Shoehorned onto this page because there’s now a parallel DVD, which means this compilation of Volumes 1 and 2 (Cherry Red 1982-84) counts as a soundtrack, okay? The label’s reissue of its golden age revels in the courage to be slightly twee. It’s the sound of Englishness, only without the mindless violence. Art-rockers like Monochrome Set and Fantastic Something stand up well, having first politely checked that nobody minds if they do. Morgan Fisher’s version of “Un Homme Et Une Femme” shrugs coolly, while Felt’s “Penelope Tree” carries a torch for Television. Blossoming late.

We last heard from Daniel Lanois as a solo artist on 1993’s For The Beauty Of Wynona. Since then, he’s hardly been idle, producing albums such as Emmylou Harris’Wrecking Ball and Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind and, of course, working with the mighty U2. This makes it easy to forget that he began as a guitarist and songwriter back in Canada long before Eno recruited him as his cohort on The Unforgettable Fire and set him on the road to becoming the world’s most sought-after producer.

Shine was recorded on and off over the last few years in Mexico, Dublin, Paris, Canada and LA, in between production chores for the great and the good. Yet it’s lent a convincing cohesion by those moody, atmospheric textures that have always marked out Lanois’ production work. A master of studio technique, he nevertheless uses his skill behind a desk to enhance feel rather than substitute for a lack of it. Essentially, Shine is a guitar album, all chiming chords and mellow, golden lead lines. But above all it’s an album dominated by pedal-steel guitar, apparently Lanois’ first instrument. It’s almost impossible not to give everything that features the instrument a country lilt. Lanois is one of the few to manage it and, like Jerry Garcia, creates a more ethereal, spacey feel.

There are a handful of stunning instrumentals, but the revelations here are Lanois’ singing and songwriting. “Sometimes”, “Power Of One” and the title track have a searching, spiritual quality. “As Tears Roll By” glories in a laidback, Southern groove like JJ Cale, but with the gruff baritone replaced by Lanois’ melodious falsetto. “Falling At Your Feet”was co-written with Bono during the sessions for the last U2 album, and the greatest living Irishman adds his vocals to a song that would have graced almost any of the band’s LPs.

It may have taken him 10 years, but Daniel Lanois has made an understated gem.

On their last album, Smile, The Jayhawks perfected a bright, sparkling, radio-friendly pop-rock confection laden with winning hooks and cracking tunes. Rainy Day Music, their first for Lost Highway, is not so much alt.country as classic late-’60s Byrds/Burritos-style country rock. Helmed by Ethan Johns (who produces Ryan Adams), it’s all acoustic guitars, rich jangling melodies and heavenly harmonies. On “Stumbling Through The Dark”, “Tailspin”, and “Will I See You In Heaven?”, Gary Louris has come up with some of his most memorable compositions to emerge as a kind of country cousin of Neil Finn, while “Save It For A Rainy Day” and “Madman” could have easily made it on to The Eagles’ Desperado (a notion only enhanced by the presence of Bernie Leadon guesting on the album).

You wondered how they could top Smile. With Rainy Day Music, The Jayhawks have gone and done it.

At last, the real electroclash! Detroit’s Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus specialise in harsh, unforgiving music which makes few concessions to the dancefloor. The duo instead deploy queasy synth textures and primitive beats, recalling the early brutalist electro of Throbbing Gristle, The Normal and Cabaret Voltaire. Adult.’s music seems similarly designed to produce an involuntary physical response?opening instrumental “The Cold Call” disorientates the listener with its sick, shuddering synthetics and stroboscopic blips. Elsewhere Kuperus’ callous vocals taunt and cajole over a sustained electronic assault. There’s admittedly very little light and shade here, but Adult. deserve respect if only for making an almost overwhelmingly vicious album that succeeds on its own unreasonable terms.

Away from his native Arizona, Howe Gelb spent six months of last year in Denmark, where he recorded The Listener. The results sum up everything that’s most appealing and irritating about him. At his best he sounds spontaneous, fresh and unexpected. Yet at other times his quirky ideas can sound half-baked and his songs undeveloped. Back home in Tucson after his Euro sojourn, the Giant Sand/Calexico rhythm section of John Convertino and Joey Burns, The Handsome Family and Lambchop’s Mark Nevers all added their imprint.

