Album

Frank Zappa – Joe’s Corsage

Early Motherly love from Zappa vaults

James Yorkston And The Athletes – Just Beyond The River

Second album from much-vaunted Edinburgh nu-folkster

Jesse Malin – Messed Up Here Tonight

Official bootleg from Brooklyn's big-hearted punk poet

Burrito Deluxe – The Whole Enchilada

Inoffensive country rock featuring original Burrito Brother Sneaky Pete Kleinow plus Band deity Garth Hudson

Charles Douglas – Statecraft

Pixies guitarist raises bar for nerdrocker

Hoodoo Gurus – Mach Shau

Sydney's finest reunited

The Blue Nile – High

Another lengthy hiatus, another Blue Nile album. Here Paul Buchanan revisits the same spot on the hillside overlooking the evening city lights, is still filled with the same surging, oblique melancholy and longing that has sustained The Blue Nile since 1984, is still crafting singularly mature MOR in a darker shade of turquoise all his own. This time, however, the overall return feels diminished in effect—"I Would Never", for instance, trespasses dangerously close to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

Sparks – Li’L Beethoven: Live In Stockholm

Recorded in March, this is the same stylish stage show that Sparks brought to London earlier this year. Built around the Li'l Beethoven set, you also get a big helping of bonus tracks from that beguiling back catalogue, including the scarily prescient "The Calm Before The Storm". The motorik medley of "The Number One Song In Heaven" and "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" takes some beating.

Righteous Brother

Mid-price reissues from one of the progenitors of intelligent rap

Various Artists – Disco Undead

Cult horror movie-inspired synth-pop
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