Manic Street Preachers
Lifeblood (Sony)
If your most enduring memory of the Manics over the past few years is James Dean Bradfield bellowing yet another live rendition of 'A Design for Life' to a football-chanting festival crowd, their latest offering will be a pleasant surprise. True, the potential for pomp-rawk is there - 'Glasnost', like many of their crowd-pleasers, is scaled down from the political to the personal (Chorus: 'If we can still fall in love/ Embrace with me/ Make your own glasnost'), 'To Repel Ghosts' has Edge-tastic guitars and 'Empty Souls' reminds you why Doves always carry a gig - but there are some nice production touches, texture very much to the fore. Nick Nasmyth and Jeremy Shaw provide heavy keyboard and piano support throughout, there are some interesting forays into dub delay, and the slow electronic rock beat and bleeping synths of the foggily political single 'The Love of Richard Nixon' sound like the Cardigans' heavier moments. The low guitar solo of the lush, touching 'I Live to Fall Asleep' recalls Peter Hook's high bass in New Order. As ever, Bradfield proves he has a great way with melody, and his voice is never stronger than when he launches into the high sections of the wistful opener '1985' or 'Solitude Sometimes Is'.
A Perfect Circle
eMOTIVe (Virgin)
Released in the US on election day and sporting post-apocalyptic cover images and the legend 'A collection of songs about war, peace, love and greed', A Perfect Circle's third album is a doom-laden, if sincere affair. The group have co-opted a diverse selection of other people's songs and squashed them into the APC mould to show the kids a glimpse of the knee-jerk, sabre-chucking future. The results are largely successful (though Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' gets a right milling) but quite why almost everything had to be transposed to the minor key (yes, we know that's how you do sad) is a bit of a mystery; if Nick Lowe's '(What's so Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding' acquires a new resonance, 'When the Levee Breaks' is completely flattened. Among the best numbers are the opener, a cover of Crucifix's 'Annihilation', which whispers our destruction over glockenspiel chords, and Black Flag's orc-shouting 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' - though the slow march of the band's own 'Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums' has its charms. The record closes with a suitably weird, close-harmony rendition of Joni Mitchell's 'The Fiddle and the Drum'.
The Flaming Stars
Named and Shamed (Vinyl Japan)
North London stalwarts the Flaming Stars recorded no fewer than seven Peel sessions over the years; here they show why the DJ hero kept asking them back. The group have taken full advantage of the big old reverbs, vintage amps and analogue fug at Toe Rag studios on their sixth album proper to create a sophisticated take on garage/ punk rock. Opener 'She's Gone' sets the tone: Singer Max Décharné's low-end vocals sit on a big, swampy mix of toms and piano; it even goes a bit 'Sister Ray' when he adds overdriven organ to the mix. 'Stranger on the Fifth Floor' could teach the Libertines a thing or two, and throughout Décharné paints fine, dimly lit pub pictures in his lyrics; 'The Marabou Shuffle' has the winning couplet 'If it wasn't for the hippies banging tins in the darkness/ You might think everyone was asleep', and 'Spilled Your Pint' really is between a ruck and a hard place. The title track is a curious spoken-word gangland boutade over fine flamenco guitar.
Il Divo
Il Divo (BMG)
Tonight may be Halloween, but Christmas begins tomorrow. And here's the proof. Simon Cowell's latest project involves sticking four pretty boys in front of a swooping string section and some timpani and pretending that it's related to opera. Three of the boys had proper training before Cowell bagged them, but opera this is not; it's pleasant enough, but most of it sounds like that soft, Spanish guitar-tinged, Julio Iglesias-aping Europop you used to get on the radio in Spain or France in the Eighties. The lads only really hit opera/ glee club mode in the ensemble choruses; and if the sentiments behind 'Nella Fantasia' are noble, placing the devotional English-language number 'Mama' directly behind the single 'Regresa a Mi' (Toni Braxton's hit 'Unbreak My Heart') at the start of the record is deeply cynical. Music for people whose relatives only buy them one CD a year. At Christmas.
State River Widening
Cottonhead (Vertical Form)
Sometime Wisdom Of Harry man David Sheppard, Keiron Phelan and drummer Jon Steele really do make a lovely noise. Their third, largely instrumental album is a warm-hearted affair. Across 10 tracks they create busy, shimmering soundscapes from acoustic guitars, arpeggiating marimbas, synths and light but on occasion very funky drumming. Openers 'Crown' and 'Touched' feature John Cale-style string drones from Pam Ribbeck and 'Knifegrinder's Song' builds to a climax; the prominent electric guitar and episodic structure of 'Madder Hues' place it in the post-rock camp, but there's as much Philip Glass here as Tortoise. Added bonus: Anne Briggs's sampled vocal snatches on 'Lowlands'. Music for curling up by the fire.
Sizer Barker
Hotel Juicy Parlour (PRE)
The release of Sizer Barker's debut album has been a long time coming. The single 'Day by Day' (included here) received high praise when sent out as a demo in 2001 - then got pulled because of its lyrical content after the 9/11 attacks. Carl Brown and chums have put the intervening years to good use, coming up with a fine collection of sunny, Sixties-tinged pop songs with pretty melodies and close-harmony choruses ('Climb Aboard' is very CSNY). And where the tunes run out of puff, fed-back psychedelic guitars suddenly turn up, or the band surprise with a tootling recorder solo ('Something in the Park'). Prettily good.
To order Sizer Barker for £11.99 or any other of the above for £13.99 each, all with free UK p&p, call the Observer Music Service on 0870 836 0713
