MTV show-hosting brothers Benji and Joel Everly are the driving force behind Good Charlotte’s second album. They co-wrote all 14 of these slick, punk-pop songs. Though, on occasion, they are Green Day-lite, there are enough solid rock moments to keep their youthful following happy.

First single, “Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous”, is a speedy thrash at celebrity-whingeing (“All they do is piss and moan inside Rolling Stone”), while sole ballad “Emotionless” really is quite lovely.

The death of mentor Eazy-E, the imprisonment of original member Stanley Howse (alias Flesh-N-Bone) on gun charges, and last album BTNH Resurrection’s poor sales may have been the end for less resilient acts than Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Fortunately, the four remaining members simply refused to stop recording. The rapping, backed by sharp beats from DJ U-Neek, remains speedily impressive. The misogyny of “Not My Baby” and the Phil Collins-sampling “Home” apart, Thug World Order is an invigorating return to form.

The brainchild of Seattle-born 21-year-old Ryan Beatty, Serene’s debut is nothing if not big on ambition. Beatty admits a fondness for Built To Spill and Sunny Day Real Estate, and much of the music taps into the loud/quiet dynamic and stuttering invention of the latter’s How It Feels To Be Something (1998).

There are echoes of Pavement and Modest Mouse among the pulses and explosions, but it’s not until the home straight that he finally sounds uninhibited, cutting loose on “Last Words Of A Fallen Angel” and relaxing into the stoner vibe of “Autumn”.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat?that’s a guy singing. Acoustic songster Jeff Hanson has a high, airy voice that makes Badly Drawn Boy sound macho, but his pop sensibilities are not far removed from those of the woolly-hatted one.

With a super-spare production and an emphasis on subliminally infectious tunes possessed of a childlike simplicity, Hanson could be the Marc Bolan of the sadcore set.

First released in America two years ago, the third album from the independently-minded pianist-songwriter Jennifer Terran is a conceptual exercise in which the musician of the title is a tortured character called Mad Magdaline who liberates herself and ends up killing the corporate suits?metaphorically or not?who are messing with her art.

Although the character is fictitious, it’s clear the songs are deeply personal. Haunting and intense, she sounds like a rawer version of Tori Amos. But Terran possesses a uniquely fierce and uncompromising voice.

Starbelly

In November 2001, the owner of Tongue Master records invited Mark Eitzel to fly out to Greece and record an EP with Greek musicians under the guidance of Greek composer/producer Manolis Famellos. Backed up by a sort of Greek Buena Vista Social Club, the EP bloomed into this full-length LP.

As well as six balalaika-adorned re-workings of classic American Music Club tracks (“Western Sky”, “Here They Roll Down”, “Jenny”, “Nightwatchman”, “Will You Find Me”, “Last Harbor”), Eitzel offers one decent new song (“What Good Is Love?”), an unremarkable Famellos composition (“Love’s Humming (Black Love)”) and new versions of two previously released solo songs (” Take Courage”, “Anything”). This has self-destructive career move written all over it. Like Alex Chilton before him, Eitzel alternates between genius and audience-baiting mediocrity. After two fabulous albums?The Invisible Man and Music For Courage And Confidence?he gives us this. Whatever next?

Scandinavian by design but closer to the Dutch school of happy-go-lucky power pop, breezy Beezewax jerked the radar when Ken ‘Posies’ Stringfellow produced their South Of Boredom disc.

They have that charming second language factor, using it to combine adventurous harmonies and wall-of-sound drumming with wistful lyricism. “The Brighton Concorde” and “Ballad Of The Beaches” finger their Anglophile sensibilities. Pungent rather than cheesy, Oh Tahoe’s full-force folk rocking refreshes a vintage formula. If you liked Posies’ Frosting On The Seater but are tired of waiting for a decent follow-up from that Seattle band, this could do the (cheap) trick.

Like a soundtrack for a film that never was, most of the dozen tracks on this one-off from the pair behind New York’s innocent urbanites Madder Rose are entirely instrumental. Weirdly echoing guitars and analogue synths weave dreamily between stark piano chords and eerie strings, like Air jamming with Calexico. It’s atmospheric, yet the introduction of vocals on “See The Stars” comes as a relief amid the otherwise chorus-free fare.

The news that The Tragically Hip had headed off to record in the Bahamas with fashionable producer Hugh Padgham (Sting/Genesis/Bowie) instilled fears that perhaps they were about to live up to their name in the most unfortunate manner. Fortunately, Padgham resisted the temptation to give them an artful makeover and instead opted to capture the synergy of the band’s live sound. The result is a pleasing LP of R.E.M.-style guitar rock, and at least one song?”Use It Up”, with its splendid refrain, “I’m a fool for music that can take you away”?is an instant hit.

