Album

Affectionate Emmylou Harris tribute from her former guitarist

It could have been so different. Back in 1988, Weatherall and Paul Oakenfold were at the cutting edge, dancing like loons in fields to Italian piano riffs and speeded-up Soul II Soul beats.

Blood-curdling rock'n'roll oddities

Shane's grinning Death Angel and his (fairly good) Nashville country album

Three lessons in future-beat history

Sonic Boom, once of Spacemen 3, reworks Welsh experimentalist Dafydd Morgan

Stephin Merritt, whose piquant playfulness with The Magnetic Fields has seen him described as this generation's Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, may not be quite ready for that league—not just yet. But his sanguine voice, shrewd words and mauve melodies do mark him out as a songwriter of genuine, um, merit. Here he colours Peter Hedges' new film with five new songs and five drawn from his albums with the Fields and The 6ths. There are clever couplets and wry winks, but the melancholy is authentic.

Uneasy listening by out-spoken wordstress

Influential pre-grunge landmark re-emerges after years in limbo

Expert Appalachian pickers on fire in '74