The Verve
Forth (Parlophone) £11.99
The Verve's reunion album arrives amid fresh rumours of bad blood between big-lipped singer Richard Ashcroft and highly strung guitarist Nick McCabe. Forth
is not the sort of unmitigated triumph that would bury these ancestral tensions. Its taut dance-rock single, 'Love Is Pain', finds the Wigan outfit hungry for a chart placing. The explosive final two minutes of 'Noise Epic' just about makes up for the laziness of the title, creating a little storm in heaven, while the gentle soul of 'Judas' provides dewy succour. In the main, though, the Verve's potential for lifting populist bloke-rock into something holy never quite happens.
Kitty Empire
Solange
Sol-Angel & The Hadley Street Dreams (Polydor) £11.99
Pity the siblings of pop royalty. Solange's publicists tiptoe coyly around the B-word, but the 22-year-old still acknowledges on album opener 'God Given Name' that, yes, she has a famous sister (Beyonce) and no, she doesn't like comparisons. The more esoteric fringes of this, her second record, force the point; big sis may never have sampled Scottish electronic recluses Boards of Canada but Solange's bid for ambient kudos ('This Bird') is slight. Much better are the Sixties girl group-inspired moments where Solange displays a breezy charm that is all her own.
Ally Carnwath
The Peth
The Golden Mile (Strangetown Records Inc) £11.99
Whatever the Peth is for Rhys Ifans, it's not a vanity project. The actor fronts this new Cardiff-based band but manages to keep a pretty low profile. At the controls is Super Furry Animals drummer Dafydd Ieuan, who has written 10 unremarkable rock songs with a psychedelic overlay. Ifans contributed some lyrics but most of his vocals are drowned out in a sea of effects. Snippets rise to the surface: 'Last Man Standing' celebrates a hedonistic past; 'Stonefinger' laments a heart broken - perhaps by Ifans's ex, Sienna Miller. 'Let's Go Fucking Mental' is mindless chant-along fun, but the rest stimulates little interest.
Killian Fox
The Automatic
This Is a Fix (B-Unique) £12.99
Having traded wacky keyboardist Alex Pennie for Paul Mullen from Yourcodenameis:milo, the Wales-based foursome who had a monster hit with Monster , turn to album two. The Mullen-penned opener 'Magazines', all jagged bass and pumped up indie-pop vocals, suggests he was a wise addition, while the shiny guitar spangle and shouty chorus chant of first single 'Steve McQueen' is another success. Yet much of this album flabs out into overblown Eighties stodge. It's a shame this misguided romance with stadium pomp overshadows the light-hearted pop rock the Automatic do so well.
Katie Toms
Various
Rough Guide to the Klezmer Revolution (World Music Network) £8.99
Once the epitome of Jewish old fogeydom, Klezmer now rallies dissident voices. With New York as the major spawning ground and the Klezmatics as pioneers, its clarinets, accordions and violins have tangled with reggae, jazz and hip-hop, while fun-poking Yiddish cabaret has been redeployed to turn ancient marriage songs into gay anthems. This compilation samples the scene nicely. There's plenty of uptempo oompah, in which London's Oi Va Voi do a nice line, lyrical jazz piano from Marilyn Lerner, and some stonking dub from the Amsterdam Klezmer Band.
Neil Spencer
Ken Peplowski & Jesper Thilo
Happy Together (Nagel-Heyer) £13.99
Rarely has an album been more aptly titled. Peplowski (American) and Thilo (Danish) both play tenor saxophone and clarinet, so this could be the set-up for a duel. But they are clearly having so much fun on this live session, recorded in Hamburg last year, that the atmosphere is charged with good feelings. With classic swing out of favour in the US, Europe has become its new home and you are much more likely to encounter music of this quality in London or Hamburg than in New York. The accompanying trio, led by pianist Thilo Wagner, is more than equal to the task.
Dave Gelly
