Getting out of the big corporate rat race, and taking a lengthy sabbatical, seems to have sharpened Maria McKee’s view of her craft. Always blessed with a vivid, exciting vocal power, she’s starting to mature into a kind of modern Jackie DeShannon, since High Dive is packed with big, epic pop, produced for full-on effect by husband and collaborator Jim Akin.

Standouts include a new take on “Life Is Sweet” and some audacious and complex ideas explored in “Non Religious Building” and the emotional range of “Love Doesn’t Love”.

She may look like a Carson McCullers character but McKee’s Southern gothic is still polished by the LA dream.

It’s fair to say that Mia Doi Todd has garnered good notices for this, her first album, and that there’s an opinion abroad that she’s something special. It’s difficult to see quite why she should have been seized on in this way for her simple, repetitious music is predominantly listless and washed out, typically swinging back and forth between two chords.

Monotonous, her voice fails to sell her rather earnest lyrics. Perhaps Todd is an acquired taste. Certainly ask to hear some of this before buying.

Jewish-Canadian electro-rapper ‘Chilly’ Gonzales has carved a short but cultish career out of sporting a velour tracksuit and injecting his idiosyncratic hip hop with a humour both sharply self-effacing and thoroughly silly.

This is a compilation with a difference, since every track has been not only re-recorded but reworked from scratch. Gonzales’ ribald rhymes are thus disguised or obliterated by surprisingly sensitive, often sumptuous musical arrangements that run the gamut from klezmer to Studio 54 funk.

Z is a revelatory experience for fans and a treat for neophytes.

With Squarepusher as a brother, Aphex Twin as patron and Ed DMX as label boss, Andy Jenkinson’s debut album was hardly likely to be alt.country. Sure enough, Ceephax Acid Crew fits comfortably into the Aphex-patented Braindance genre:lush melodic constructions whose intricacies don’t obscure their debt to rave.

Graceful stuff, thrown into relief by a second CD that compiles some of Jenkinson’s infrequent EPs, mentions “Acid” in eight out of 14 titles, and brings his squelchier, brutalist predilections to the fore.

Beserkley boys The Rubinoos scrambled up the food chain at about the same time Jonathan Richman and Greg Kihn did their solo road running. Having gone the way of most flesh, the Roobs might have slipped into the Where Are They Now file until power pop’s renaissance jerked their chain.

Following an International Pop Overthrow date in 1999, the band decided to visit the 21st century with this sterling set of covers.

Anything from “Heroes And Villains” to the Sweet’s “Little Willie” passes muster, and the cheeky inclusion of Utopia’s “There Goes My Inspiration” next to Elliot Lurie’s divine “Brandy” shows they’ve got class-A tastes.

As Fog, Andrew Broder constructs fragile soundscapes using everything from his beloved turntables to bird whistles and music box tunes. There’s something Heath Robinson-like about his twittering creations, which use hip hop as their base but defy all attempts at categorisation and recall artists as diverse as Keith Jarrett, DoseOne and Smog. Broder has described his second LP as “an urban vaudevillian symphony”, but although a barbershop quartet looms briefly in “I Call This Song Old Tyme Dudes”, Ether Teeth is a thoroughly (post-) modern affair.

It’s reasonable to assume that anyone who’s named an album/Poo Poo On Your Juju might not play it entirely straight. Now, after dealing variously in dub, drum’n’bass, ambient, prototrance and electronica, Matt Elliott has invented something perhaps best described as gypsy glitch. Combining elements of the French chansonnier and folk traditions with experimental post-techno, the former Third Eye Foundation man has produced an LP of spooked delicacy and wheezy, wayward charm which recalls both Coil and Yann Tiersen. Odd, but oddly affecting.

Recently heard opening for Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco says Evolve is her last album with the jazz-lite backing band that has accompanied her in recent years before she returns to “solo folk guitar”. If so, make the most of these subtly funked-up arrangements with their horns and clarinets and bebop percussion. Then turn to the lyrically dazzling 10-minute “Serpentine”, which snakes its way into the maggot-ridden apple that is contemporary America (“Uncle Sam is rigging cockfights in the promised land”). Solo and acoustic but still full of fireworks, if it points to what she intends next, a treat is in store.

