Emerging from years of processed vocal abstraction and fragmentary slogans, Yorke’s personal demons loom very large here in a symphony of psychic disgust and parental anxiety, nocturnal gloom and claws-out nature imagery. Couched in a ripe vocabulary of slavering wolves and child-eating vampires, Hail To The Thief feels like some grandly gothic horror film set to music. With his operatic range and fathomless reserves of self-pity, Yorke’s raging persecution mania has finally found its perfect vehicle. Here be monsters.

Any initial disappointment in Hail To The Thief soon fades. Like all great albums, it sounds daunting at first but repays multiple hearings. And for all its baroque sonic trickery, it also contains simply sublime piano-guitar lullabies, from the spectral blue-note sobs of “Sail To The Moon”to the soul-soothing Smithsian folk-pop surges of “Scatterbrain”. There are also enough anthems to appease Radiohead’s more conservative fans. Indeed, the clanging guitars and piercing falsetto sighs of lead-off single “There There” evoke primetime Neil Young, while the honky-tonk piano clonk of “Drunken Punch-Up At A Wedding”is the great vengeful tirade that Supertramp should have written.

Heroically adrift from the zeitgeist, Hail To The Thief raises a gigantic finger to the low ambitions and cramped emotions of the fashion-victim pop minnows all around. The good ship Radiohead sails on into the night with its strange, sad, psychically damaged cargo intact.

Brassy’s debut was a spirited hybrid: the staccato New York punk you might expect from Muffin Spencer (sister of Jon), with hip hop scratches courtesy of Manchester’s DJ Swett. Now they’ve moved to almost pure hip hop, played on by a funk-happy band. In the new (pace Debbie Harry) movement of punky white women rapping, Spencer is more convincing than Northern Exposure but less interesting than Le Tigre. Her drawled venom over the skeletal, bass-driven title track shows Brassy at their best, though elsewhere some bratty energy is lost.

With the praise afforded 2000’s Everything’s Fine, WGC seemed to have reached a critical plateau. After the quasi-psychedelic debut album 3am Sunday@ Fortune Otto’s in 1996, the collective built around founder members Robert Fisher (vocals) and Paul Austin (guitar) began purveying a doom-laden strain of alt.country on 1998’s Flying Low and the following year’s Mojave. Central to WGC’s campfire folk sorrow was the exorcising of demons, particularly the self-loathing and emotional dislocation that had driven Fisher to pills and booze at a tender age. By (the only semi-ironically titled) Everything’s Fine, the singer appeared to have swapped the sauce for the healing waters of music. That record, compared in Uncut to Lambchop’s Nixon, seemed unassailable. Until now.

What strikes you first about Regard The End is the sheer bloodied power of Fisher’s voice, around which everything else spins. It is a voice that defines a mood and ushers in depths of feeling that renders much of their back catalogue redundant overnight. On Flying Low, for instance, he was forever vying for space with tough acoustic guitars, drums and studio trickery, so that for every unadorned “Evening Mass”there was the distorted vocal mix of “August List”. Even Everything’s Fine now sounds as though Fisher was holding back, its more conventional band format denying the space around the vocal which puts Regard The End in such dramatic relief. Compared to Fisher’s deep-swamp baritone here, only the former’s “Wicked”and “Ballad Of John Parker”tap into the same wellspring.

The second point of major departure is the way Fisher now delves into traditional folk forms, informed as much by Celtic/European styles as the turn-of-the-century rusticity of Greil Marcus’ “old, weird America”. Recorded in Slovenia (where Fisher hooked up with ally Chris Eckman of The Walkabouts), Boston and London, Regard The End stitches four traditional songs into seven originals without exposing the seams.