Frustrating yet fascinating, it’s hard to think of anyone other than Gelb bold enough to release these demo-like recordings. You’ll be glad that he did.

When we last heard from Yo La Tengo, on 2000’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, the dependably marvellous Hoboken trio were contemplating the minutiae of long-term relationships. These were songs that mapped the vagaries of love from an adult perspective, with correspondingly subtle music. That sounded almost unbearably intimate, like the aftermath of fights being piped direct from bedrooms in the middle of the night.

On Summer Sun?originally known as Beach Blanket Bingo?the disorientation may be caused by heat haze rather than sleepiness, but the effect is the same. Yo La Tengo have spent 17 years experimenting with an eclectic sound palette, drawing on a voracious love of music, and being pigeonholed as a correlative to the New York traditions of the Velvets and Sonic Youth. Now, though, they seem happiest unifying their influences into a gauzy, understated art-pop.

Everything happens gently and absorbingly on Summer Sun. Where once Ira Kaplan would use his guitar to rip his songs apart, to trigger explosions, now his experiments are remarkable for their discretion, with space his main weapon rather than noise. The fluttery underwater textures of last year’s low-key instrumental album, The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science, remain in the mix, and the free-jazz players who backed them on the recent “Nuclear War” single are still around. But on the likes of “Beach Party Tonight” and “Season Of The Shark”, they’re aligned to muted beat group dynamics. Only at the end does the mist lift to reveal Georgia Hubley singing Big Star’s “Take Care” with Alex Chilton’s trepidation intact. From the edge of the sea, back to the fringes of sleep, Summer Sun is uncommonly lovely.

On her first solo outing, the 2000 EP Waltzie, former Whiskeytown fiddler Cary distanced herself somewhat from her former band’s alt.country sound by coming on like a modern Sandy Denny, to fine effect. Her second full album is closer to contemporary Americana. Though attempts at Amy Rigby territory ring hollow, a couple of country weepies bear redemptive powers. And when a clarinet solo brightens “I Want to Learn to Waltz,” one’s struck by how ripe for expansion country-rock’s framework remains.

With this, the sixth and apparently final LP in what now appears to have been a concept-career, Detroit’s ICP deliver their finest, funniest material yet. Their comic ultraviolence reaching a beastly new peak, they threaten unbelievers with axes, knives and shotguns?they’ll even “bitch slap cow licks into your hair”. Yet there are also sombre reflections on death and heaven (this is where the concept comes in) so, with the music a brilliantly produced collage of SFX, funk and metal, The Wraith adds up to a thrilling, thought-provoking experience.

Improvised music doesn’t always make for great records, but this lot, led by the visionary trombonist Gail Brand, have managed it. Largely recorded live in Amsterdam last June, with two tracks from a 2000 London studio session, this is a mind-blowing helter-skelter of a record. Keyboardist Pat Thomas, violinist Phil Durrant and drummer Mark Sanders make generous use of electronics and samples, and the results lead to virtual hardcore jazz-punk (“No Filters”), quasi-drum’n’bass meets ambient (“Planarchy”) and reflective pieces like “Rothko” which will tear your heart out. Highly recommended.

Platinum rock goddess-in-training Harry first caught attention fronting London based rock quartet Dirty Harry. Now, with one kohl-lined eye fixed firmly on the charts, she has ditched the “dirty” part of her epithet and restyled herself for the pop market. The outcome is a debut which combines the eeriness of electro-rock with the Day-Glo glamour of pop culture and attempts to prove Harry is more than a ridiculously pretty face. Her pouting vocal performance makes for a polished cover of Belouis Some’s “Imagination”while “Valley”is a rasping, rock-based affair. But the album steals too much from ’80s synth bands to attain real individuality.

Head of innovative Glasgow labels Shoeshine and Spit & Polish, Francis (Nice Man) Macdonald’s CV includes Alex Chilton, The Pastels, Dan Penn and Jerry Lee Lewis, alongside stints with BMX Bandits and the Fanclub (for whom he still plays live). Sauchiehall & Hope is a love-bitten concept album of sorts, all delicious pop froth and sunny-side-up guitars. “Get That Girl” tips the wink to Big Star, “Mine All Mine” and “Loser” are the Fannies in full summer canter, while Kim Fowley guests on “Heart To Break”. Elsewhere, the choppy “Girl, I’m In Love With You” and bubblegum rock’n’roller “Daydream Girls” ice the cake with panache.