The press release describes Markel’s “smooth voice”, but in fact it is rough and ragged, which presents a major obstacle to appreciating this album. Somewhere between an untrained Jeff Buckley and a reluctant Greg Dulli, this record similarly inhabits an unsatisfactory limbo between Grace and Black Love. The more obviously soul-oriented songs such as “Finer Side” and “Relics Of Reaction” are undermined by Markel’s creaking tenor, while the intimacy of “Hello Hello” is like being seduced by sandpaper. The strongest of these 11 songs is the falsetto paradise of “Pallisades Promenade”, a bit like the Association singing The Flaming Lips. Which makes it The Polyphonic Spree, I guess.

With her second (albeit successful) album proving a little too maverick for mainstream fans, it looked for a second like Macy might be the new Terence Trent D’Arby?godhead one year, forgotten the next. Yet she’s kept her eye on the ball (when not appearing in Spider-Man) over the 18 months spent recording her third. From opening single “When I See You”, which evokes both the Jackson Five and Janet Jackson, the mood is up. Sunny funk (Clintonesque in spurts) pours from most tracks, veiling the odd lyric about single moms, and the slowies are lit by noble torches. If this was Rod nobody would glance twice at it, but it’s Macy, and as such will fly fashionably off the racks. Let’s be fair: she’s one of the few industry-saviours with soul, and is indeed being herself, no trouble.

You take three established songwriters, put Martin acoustic guitars in their hands, get them to sing three-part harmonies on each other’s songs and a folk rock supergroup is born. With every other aspect of ’60s musical history revived, ripped off and revered by a generation not even born circa Woodstock, it’s surprising that the legacy of Crosby, Stills & Nash has never really been disinterred.

Until now. The Thorns are Matthew Sweet, Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge. All three have enjoyed modestly successful solo careers but now pool their talents in a manner that can’t really fail. Standouts include the yearning “I Can’t Remember”, the countryish “Think It Over”, “Dragonfly” (which has a real Stephen Stills feel) and the one cover, an uplifting rendering of the Jayhawks’ “Blue”.

Yet there’s more to them than mere acoustic strumming. “Thorns” and “I Set The World On Fire” rock tastefully. “Now I Know” is augmented by sweet strings, and “Such A Shame” is an appealing mid-tempo ballad, although all are stamped with their immaculate harmonies.

In truth, Sweet, Mullins and Droge are not as individually distinctive songwriters as their role models. They lack Stills’ virtuosity, Crosby’s left-field unpredictability or even Nash’s winning simplicity. This makes them more America than CSN, and the songs are not so much “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” as “Horse With No Name”. But, hey. It’s a long time since we heard three-part harmonies as good as this from anyone. Perhaps the singer-songwriter supergroup is an idea whose time has come again. Think up your own dream team. Uncut’s would be Ryan Adams, Josh Rouse and Ed Harcourt.

How about it, guys?

Bret Easton Ellis’ second novel was very much of the ’80s, but one of the many clever things Roger Avary’s done with his pulsing movie adaptation is to catch the feel of that decade’s music without slavishly nuzzling obvious nostalgia trends. The underlying score, by indie-flick stalwarts tomandandy (sic), is both inventive and unsettling. Around it are layered songs of a chic, shiny kind of darkness, borrowed from various eras: tone and temperature are more important here than timeliness. Acute hysteria usurps accurate history lessons.

The Cure (are they possibly slithering back into fashion?) rattle through “Six Different Ways”; Blondie (never uncool, despite Debbie Harry’s current tendency to dress in Divine’s cast-offs) coo through the seamless “Sunday Girl”. From the ’60s, Donovan’s “Colours” accompanies the closest the film comes to a normal falling-in-love scene, and there are synthpop burbles from Erasure and Yazoo. The Rapture storm “Out Of The Races And On To The Tracks”, while the sun-baked syrup of “Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal Band is heroically reinvented. Yet even that re-coding is as nothing next to what Avary’s done with Nilsson’s “Without You”: here it decorates the most memorable suicide in 21st-century cinema. Somehow, if this isn’t too tasteless an observation, you have to feel Badfinger’s Pete Ham would’ve approved.

