Reviews

Contrasting, uplifting reggae revivals from London and Leeds

Underground rap legend MF Doom returns as giant lizard

Country-rock was superseded as a description long ago by new, alt. and insurgent country, not to mention the catch-all 'Americana'. But the old '70s terminology should surely be revived to describe Austin five-piece Reckless Kelly, who sound more like Pure Prairie League than Uncle Tupelo. Led by the brothers Willy and Cody Braun, the band's third album stomps rowdily on tracks like "Let's Just Fall" and "Nobody's Girl".

Three-disc overview of Billy Idol's brigade

Pioneers of rootsy Southern fried rock and funk school

South Korea's answer to Dirty Harry

Offbeat Elmore Leonard yarn brought to the big screen by Paul Schrader. Juvenal (Skeet Ulrich) is a stigmatic ex-monk with miraculous healing powers, Tom Arnold is the religious fanatic obsessed with him, Bridget Fonda the nice girl who loves him, Christopher Walken the hustler who wants to exploit him. Nicely satirical about the modern media circus.

The L-Shaped Room is a stagy 1962 adaptation of a Lynne Reid Banks novel about pregnant French socialite Leslie Caron in a London bedsit, and is famous only to Smiths obsessives due to it being the source of the opening sample from The Queen Is Dead. John Schlesinger's 1965 Darling is a key text from the Swinging London canon, breezily and brilliantly skewering vacuous underwear model Diana Scott (Julie Christie) as she seduces her way into wealthy despair.

Part of a triple DVD pack, this contains footage of German TV show Beat Club, a legendary showcase for the best bands of the era. Its late-'60s archive is now a valuable resource for DVD compilers. Like a visual companion to Uncut's Acid Daze CD given away two issues ago, Psychedelic High features Donovan, Arthur Brown, the Small Faces and The Nice all overlapping with that collection. The Who and The Moody Blues also attend what is mostly a very English psychedelic tea party, although The Byrds, Blue Cheer and Canned Heat fly the American freak flag.

Raw-as-blisters rock from Jack White cohorts