It’s hard not to be a little jaded when confronted by yet another post-punk band from Brooklyn who write songs called “Sex Automata”. Ex Models adhere to the school of spleen, rather than groove, and skid through 15 songs in 20 bracing minutes. The dehumanised yelp of Devo is plainly a big influence, and there’s plenty to admire about a band who think polygonally and seem to punctuate with nothing but apostrophes. Still, unless you find the Liars depressingly linear, there are better no-wave torchbearers to investigate right now.

Recorded during their 20th anniversary tour at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, this double live disc features tracks from the breadth of the band’s career, including crowd-pleasers such as “Y

The Bug

An authentically odd debut, this, given that Susumu Mukai seems to combine two contrasting ideas of retro-modernism:the cavernous but homely production style of Joe Meek, and the chillier, more precise textures of electro. It begins brilliantly with “Make Love Not War”, originally by biker/surf guitarist Davie Allan, that posits how The Cramps might have sounded had they embraced their robotic side. The rest of the album’s pretty good, too. Mukai fuzzes the edges between bleep and twang to novel effect, and even his applications of punk-disco surprise?forlorn and bedsit-bound rather than the usual studied hedonism.

Now picked up by Flying Sparks?the label that discovered Thea Gilmore?Pierce Pettis comes from a rich vein of Nashville-based new-folk troubadours that in the past couple of years has bought us such talents as Jeff Finlin, Josh Rouse and Will Kimborough. With a supporting cast that includes mandolin player Tim O’Brien and fiddler Alison Brown, there’s a strong bluegrass flavour. But it’s Pettis’ songwriting that’s the main attraction. Further evidence that away from the Music Row production line, there are still more great singer-songwriters per bar in Nashville than anywhere else in the world.

This six-foot-two?hence the moniker?hip hop geezer straddles an intriguing divide. On the surface, Sixtoo’s monotone wordplay exudes the pungent whiff of menace and urban paranoia. Think Eminem grappling with the grim landscapes of Method Man or Scaramanga. On the interior, Warp-style electronica and spy-film dramatics cast a left-field shadow. The latter’s rough simplicity accentuates the thug-life scenarios and, on the Boards Of Canada-ish “The Mile End Artbike/Suicide Manual”, creates a nail-biting atmosphere. Sixtoo’s diction isn’t always sharp, but his beats and brooding journeys are.

Morgenstern’s first LP (1998’s Vermona ET 6-1) was remarkable for its hard-soft collision of technoid digitalia with her own uniquely expressive voice. Fjorden (2000) upped the analogue ante with found sounds, static and rafts of sequencers. Nichts Muss retains the slippery stamp of co-producer and fellow Berliner Stefan Betke?aka Pole?in its blips, snapped beats and loops, while Orb/Sun Electric producer Thomas Fehlmann adds a frosting of detached cool to her delivery.

As a slanted slice of motorik dub, it’s clean, lithe, electro-pop precision, funked at the edges with rhythmic Nile Rodgers-y guitar. Even the cheerily-titled “We’re All Gonna Fucking Die” comes with a frisky, neo-Moroder skip.

The US underground’s fascination with our more obscure ’80s indie bands has always been a bizarre treat (for instance, Nirvana’s obsession with The Vaselines). The Aislers Set are similarly smitten, making the kind of heart-lifting bedroom-casualty pop not heard since the girl’n’glockenspiel innocence of C86-era anorak outfits Talulah Gosh and Shop Assistants. Moreover, there’s real poeticised emoting here, and great tunes?even if, as on “Melody Not Malaise”, they’re nicked off The Supremes.

Two years on from debut Ming Star, Jon Brooks (aka KOW) has ditched the Gallic soundtracks, Hammer Horror snippets and childhood TV obsessions to explore his love of French library music and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Having remixed Ladytron and St Etienne in the interim?alongside the appropriation of “Bakerloo” for the Orange mobile ads?the strokes are now broader, less frantic, more soulful. There’s still an air of mischief?check out ode to pet moggy, “123 (Brillo’s Beat)”?but Dot Allison’s guest vocals on Hammond-cool “Sell Me Back My Soul”, the lovely Emma (Delgados) Pollock-fronted “Nuada” and standout “Evelsong” are the ones to stir up the ad men this time.