This time, Paul Austin uses occasional members, making way for multi-instrumentalist Simon Alpin (most recently seen pumping keyboards on the Teenage Fanclub tour), who also co-produces. With Fisher leading from the front (

Chicago developed from their jazz-rock roots (as Chicago Transit Authority, whose version of “I’m A Man” is essential) into a group whose music was so devoid of edge it was practically amorphous. Listening to these reissues today, there’s a perverse pleasure in the ruthless soft-pomp balladry of megahits “If You Leave Me Now” (from 1976’s X) and “Baby, What A Big Surprise” (from 1977’s XI). Unfortunately, vocalist/bassist Peter Cetera’s sentimental excursions provide only momentary respite from the impeccably played but dishwaterdull boogie on offer elsewhere. XI is partly redeemed by the Little Feat-lite funk of “Mississippi Delta City Blues”, but otherwise it’s horn-dominated monotony all the way.

NYC rock’n’roll troupe Cat Mother had a semi-illustrious history. Formed by Stephen Stills’ mate Roy Michaels (pre-Buffalo Springfield), Roy’s boys packed an esoteric punch with their odd mix of old rocker standards and mandolin/violin/banjo workouts. Jimi Hendrix took a shine to them and semi-produced this disc at Electric Ladyland. They came up with a diverting set, but the Hendrix link is obviously the draw for this first-time CD reissue.

Disillusioned by the bullying that being James Brown’s arranger and trombonist entailed, Fred Wesley happily jumped ship (followed by legendary saxophonist Maceo Parker and Richard “Kush” Griffin) when approached by George Clinton to become part of his P-Funk empire. Augmented by trumpeter Rick Gardner, The Horny Horns blew a storm across a slew of Parliament and Bootsy’s Rubber Band projects before releasing two albums of their own in 1977 and 1979.

Reissued here as a slipcased double CD, tracks include instrumental reworkings of Parliament material (“Up For The Down Stroke”), tunes written by Wesley while in the JB’s yet never recorded (“Peace Fugue”), and a host of funky free-for-alls backed by fellow P-Funkateers such as Bootsy Collins.

The Cabs, of course, did not arrive at “Nag Nag Nag” out of the blue, and this comprehensive, for-fans-only box documents the five years it took them to get there. CD1 (’74/5) is doodling, with simple loop experiments (“Exhaust”) between occasionally arresting nods towards pop (“Stolen From Spectra”) and disturbing newspaper cut-ups (“She’s Black”). CD2 (’76/7) is the real revelation: a sequence of quietly disturbed tone poems which presage the Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol 2. CD3 (’77/8) presents a more familiar picture, with primitive prototypes of Cabs standards like “Baader Meinhof” and “Nag Nag Nag” itself.

Ten years ago, as Sonic Boom’s new sleevenotes attest, he and Jason Pierce were “making hypno-monotony” and smoking a lot of grass. Spacemen 3 were a cult on the brink of brimming over, which soon happened with the spin-off of Pierce’s Spiritualized. Their penultimate LP as a pairing was The Perfect Prescription, here stretched to a double with the addition of various demos and unreleased sessions. In two modes, hippie-trance riffery and hushed faux-religious reverence, it’s love-it-or-hate it puritan-rock. The drugs, clearly, worked for them.

Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield

THE LOST CONCERT TAPES 12/13/68

BOTH COLUMBIA LEGACY

Back in 1968, BB King still had to rely upon the patronage of the Stones and the Mac to reach white audiences while blues-rock celebrities Al Kooper (keyboards) and Mike Bloomfield (guitar) were worrying the US Top 20 with their Super Session albums. Instrumentally, these Dylan sidekicks cut the mustard but, with the exception of Steve Stills, the vocals were often bloodless. The main event of the hitherto “Lost Concert” has to be Texas guitarist Johnny Winter who?just three days away from stardom?overshadows all else with a blistering take on BB’s “It’s My Own Fault”.

At a time when Radio 4 and Liars are receiving plaudits for the ‘innovation’ of adding dub elements to their sloganeering punk-funk, Wild Dub comes as a helpful reminder that others were doing it over 20 years ago, pulling the same tricks with greater skill and conviction. The obvious choices are present, correct, and as startlingly brilliant as ever (The Clash’s “Bankrobber Dub”, PiL’s “Death Disco”) but the genius of this compilation lies in its unearthing of bass-heavy obscurities such as Killing Joke’s chilling “Turn To Red” and Generation X’s astonishingly good “Wild Dub”. Timeless.

