If one wanted a microcosm of the chaos of being in a band, one could do worse than look at the recording of Kilimanjaro, the debut album by The Teardrop Explodes. Julian Cope’s wonderfully bitchy memoir of that period, Head On, paints a tale of jealous rivalry (with Echo And The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch), of startling paranoia (directed at mentor and label boss Bill Drummond) and pathological hatred (directed at Dave Balfe, who somehow multi-tasked as the band’s manager, keyboard player and co-label boss). The saga was perpetuated by the fractious and fragile nature of the band. Founder guitarist Mick Finkler, who helped write many of the songs over the previous two years, was sacked the day before their first American tour and replaced by Alan Gill, while Gill and Balfe both departed shortly afterwards. There were constant fistfights, onstage bust-ups and huge ingestions of drugs. During the two months he spent recording Kilimanjaro, the straight-edge Cope went "from Drug Puritan to Acid King”. Not only that: having started the project as a slightly nerdy student teacher from rural Staffordshire, he ended it as a fully fledged sex symbol, gracing the cover of every music magazine in the land. The finished album is something of a palimpsest – when Phonogram signed the band just after they’d recorded the original mix, many of Finkler’s guitar parts were overdubbed, while Cope decided to re-record most of his vocals while dressed as Lawrence Of Arabia. Additionally the singles “Treason” and “Reward” were given extra punch by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the archetypal pop partnership behind Madness, Costello and Dexys. This 3CD set collates all of that material, with one CD of older material (b-sides, original single recordings) and another of Peel sessions. Amazingly, the whole thing hangs together as a cohesive statement. Liverpool bands often have a reputation of being apart from the rest of Britain – this is, after all, a maritime city state that returned an Irish Nationalist MP to parliament for half a century, a place where kids spent the 1980s wearing flares and listening to Pink Floyd. Kilimanjaro betrays many of the peculiarities that have defined the city’s music scene over the past three decades: the Scott Walker/Jim Morrison-style crooning, the air of triumphalism, the jangly guitars, the soothing balm of melody and the definite hint of psychedelia. A slightly paranoid Cope maintains that his band’s deployment of a horn section was copied by The Jam. The difference is that the Teardrops used horns very differently from contemporaries like Weller, The Specials, Dexys or Spandau Ballet. On “Ha Ha I’m Drowning”, “Sleeping Gas” and “Went Crazy”, trumpeters Ray Martinez and Hurricane Smith aren’t sassy and soulful, they are deliberately stiff and unfunky, like the martial fanfares leading an army into battle. Curiously, they chime with the whole Neolithic vibe that Cope would later explore, as do some of the other additional tracks on this package. The title track, which wasn’t actually on the original album, is a spooky tribal drum stomp. “Strange House In The Snow” – all modal piano, scraped violins and distorted guitar – conjurs up something primeval. “The Great Dominions”, later elaborated for the next album, Wilder, is here presented in its Peel Sessions incarnation as a duet for piano and vocals, complete with medieval harmonies and drones. There are also several earlier tracks which shed light on the finished album. The fantastic “Camera Camera” sees Cope doing his best Howard Devoto impression, while two other early b-sides, “All I Am Is Loving You” and “Kirby Workers Dream Fades” sound like unfinished Joy Division demos: the first a simple minor-key riff, repeated for two minutes, the second a two-chord dirge. Other songs on the album were, according to Cope, conscious attempts to copy The Pop Group, Patti Smith, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Seeds and assorted psych-rock obscurities. In the end, Cope and Balfe were disappointed that they didn’t sound like their role models. Yet Kilimanjaro stands as the most enduring Liverpool album of this era precisely because of its failings. Much as they try to be trippy and hypnotic and psychedelic, The Teardrop Explodes couldn’t help making perfect pop music that slotted in perfectly with the New Pop scene they so hated. John Lewis