Eight interwoven, imaginative re-workings of their album cut “The Mello Hippo Disco Show”, working with Jacknife Lee. Totally genreevasive, flowing from echoes of Pink Floyd to Mercury Rev murmurs to trippy trance. Dreamily delicious.

Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc crew have dominated the hip hop mainstream in the past couple of years with their glossy dilution of G-funk. Ja Rule epitomises the style, mingling macho posturing with gruff attempts at sensitivity; “Thug Lovin'” is the most telling title here. One suspects, too, that his popularity is down to impressive musculature as much as rhyming skills, since his clumsy barking artlessly copies the style of real-deal DMX. And what a treat to discover another album (following Xzibit’s recent Man Vs Machine) that samples Toto’s “Africa”.

Joy unconfined.

Thirty years on, and then some, Blue

Never one to miss a trick, hip hop’s leading avant-savant and anti-corporate entrepreneur El-P here recycles his outstanding Fantastic Damage as an instrumental LP.

If the original sounded forbidding, Fandam Plus is even muzzier, with the humanising raps peeled away to reveal layer after layer of rough-cut samples, spluttering beats, deviant synths and indeterminate threats. Hardly essential, unless your karaoke sessions are unusually intense (the lyrics are included, along with remixes and videos, on a second disc). But still the best hip hop dub excursion since Dr Octagon’s The Instrumentalyst in 1996.

Gallic icons rarely let you down, being so impeccably steeped in their own mythology and conscious of their dignity. Like the music world’s answer to Catherine Deneuve, honorary French muse-turned-chanteuse Birkin continues to take artistic risks without capsizing.

Here reinterpreting the songbook of former husband Serge Gainsbourg (and not the obvious pages) with Arab gypsy shadings and Algerian violinists, she reaffirms that she understands Serge’s depressive yet Dionysian urges, never lapsing into parody. “Elisa” and “Comment Te Dire Adieu” are mordantly bittersweet. Tasteful and tense.

Part of the tightening loop between Jamaican ragga and US rap, Bounty Killer prot

Ten songs recorded in 10 different cities constitute the debut from the bespectacled Dane. But Unrest is far from the acoustic strummings of his band, Kings Of Convenience (anyone remember the New Acoustic Movement?) as here

Doug McCombs and Noel Kupersmith’s (aka Brokeback’s) third LP attempts more traditional song arrangements. But true to McCombs’ Chicago-centric instincts?guest appearances from Jim O’Rourke among others?Brokeback don’t deviate from post-rock, with only a tinge of jazz noir as respite. For while silvery reverb may now predominate, slow-shifting movements and droning textures show McCombs choosing familiarity over fresh adventures. It’s hypnotic stuff, but for a side project it’s self-defeating.

Legend has it when Waterboy Mike Scott delivered Fisherman’s Blues after a long time “getting his head together”, a label boss called him in and said, “Great. You’ve spent four years off and you’ve made a fucking folk album.”

Christ knows what he’d make of Lou Reed’s latest double album, The Raven, based on POEtry, the musical founded on the peculiar life and work of Edgar Allan Poe, which Lou and Robert Wilson performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last year. You missed it? No matter. Lou commits it to CD here, on this quasi-‘life and crazy times’ of the poet.

Psychosis plagued Poe’s life. “He was no ordinary Joe,” Reed points out kindly. “If you haven’t heard of him you must be deaf or blind.” In the mood for a rock star lecture? No doubt Poe wasn’t cut from the same cloth as we mere mortals, yet one gets the feeling this sprawling, unwieldy concept, featuring poems set to music as well as some stand-alone songs, will be, at best, admired, played once and filed away. All albums are vanity projects, but this vanity may be in vain, despite its benign nature.

“The Bells” and “Annabel Lee” are influences that have always taken root in Reed’s work, and he’s never been afraid to munch a cockamamie project?Berlin, Songs For Drella, Magic And Loss. The Raven also comes with a stellar cast of musical and theatrical luvvies?Dave Bowie, the missus Laurie Anderson, Ornette Coleman, Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe. Obviously it’s not all pretentious.

Still, at 60 Reed’s entitled to do what he wants. If he wants to do an operatic version of “Perfect Day”, get back into his “Blind Rage” character or duet with Dave on “Hop Frog”, he can. The rest of us may prefer to score some Poe by bell, book and candle. Whatever, you will need inordinate patience to sit through something that sounds like one of Frasier’s follies with Kelsey Grammer going off on one.

What was it the raven quoth? “Nevermore.” I’m with the bird on that one.

Ever wondered where goths go in the daytime? They’re at home listening to this?on headphones, to avoid being attacked by neighbours within a two-mile range. This is monstrously heavy stuff, Norwegian black metal at its most disciplined and powerful. Often veering from the template, it also features slabs of garage rock, subtle orchestral samples, and the magnificently cold voice of Anja Garbarek, who appears on awesome 14-minute closer “Black Lava”.