Dogs

Motown's mighty sax man on two twofers

Lively, multi-layered Dublin-set comedy drama

"Thirteen big, salty tears," blurbs Black. "Like 13 little black dogs just born... ready to howl at the world"

This melancholic accompaniment to the David Gordon Green slow-burner draws succour from the nocturnal chambers of alt.country's heart. Will Oldham's "All These Vicious Dogs", Sparklehorse's "Sea Of Teeth" and Mogwai's "Fear Satan" are more than willing to cry into your beer. David Wingo, whose lyric yielded the film's title, couples with Michael Linnen for three tracks; Mark Olson and Paul Jones also peer for clouds among the silver linings. I'm writing this on the hottest day of the year, and it sounds inappropriate.

Rock revelry with a Scandinavian twist

Excellent, if creepy, lo-fi folk

Fourth LP from purveyors of Hispanic-Americana

Even if you remain immune to the dark charms of Joss Whedon's mighty Buffy The Vampire Slayer, you'll have noticed that some of us drone on about The Musical Episode from season six like it was the second coming of Abbey Road, Diamond Dogs and Closer. It is absolutely that and no less. The soundtrack, my most prized possession since someone burned it off a mobile MP3 laptop duck-billed web-pager for me (or whatever), is now officially released by popular demand, the first authentic use of the phrase 'by popular demand' since Disraeli's era.

The Beatles, The Doors, The Bee Gees, Curtis, Kris and Willie etc, are treated to a first-class passage to heaven thanks to Green's matchless ability to inhabit his material. Buy it for yourself, soul brothers and sisters. The Prisoners IN FROM THE COLD BIG BEAT The Prisoners spearheaded an early '80s Medway garage scene that spat in the eye of synth-pop ubiquity. Their fourth LP was released just as their parent label, Stiff, went bust in 1986.

Oliver Stone in mind-fuck overdrive. Seven years after it provoked the most hysterical reactions to a movie since the '70s heyday of confrontational classics like A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs, NBK remains as violent, hilarious, unsettling, outrageous and awesome as ever. At the peak of his cinematic powers and throwing everything into an increasingly volatile mix, Stone reworks Tarantino's original plundering spin on the familiar Hollywood tradition of lovers on a killing spree and sheerly eviscerates it.