Björk
On tour

Björk seems be defining a role for herself as the Madonna of the avant-garde. A maven with a talent for harvesting talent, the policy has never seemed so overt as it does on current LP, Volta. Filled with guests admired by gentlemen in independent record shops - free jazz drummer Chris Corsano, kora player Toumani Diabaté - she has created an undoubtedly challenging world of sound. While such flagrant uncommerciality is not so mad an idea in her own career as it might be in anyone else's, it's still her most tuneful work that's arguably the most loved. But with Björk, what begins sounding alienating generally ends up bringing comfort.

· Apollo, Manchester, Fri 11

The Long Blondes
On tour

Like clothes from a charity shop, with the Long Blondes there's the hope that they may enjoy a new lease of life second time around. A Sheffield band in the classic tradition - like Pulp, they trade in relationship vignettes; like ABC, they are moving towards a shiny pop template - the band's debut nonetheless failed to live up to their initial promise. Now produced by the king of electro pop, Erol Alkan, the band's new album, Couples, seems to express an urge to smarten up and enter a point slightly later in the 1980s. A noble effort, but you wouldn't like to think this polish comes at the expense of their soul.

· Junction, Cambridge, Sun 6; Academy 2, Liverpool, Mon 7; Manchester Academy 2, Tue 8; Stylus at Leeds University, Wed 9; Octagon, Sheffield, Thu 10

Portishead
On tour

If Portishead were once the music of the dinner party, prepare for indigestion. Having made, with their debut album, Dummy, a record whose melancholia and crackling ambience somehow found its way into the mainstream, their new one, Third - their first for 10 years - breaks that mould. The product of a long period of writing and discarding of material, the intervening period has seen them expanding the range of their songs even while pruning their number. Filled with scary-sounding reference points - krautrock, antique synthesizers, doom metal - the album Geoff Barrow, Adrian Utley and Beth Gibbons have made is a great, if at times alarming leap forward. As ever, it looks to be the vocals of Gibbons to which one may most readily respond. Classic, as in being outside of fashion, her voice remains the sound of heartbreak in black and white.

· Apollo, Manchester, Wed 9; Hammersmith Apollo, W6, Thu 10

The Black Crowes
London

Seven years is a long time, but in the painstaking, fish-to-mammal style evolution of the Black Crowes, it's a drop in the ocean. There may be new members, and bitter arguments between singer Chris Robinson and his brother, guitarist Rich, but it's not something you'd discern from new album Warpaint. Like any other Crowes album, it's the sound of Southern rock, the smell of marijuana, the feel of a suede jacket, all rendered in digital form. But what's maybe oddest is how the band send out the vibe that they're "coming out fighting" - really, you'd think these were the last people to know there was a war on.

· Carling Academy Brixton, SW9, Wed 9