“The Godfather of British Blues”. There must have been times when John Mayall wondered what his title amounted to, times when he rued that so many of his charges had so far eclipsed the bandleader who gave them their break. Consider, for starters, the trio of young axe gods Mayall blooded in his Bluesbreakers – Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. Then consider the wealth of other talent to pass through the group: John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Jack Bruce, Keef Hartley, Henry Lowther, Jon Hiseman, Jon Mark, Johnny Almond, Harvey Mandel, Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris and more. Not all were unknowns when they joined Mayall (especially the American names), but it says much for his talents that all signed up for his blues academy, whether their rite of passage lasted years, months or, as in the case of Free’s Andy Fraser, mere weeks. While former charges have gone on to fame and fortune, Mayall has endured with the stoicism expected of a bluesman. At 77, he is currently touring his 57th album (appropriately titled Tough) with an OBE to his name. His extensive back catalogue remains in place, though the various live sessions, singles and oddities of his early years are scattered confusingly across assorted reissues and compilations. This well-annotated set goes some way to clearing up the muddle. Though it doesn’t claim to be comprehensive – that would mean quadrupling its 71 tracks – So Many Roads offers a clear account of Mayall’s ascent from blues circuit scuffler to blues-rock icon, thereafter to Laurel Canyon eminence and jazz-blues innovator. Mayall picked up the blues bug as a kid, learning from his guitarist father and his extensive record collection. He was always an individualist, set apart from the 1960s London R’n’B scene by a background that was Macclesfield rather than Maidstone, and, perhaps, by a three-year stint in the army that included a posting to Korea. By the time Mayall, a commercial artist, moved to London and made his first record – the unexceptional two minutes 16 seconds of “Crawling Up A Hill” – he was 28. Later, Mayall fostered an image as a blues purist, but the opening slew of tracks here, recorded live in London in 1964 for his first album, John Mayall Plays John Mayall, find him happy to mix it with commercial R’n’B, ploughing an organ groove on the likes of “Night Train”. Though the album bombed, Mayall was quick to refocus, knocking out a single for Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label – “I’m Your Witchdoctor”, featuring his new guitarist, Eric Clapton, freshly departed from The Yardbirds for a less ‘commercial’ direction. Eric must have been bemused to find himself playing “On Top Of The World”, another Immediate single that sounds like an attempt to become The Small Faces. On the circuit, however, the Bluesbreakers steeped themselves in Chicago blues – a pair of live cuts from autumn 1965 (“Stormy Monday” and “Have You Ever Loved A Woman”) offer a vivid glimpse of the group’s emerging identity as blues hardliners. If recruiting Clapton was a masterstroke, so was Mayall’s decision to immerse him in the work of Chicago trailblazers like Freddie King and Otis Rush. Clapton recycled their dexterous style on a newly acquired Gibson Les Paul, which he teamed with a Marshall amplifier for a new sound – ferocious but fluid – that would prove hugely influential. The six tracks here from 1966’s Bluesbreakers still sound freakish, not least Mayall’s own “Double Crossing Time”. Producer Mike Vernon, who had long championed Mayall, conjured a murky atmosphere in which Clapton’s piercing guitar and Mayall’s eerie falsetto shone out. After this, no-one wondered whether Brits could play the blues; it was a fact of life. 1967’s A Hard Road is arguably a better album, with great Mayall originals like “Sitting In The Rain” and Clapton’s replacement, Peter Green, bringing a, more melodic approach that anticipated his Fleetwood Mac glories on “The Supernatural”. The Bluesbreakers’ lineup soon became a revolving door, with Mayall in the role of stern patriarch. His ability to attract talent was impressive, but as if to prove he needed no-one, he recorded The Blues Alone in a single day, playing all instruments (bar drums) himself. Mayall replaced Green with Mick Taylor, a less adventurous player but one whose rippling lines fitted Mayall’s plain vocal style, adding a horn section for 1967’s Crusade and its heftier sound. Mayall habitually presented himself as craggy defender of the 12-bar faith, but his response to the innovations of the late ’60s – psychedelia, songwriters – was more nuanced than he’s given credit for. Bare Wires and Blues From Lauren Canyon (both 1968) featured jazzy line-ups (with Dick Heckstall-Smith’s sax and Jon Hiseman’s drums) and some introspective, albeit