We could all live without Milla Jovovich’s attempts at singing; likewise Love And Rockets. But the inclusion of Kip Pardue’s “European Vacation” monologue, in character as Victor Ward, scattered across further tomandandy sketchings, is a manic masterstroke. A mini movie in itself, and a brilliant encapsulation of Ellis’ ghoulish humour and satirical hedonism. Avary’s pulled off the barely possible, and nailed it. The film’s polarised opinion, the soundtrack does it justice and does in your resistance. Not pretty, but hugely attractive. It rules.

Spiritual sons of New York’s Life Of Agony and forgotten emocore heroes Fireside, Sweden’s Katatonia combine Sabbath’s cosmic melancholy, Korn’s festering guitars and Jim Steinman’s flair for the melodramatic to forge an impressively doomy, reproachful metal of their own.

Riffs like those of “A Premonition” and “Wealth” don’t so much attack as shift and slide like molten lava over the surefooted rhythm section of Mattias Norrman (bass) and Daniel Liljekvist (drums). The earnestly gloomy lyrics occasionally raise a wry smile, but the tuneful delivery of vocalist/guitarist Jonas Renske is convincingly forlorn, rather like that of a small child trapped inside a pharaoh’s tomb.

Jason Merritt’s quavery, tragic voice and his band’s parched, downbeat tone make Will Oldham the obvious reference point. But a wider palette of rustic despair is eventually painted in by these unlikely country converts from New York.

Like fellow NYC yokels The Boggs, they’ve obviously heard The Band, and the arcane Americana they in turn drew on, So while Merritt’s desolate lyrics never quite double as deadpan hilarity

Even with all the ingredients of a miserably intense rock band?lead singer and brainy lyricist Damian Kulash has a semiotics degree and spent years touring with the likes of Elliott Smith?Ok Go sound… well, happy. This is an album packed with glam rock drumming, Mick Ronson-circa-Ziggy Stardust riffs, Teenage Fanclub harmonies, and even the occasional nod to The Cars (“You’re So Damn Hot”). Even the lovelorn sentiments (“Hello, My Treacherous Friends” and “Bye Bye Baby”) sound melodious and summery. Sheer unironic rock pleasure.

No self-disrespecting finger-snapping swinger should be without the music to Clooney’s clever directorial debut. Suave as the fella himself, it kicks off with a song written by the movie’s hero, Chuck Barris?or at least he claims he wrote it. Of course, he claims a lot of things. His shining pop moment, “Palisades Park” by Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, is as kitsch as the night is long. Elsewhere the retro-cool is greasier than a conman’s elbow, though Vicki Carr belts out “The Silencers” with such gusto we’re hushed, and George’s aunt Rosemary brings the roof off with “There’s No Business Like Show Business”. Game on.

Bernard Herrmann. To any soundtrack devotee the name’s sacred. From Psycho to Taxi Driver, his music made good movies great and great movies greater. Here he even caused a rubbish film to linger in the collective memory. Flying saucers and robots were ’50s cinema staples, spawned by a real public fear of science (in the aftermath of the atomic bomb). Robert Wise’s 1951 sci-fi message movie (war is bad) would today look more hilarious than it does were it not for Herrmann’s tonal and symmetrical score. Conducted by Joel McNeely, here it’s been recorded in digital sound for the first time. Your Earth will move.

Yann Tiersen rose to the front rank of film composers with the irresistible Amelie, but he’s keen to stress that he’d recorded for years prior to that. He’s collaborated with The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, among others, and sells out the Royal Festival Hall in his own right. Goodbye Lenin!, directed by Wolfgang Becker, won awards at Berlin this spring, and Tiersen’s score is a chest-swelling thing of beauty and a million violins. Actually, 17 violins?I’ve just checked. Yann himself plays piano, melodica and violin?so that makes 18. Claire Pichet is guest vocalist. This man will be the Gabriel Yared of the decade if he plays his cards (and violins) right.

Dave Gahan

Part of a package of albums previously issued only in Japan on the Eighty-Eights label, Mad 6 finds John Coltrane’s son Ravi in relaxed and ebullient mood on a two-day session recorded last May in New York. Coltrane’s sextet work through a varied programme which includes four originals as well as Coltrane senior’s “26-2” and “Fifth House”, Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” and “Ask Me Now”, Jimmy Heath’s “Ginger Bread Boy”, and Mingus’ “Self Portrait In Three Colors”.

Lively and accomplished, this LP is a good place to make Ravi Coltrane’s acquaintance.