As a school boy, morrissey would spend hours in class idly sketching pencil portraits of Marc Bolan. As a teenager, he wrote impassioned letters to the music weeklies in praise of Sparks, New York Dolls and Patti Smith. As a 21-year-old, he bamboozled pen pals with hilariously catty letters scrawled on the back of photocopied record sleeves by Ludus (the band of friend and ‘muse’ Linder Sterling) and Nico.

In one such correspondence, dated December 1980, he comments on the threat of nuclear war: “People have been panicking about the Bomb since the early ’50s. Things haven’t changed. But if it does drop, well, meet me on the desert shore (as the old song goeth)”. Twenty-two years later, the “old song” referred to?Nico’s “All That Is My Own”?appears among 15 others chosen by Morrissey on the first in a new generic series of celebrity playlists (parallel to DMC’s sister franchise, Back To Mine). Not surprisingly, so too do songs by Bolan, Sparks, New York Dolls, Patti Smith and Ludus. If Under The Influence tells us anything about the elusive ex-Smith’s psyche, it’s that Moz, now in his early 40s, is really no different from the awkward young man stewing in his Stretford bedroom nearly 25 years ago.

This is the mix tape of a pathologically obsessive fan whose joy in eking out records alien to the rest of mankind is matched only by the perverse delight of then being able to inflict them upon an unsuspecting public. It’s been the case throughout Morrissey’s concert career, with many of the nuggets here having been previously featured on his similarly esoteric pre-gig interval tapes: Jaybee Wasden’s anti-commie rockabilly boogie “De Castrow” and The Cats’ 1969 ska take on “Swan Lake” included. For those oblivious to his tastes beyond Smiths icons like Sandie Shaw and Billy Fury, there are wonderful surprises. Take Wigan Casino acolyte Jimmy Radcliff (whose “The Forgotten Man” is like Moz gone northern soul), the cajun lunacy of Lesa Cormier, even The Ramones. Shoegazing it ain’t.

One can almost sense Morrissey’s thrill in allowing us to hear Diana Dors’ rare ’60s girl-group foray “So Little Time” or Patti Smith’s “Hey Joe” (B-side to ’74’s “Piss Factory”). And his triumph in subjecting us to Klaus Nomi’s “Death” which, back in the days of The Smiths, he would cite as “the most Biblical” record he owned. Right enough, it sounds like a one-man Armageddon…. Like a self-addressed love letter to his own record collection, this is as musically fantastic as it is biographically fascinating. A priceless insight into the mindset of a lyrical genius.

EVERYTHING PLAYING

BOTH BUDDHA/RCA

Dubbed “America’s most underrated band” by no less an authority than R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, The Lovin’ Spoonful nevertheless still command a great deal of respect for their evergreen ’60s pop. John Sebastian’s songwriting was sugar-coated, with just enough dirt under the fingernails to avoid the saccharine sappiness of more acclaimed, less canny hippie tunesmithery, and the late Zal Yanovsky’s innovative guitar work now seems oddly prescient of new wave heroes like Tom Verlaine. Hums… (1966), their third studio album, is a dream-pop delight, boasting country picking (“Darlin’ Companion”), drifting psych-lite (“Coconut Grove”) and 24-carat Sebastian pop mastery (“Summer In The City”). By the 1968 follow-up, Yanovsky had gone solo, but the band compensated brilliantly via the use of then-new 16-track technology. Sebastian’s golden touch is audible on the exuberant “She Is Still A Mystery” and the incredible “Six O’Clock”, while multiple overdubs create a shimmering soundscape of strings’n’horns, especially effective on bassist Steve Boone’s swoonsome instrumental “Forever”. Sebastian’s final album with the Spoonful, Everything Playing bids farewell to an era in fine style.