patchy, songwriting. Perhaps sensing he couldn’t compete against the new world of arena rock, Mayall then went drumless and acoustic; tracks like “Room To Move” (from the hugely succesful live album, The Turning Point). “Counting The Days” (from 1970’s Empty Rooms) and “Nature’s Disappearing” (an eco-call from 1970’s Union USA) find Mayall thoughtful, tuneful, and working alongside high-class musicians like reedsman Mark Almond, Canned Heat guitarist Harvey Mandel and violinist Sugarcane Harris. The period marked Mayall’s commercial peak (in the US) and the limits of his artistic ambition. The final disc here shows him tumbling back into predictability – Jazz-Blues Fusion is a fanciful description of what’s served up on “Good Time Boogie”, and “Driving ’Til The Break Of Day” and “Gasoline Blues” are as dull as their titles suggest. Of the Back To The Roots LP (1971) that reconvened Green and Clapton there is no sign. So Many Roads may ultimately be the story of the journeyman as star – still, Mayall deserves his ‘Godfather’ title. A paradigm of what grit and savvy can achieve, his assorted Bluesbreakers lineups cast a lasting influence over British music, a fact perhaps obscured by his defection to the States. At his best, the thrill still hasn’t gone. Neil Spencer

It is 2003, and Daniel Rossen and Fred Nicolaus, roomies at New York University, have a plan. For the last couple of years, Rossen and Nicolaus have been holed up in their dorm recording sample-heavy pop songs on a laptop under the name Department Of Eagles. Now, though, they are listening back to their debut album, The Cold Nose, and deciding that something is not quite working. The new plan? A new, well-recorded set of songs in the shadow of Brian Wilson’s Smile and Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle. They don’t know it yet, but this will prove a smart turning point. In four years, Department Of Eagles will release the wonderful In Ear Park on 4AD, cracking the Billboard Top 200. Perhaps more significantly still, Rossen’s other band, Grizzly Bear, will be supporting Radiohead, playing live with the London Symphony Orchestra, and crashing end-of-year lists the world over with their third album, 2009’s Veckatimest. Archive 2003-2006, then, captures this period of invention and investigation – a three-year period coinciding loosely with the beginning of the pair’s final year of study at NYU and concluding with the release of Grizzly Bear’s aquatic, fully-orchestrated second album, Yellow House (the first to feature Rossen on songwriting duties), in 2006. Those expecting the dreamy depths charted on Veckatimest may, consequently, come away not entirely satisfied. But Archive 2003-2006 is more than just half-finished sketches. Containing the duo’s early experiments in orchestration, and layering, it is somewhat vestigial, but is nonetheless beautifully played and often captivating in its ambition and accomplishment. The content here mostly comes from two main sessions. The first, a suite of numbered songs entitled “Practice Room Sketch” recorded by Rossen in NYU’s rehearsal rooms, are brief, largely lo-fidelity, and experimental in tone. This is best illustrated by the 90-second opener “Practice Room Sketch 1”, which combines halting piano and distant birdsong. Deeper into Archive, these gain a little more form. “Sketch 2” commences with bubbling synthesiser and a burst of harmony singing, before morphing into a fey, Devendra-ish folk song: “When… is it going to get easier?” they repeat, over clacking percussion and eddying guitars; “Sketch 4 (Tired Hands)”, meanwhile, is a gentle piano piece that strings something of fragile beauty out of its amiable stupor. These sketches are scattered around what we might call Archive’s meat: five tracks from the January Sessions, fruits of a month of recording in 2006, intended for Department Of Eagles’ second album. Rossen and Nicolaus would ultimately deem the sessions a failure, although it’s often hard to see why. “Deadly Disclosure” begins as a light pop song but slowly gains mass, taking on melancholy chorales, banjo, and finally, padding drums and tambourine. In three short minutes, “Grand Army Plaza” winds through numerous sunlit passages, chiming guitars setting the tone for a secret rendezvous – or a daylight robbery: “Guess I’ll see you soon/When the coast is clear…” Probably the album’s finest track, though, dates from neither session. Recorded by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor in Brooklyn, “While We’re Young” is a hymn to youthful abandon, powered by Mariachi-style drums and Beatlesy cello. It is probably not unfair to point out this record would not sit on shelves were it not for Grizzly Bear’s meteoric rise. Rossen admits to Uncut that this music is seeing the light of day thanks to contractual obligation, adding “it’s a strange thing to politely promote a batch of material that we would have preferred not to release”. But this record doesn’t feel like a bodged-together contract closer. Yes, it is formative, but it is never amateurish, and where Grizzly Bear’s fully symphonic songs can, at their worst, feel somewhat glutinous, the tracks of Archive 2003-2006 combine a lean feel and try-anything ambition that’s well worthy of investigation. Louis Pattison

