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.

Although his fans range from R.E.M. to Madonna, it has somehow always been easier to respect than love the music of Vic Chesnutt. But Silver Lake represents something of a breakthrough. Perhaps it’s because the songs have a more expansive feel. Maybe it’s the live vibe of the backing band, who recorded the entire album inside a week. Whatever, his obvious poetic and melodic gifts have seldom sounded so compelling. Echoes of Neil Young, Sparklehorse and Lambchop all spring to mind at different times. But Chesnutt is a total one-off who, on this form, may finally have found a way to connect with a wider audience without compromising his left-field vision.

The proggy tendencies of current underground hip hop have not gone unnoticed. As if to prove the point, here we have four long tracks in true Yes fashion featuring tempo changes extended instrumental sections and bucolic acoustic guitar loops. But in the place of Jon Anderson’s shrill squeak, we have Paris-based Canadian MC, DJ and producer Buck 65’s soothing, friendly voice in your ear. The album ushers you in with a grandstanding psychedelic intro and proceeds into woozy, bleary-eyed sonics, at times impressively grandiose, at others shuffling and funky or rigidly electro-like, with Buck 65 musing tangentially over “wishes that never came true” and “apparitions of angels”. The four-part structure works well, forcing the listener to engage with the album as a whole or not at all, an admirably stubborn move for a major label hip hop artist, however atypical.

One wonders whether Callahan will ever again do anything as sublime as “Prince Alone In The Studio”, from the still-to-be-capitalised-on baroque chamber Americana of 1995’s Wild Love. The tentative pop entryism evident on albums like 1999’s Knock Knock is largely absent here; instead we have his gruff baritone take us through an increasingly uninteresting outlook on love and life. “Butterflies Drowned In Wine” tries to be avant-garde Dire Straits, but lacks the authentic duende of Jim White. Highlights are the eerie “Our Anniversary” and the quite fabulous, out-of-tempo prayer “Driving”, which, with its freeform drumming and banjo commentary, forges previously unimagined links between The Carter Family and Pharoah Sanders.

With a Grammy nomination in the US, Delbert McClinton’s Room To Breathe finds the Texan veteran rocking harder than ever. More f

Seen as the meeting point between New York’s thriving trashy rock and clashy electro scenes, the reality is that A.R.E. Weapons offer a lot more than a contrived halfway house between fashionable polarities. Far from being the slavish disciples of Alan Vega and Martin Rev their singles might suggest, Weapons Matthew McAuley, Paul Sevigny and Brain have crafted an album of ruthlessly effective 21st-century rock’n’roll, shot through with raw, lo-fi electronics.

With this concise (under 37 minutes!) debut, A.R.E. go further than the mere crossbreeding of Gotham’s current, voguish sounds; they encompass the entire fucked-up lowlife tradition of NYC rock, taking in not only Suicide but Lou Reed (particularly the Street Hassle era), New York Dolls, Ramones and early Beastie Boys.

One thing all these acts have in common (pace Reed) is a last-gang-in-town, misfit mentality. A.R.E.’s outsiderdom may or may not be counterfeit, but when tunes like opening rallying call “Don’t Be Scared” are this grimily uplifting, this downright inventive and inspirational (“Life was meant to be awesome”), authenticity of credentials barely matters.

The album doesn’t just bludgeon. There is an attention to detail, an appreciation of dynamics at work in the knife-edge narco-tension of “Strange Dust” and the eerie Assault On Precinct 13 chill of “Headbanger Face”, while the primitive synthesized drum patterns suggest more than a passing familiarity with hip hop stretching from Run-DMC through The Bomb Squad right up to the Neptunes.

For all their street-fighting posturing, A.R.E. cultivate an inclusive vibe and a generosity of spirit, epitomised by anthemic closer “Hey World”. This song for ‘the kids’is genuinely affecting, pleading for tolerance in the hope we may endure this “fucking miserable solution that we call life”.

Electroclash? This is rock’n’roll, pure and simple.

Celso Fonseca is a Brazilian singer-songwriter who has worked with the likes of Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and Gilberto Gil, as well as appearing on Bebel Gilberto’s worldwide hit Tanto Tempo. Billed as his first international album, Natural is a pleasant affair of light bossa/samba, laidback in style and chilled-out in performance. The problem is that no translation of the lyrics is provided, which makes the “international” claim puzzling Mood music at best, then, for non-Brazilians.