New York power popper Mark Bacino is just as adept as his peers at assimilating The Beatles, Badfinger et al, but studiously avoids the inherent pitfalls of the style, maintaining just the right blend of melodic sweetness and rock toughness

The second album from 22-year-old Sorbara marks the emergence of a major new songwriting talent. Citing Tom Waits as her greatest inspiration, her songs are full of sleazy sex (“pushed into darkness by a relentless pelvis”) and fleshy regrets (“I ought to wipe the slate clean with new sheets and shower”), the soiled sentiments deliciously offset by her angelic voice. Switching between piano and guitar, she strays into Norah Jones territory on the jazzy “Eggs Over Easy”, while Natalie Merchant fans will lap up songs such as “Bonnie & Clyde”. The Cure… grows on you with every play.

Imagine if the Cheeky Girls were as good as retro-kitsch archivists will probably one day pretend they are. 200 km/h In The Wrong Lane is that sort of record. The two lead singles off this fantastic piece of pop product?”Not Gonna Get Us” and “All The Things She Said”?are produced by Trevor Horn. Suffice to say they represent the latter’s finest work since Grace Jones'”Slave To The Rhythm” in 1985. Despairing, frantic and caressing are the twin vocals of latest tabloid shock sensations Lena Katina and Julia Volkova; one soft, the other strident. The whole thing is, quite literally, Dollar meets Propaganda. The stroke of genius comes with the girls’ brilliant, unexpected reworking of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?”, magnifying the original’s despair into a floodlit arena of uncertainty.

Renowned for his live use of computers, live instruments and videos, Nobukazu Takemura provides a gentle but subtle introduction to the sometimes onerous world of avant-techno. Most intriguing here is his use of “speech-synth”, a technology created to enable handicapped people to communicate, similar to that used by Stephen Hawking. It raises and debunks the question of whether this constitutes a human voice or whether a machine can sing. Illustrator Nakaban’s cover art is reminiscent of Paul Klee, the spirit of whose cheerful, bright yet inestimable abstract art is recaptured in these detailed electronic miniatures.

Between 1978 and 1980 the original four members of the Joe Jackson band recorded three albums ranking among the finest of the new wave era. Subsequently, Jackson dabbled in everything from swing to classical, never quite recapturing the fire of those early records.

For the 25th anniversary of Look Sharp!’s recording, Jackson looked up his three old cohorts and worked up a batch of new songs in the old guitar-bass-drums format. A tour and this record are the result, and it’s a pleasure to see musical journeyman Jackson back on his old patch once again.

While fellow New Yorkers Interpol wrestle similar sonic demons with grace and profundity, Calla’s third album favours artifice over aptitude, every dark, meandering art-rock dirge bulging with superfluous effects and studiously ambiguous lyrics. Only “Pete The Killer” impresses, largely because its bittersweet, Sundays-style guitars see the trio temporarily eschew their glum self-importance for the sweet chime of pomp-free art-pop.

Ultimately, Calla lack the melodic muscle and conviction sufficient to suggest they’re anything more than the emperor’s new worry beads.

The persistent pursuit of an explosive climax and the dancefloor epiphany can be exhausting. But beneath their knowing camp and tongue-in-cheek theatrics, Junior Senior have a wealth of references to pull it off. With the surf guitar riffs of “C’mon” through B52’s-style freak-outs, Kid Creole And The Coconuts craziness, Stones raunch, Sweet-ish bubblegum and as many elements of garage punk as garage house, their hedonistic sex-dance anthems go down a treat. Fancy “a good time, all the time”? You could do a lot worse.

New York’s premier abstract hip hop label goes west to enlist Murs of California’s Living Legends crew, whose angsty lyrics and pained delivery makes for a taxing hour’s listening. Some moments of sheer brilliance (“Gods Work”) help lighten the gloom.

The skimpy biog for New York-based McCombs reveals diverse allegiances with Will Oldham, the Anti-Folk movement led by The Moldy Peaches, and art-metallers Oxes. Of these, the Oldham connection is most revealing, if only because both have clearly studied the odd Dylan record. McCombs isn’t quite that predictable, though, since his singer-songwriter routine often fuses with pleasingly lethargic psychedelia, especially on “Opium Flower”. He also has a nice trick of being at once plaintive and undemonstrative, so that this debut mini album resembles Galaxie 500 as much as all the usual alt.folk touchstones.

This is a very odd album. Lyrics chronicling masturbation and murder with music that is a freaky hybrid of The Cure’s goth whimsy and Fugazi’s serrated aggression. While slightly bombastic and overwrought, Tim Kasher’s tremulous narratives steer this largely compelling album into the territory of fellow-Nebraskan Conor Oberst aka Bright Eyes. Incredibly, prog-rock scales are united with fairground organs (“Butcher Song”), but Grette Cohn’s scraping cello is revelatory and their kinetic force sees them through.

Wrongly lumped in with the electroclash brigade last year, Fat Truckers utilise quasi-Glitter Band beats with whirring synths and snarling Mark E Smith-style vocal barks. Old singles “Teenage Daughter” and the astonishing krautrock meets rockabilly surge of “Superbike” retain their blazing intensity. And “Roxy’s”, presumably named after the Sheffield night-spot owned by the infamous Barry Noble, is a marvel of tumbling arcade game analogues and pristine Kraftwerk syncopation. Unfortunately, the ideas do eventually run dry. “Anorexic Robot” and the A&R-baiting “I Love You Son” are slovenly punk-synth dirges. Still, with Add N To [X]’s future in doubt, they could fill a micro-gap in the market.