As Liam Gallagher is also about to discover, maintaining your swagger is tough when you’re estranged from the musicians who gave it to you in the first place. Richard Ashcroft’s three post-Verve solo albums sold respectably – albeit largely to the ageing ladrock constituency whose definition of rockstar mystique is not wearing shoes on stage – but offered little in the way of inspiration, with Ashcroft becoming an increasingly marginal, mockable figure on the rock landscape. Inevitably, old wounds were patched up and The Verve reconvened. Initially the signs looked good – a series of triumphant comeback gigs, the colossal “Love Is Noise” single, the old chemistry simmering nicely in places on Forth – but ultimately the reunion only served to remind mercurial guitarist Nick McCabe why he quit the band twice before. A fifth Verve album now looks about as likely as Gallagher Jr going dubstep. So Ashcroft is back on his own, although this time he’s employed what’s known as the ‘Albarn Manoeuvre’ and hooked up with an American hip hop producer. United Nations Of Sound is a collaboration between Ashcroft and Dion Wilson, aka No ID, who cut his teeth making albums for Common, mentored Kanye West and most recently produced the brilliant “DOA (Death Of Auto-Tune)” and “Run This Town” for Jay-Z. While this is a bold move for someone as musically conservative as Ashcroft, it’s not as if he’s started sipping sizzurp with Lil Wayne. No ID was favoured for his familiarity with classic, canonical soul; live strings here are arranged by Benjamin Wright (Gladys Knight, Barry White, Michael Jackson), the record is engineered by Lamont Dozier’s brother Reggie, and Mary J Blige sideman Steve Wyreman handles guitar (although you’ll want to wrap it around his head after one too many flashy, sub-Ernie Isley solos). Evidently, Ashcroft is hoping that such company will confer deep soulfulness upon him, and for a while, the ruse works. “Are You Ready” is certainly a stirring opener, its swirling strings an obvious callback to “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (or at least the James Lavelle remix thereof). “Are you ready? Ooh, are you ready for the day/ He’s gonna come back down to earth, I hope you’re gonna pray” hollers Ashcroft in that wonderful Pennine howl of his, as somewhere in the Deep South a gospel preacher wonders who’s stolen his sermon. With songs called things like “Beatitude” and “Born Again”, numerous entreaties to “sweet Jesus” and even a reference to “speaking in tongues” you wonder if Ashcroft’s taken to spreading the word of the Lord. However, he’s quick to clear things up: “I ain’t a Christian,” he protests, “I am just living life in my own ’culiar way.” It’s a ’culiar way indeed – “I’m like a fish with legs!” he wails fantastically at one point – yet Ashcroft’s passion is so generalised that he soon ends up marinating in cliché, offering up a Curtis Mayfield pastiche cringingly titled “This Thing Called Life”. “Good Loving” and “Life Can Be So Beautiful” succeed by wearing those same early-’70s soul influences a little more lightly, but there are some real horrors, too: a ropey blues jam called “How Deep Is Your Man” leads straight into “She Brings Me The Music”, a rotten power ballad. It’s also hard to decide if the flagrant lift of the riff to “Sweet Jane” on “Royal Highness” is an inspired ‘sample’ or indicative of a dearth of original ideas. No ID is unable to conjure up anything as punchy as “DOA”, abandoning crisp breakbeats in favour of propping up Ashcroft’s anthems with a soggy clip-clop. There’s something heroic about Ashcroft’s unshakable conviction in this often quite average music, his unrelenting passion simply about being passionate, and his utter imperviousness to ridicule, even when channelling Jim Morrison and bellowing lines like “Cancel my subscription to the resurrection!” You’re willing him to succeed, but ultimately it’s hard to listen to a lot of this album without cringing. Sam Richards