Dunger, a Swedish ex-footballer, crept onto the radar a couple of years ago when he toured with an admiring Mercury Rev and released the heady Soul Rush, an unusually fruitful grapple with the legacies of Van Morrison and Tim Buckley. Those influences are still apparent in Dunger’s throaty and supple vocals. On his excellent third album, however, the music is stripped back to a kind of easy-going, rumbustious folk blues, fitting given the notable participation of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Maybe this time Sweden’s current rock’n’roll cachet will bring Dunger (whose debut featured Soundtrack Of Our Lives) closer to the acclaim he deserves.

Seven years ago Moloko asked us Do You Like My Tight Sweater? On Statues, singer Roisin Murphy reprises that raunchy look with a cold water snap and two pints of lager. Hard to categorise as ever, Moloko’s milky club anthems pop along with a zip, oodles of programmed orchestration and enough melody to cross the divide between chart and cool. Murphy and Mark Brydon have expanded their deadly duo ambitions, adding substance to charm on “Cannot Contain This” and the hypnotic moods of the title track. With a Timo Maas remix waiting to ‘do a “Sing It Back” on the single “Familiar Feeling”, this will be one of the spring collection’s favourite outfits.

“With my great big amp I will rule the world,” he croaks, and being Wayne Kramer?the man who put the kick in Kick Out The Jams and the cocaine-dealing martyr canonised in The Clash’s “Jail Guitar Doors”?he means it. Marching to a power-stodge two-step similar to Neil Young’s sublime Mirror Ball, Adult World is as thick on sincere, sharp songwriting as it is on squealing licks. Alongside the politically-charged “Love, Fidel” and “Sundays In Saigon”, Kramer’s beatnik-jazz diversion “Nelson Algren Stopped By” is a riveting surprise.

Loud, it seems, is the new loud. Back in 2001, when Turin Brakes released The Optimist LP and were bracketed with the “New Acoustic Movement”, it would have been inconceivable for them to have been invited onto a show like Born Sloppy, trying to make themselves heard above Sara Cox and her lairy sub-Chris Evans circus. But that’s exactly what they did last month. Ether Song, their new album, was recorded in two weeks in California with Beck/Air/Supergrass producer Tony Hoffer. However, this amounts to more than a commercially expedient attempt to amplify themselves in the musical marketplace. Ether Song merely brings to the surface all the volatility and emotional charge that was inherent in their work.

Exposure to Los Angeles has certainly impacted on their music?there’s a Southern-fried, sun-dried air about Ether Song in the slide guitars of “Self-Help”, which threaten to drift off into “Freebird” mode, or the laid-back, electric keyboard licks of “Full Of Stars”. Yet their music is characterised by a quiet desperation in the face of life’s vicissitudes that is very English. Rain is a recurring motif, with even the occasional hurricane, as (human) nature does its worst.

“Average Man” and “Self-Help” are excellent songs about mid-life crises, though presumably Turin Brakes are too young for such things. The first encapsulates that horrible moment of epiphany when a demon whispers to you that whatever you thought you might make of yourself, it ain’t going to happen now. The narrator of “Self-Help”, meanwhile, is in such a state that he has to talk himself through life one step at a time: “Tell yourself you’re not in it for the money…”. By “Panic Attack”, things have reached crisis point.

The single, “Pain Killer”, is as ecstatic as “Self-Help” is distraught, as bracing as the summer shower that strikes in its chorus. Finally, “Little Brother” and “Rain City” paint more settled and evocative pictures, after the best and worst is over. A tug of war between demons and angels, Ether Song is an album of ups and downs?but its standards remain uniformly high.

Fame didn’t sit easy with the recalcitrant Stephen Jones. These days he writes books, tinkers with electronica and makes music inspired by the Mexican Day Of The Dead and the lure of advertising. The phrase ‘maybe he should get out more’ is met head-on in “Keys To The Brain” and the typically trenchant “Jesus Freaks And Candy Asses”. Meanwhile, on “Radio’s Been Thinking Again”, Jones acts like a sponge, except the quirky musical liquid is never the same on its way out.

A neat adjunct to the Badly Drawn philosophy.

Just about to hit 36, Evan Griffith Dando, the mild Bostonian, is more likely to throw a tea party these days than crack open another bottle of Russia’s finest. In the process of rehabilitation?to life, mostly?the original King Of The Slackers, who rose to prominence thanks to classic hard pop discs like Hate Your Friends (the Lemonheads’ 1987 debut), Lovey (1990) and breakthrough album It’s A Shame About Ray (1992), decided not to “join that stupid club”

By steering clear of his controversial ‘Nazi rock’ period, 1984’s scandalously fab “Lemon Incest” and the epic “Cargo Culte” from 1971’s Histoire De Melody Nelson (arguably his most influential seven minutes on record), this can never deliver its titular promise even if it is the first Serge comp to bear an English sleevenote. Still, Gainsbourg virgins new to his erotic pop art should find “69 Ann

Various Artists

RADIO CRYMI PLAYLIST VOL 1 1988-1998

ANKST

No longer the harsh psychedelic Celtic oddballs they used to be, 20 arrives as an opportune reflection on Gorky’s’ more eccentric origins, rounding up their first six Ankst singles from 1994-96. Check “12 Impressionistic Soundscapes”?like Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma with a slice of acid-infused barra brith on top.

Gorky’s inevitably appear again on Ankst’s own Radio Crymi retrospective, a handsome two-CD set also boasting collectable Welsh rarebits from Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Peel darlings Datblygu.