KEYBOARD CHOIR
Mizen Head to Gascanane Sound
Four stars
From the city that gave us Radiohead, Supergrass and, er, Hurricane #1 come Keyboard Choir, a sextet from Oxford with a shared affection for Pink Floyd, Lemon Jelly and BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer Delia Derbyshire.
Named after a fog signal station on the southernmost tip of Ireland, their debut album is a gloriously eccentric affair mixing snatches of prog rock, ambient electronica, instrumental hip-hop and disembodied voices predicting the end of the world or babbling nonsense in rap speak.
The aptly-titled In This Situation, Thinking Won't Help! sounds like a collaboration between DJ Shadow and Boards of Canada while Bugs sets newsreader Peter Donaldson's four-minute warning about impending nuclear war to a doomy backdrop worthy of dubstep enigma Burial.
Rounding things off on a chilled note is Electrical Unity, a seven-minute wash of burbling synthesisers that's like a bubble bath for the ears.
Mizen Head to Gascanane Sound is an album you'll want to listen to again and again.
Brainlove
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LITTLE JACKIE
The Stoop
Three stars
Like Kelis without the shouting or Lauryn Hill gone pure pop, The Stoop is the arresting debut album by singer-songwriter Imani Coppola and multi-instrumentalist Adam Pallin. Lead single The World Should Revolve Around Me effectively sets out their stall with its Motown backbeat, swooning strings, parping brass and sharp, sassy lyric about self-expression; the rest follow a similar musical theme with lashings of wry humour. Men are a frequent target of Coppola's put-downs – "I'm perplexed by the opposite sex" (Guys Like It When Girls Kiss), "Seems I brought the worst out in you" (Liked You Better Before) – but there are digs too at the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan ("I live this simple life, I am a socialite") and the Brits ("Girl you ain't got jack on me, ain't got jack on NYC/Got nothin' on this city, save all that crying for the Queen").
S-Curve
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VOLCANO!
Paperwork
Three stars
From the Horsforth-based stable of Leaf Records comes this impressively "out-there" offering from volcano!, a Chicago trio intent on rolling back the boundaries of the modern rock song. Think Radiohead playfighting with Deer-hoof and you're perhaps halfway to describing the dottiness at work in songs like Africa Just Wants to Have Fun and Slow Jam. They remain eminently listenable, though – none more so than on Performance Evaluation Shuffle where a Kinks-ish melody swerves out of control beneath skronks of feedback.
Leaf
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JAMES YORKSTON
When The Haar Rolls In
Four stars
Forever the nearly man of Scottish folk, James Yorkston has yet to translate critical cachet into sizeable record sales. The situation's unlikely to change with When The Haar Rolls In; it is nevertheless his most complete set of songs yet.
B's Jig glides along on the most delicate of arrangements for harp and piano; for Temptation Yorkston assumes the role of a Scottish Jacques Brel, drowning his sorrows in an Fife harbour bar; mandolins and bouzoukis interrupt the title track's bitter narrative; while folk royalty Norma and Mike Waterson grace an ear-catching cover of their sister Lal's Midnight Feast.
A quietly understated gem.
Domino
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ROOTS MANUVA
Slime & Reason
Two stars
A former Mercury Prize nominee, Rodney "Roots Manuva" Smith has been flying the flag for intelligent British hip-hop for the past 14 years.
Slime & Reason, his fourth album, sees him return to original inspirations – old-skool rap and Channel One reggae – with mixed results. While there are certainly commercial moments – the Black Uhuru-influenced Let the Spirit, the naggingly insistent A Man's Talk, the syncopated rhythms of 2 Much 2 Soon – the rest of the material here rarely rises above the average.
Part of the problem is the lethargic beats, but apart from the odd clever turn of phrase ("Never stood for flying with Ryan Air/It's Sleazy Jet now, bargain bucket wing") there's also a lack of lyrical inspiration.
Where Smith's rhymes should bite, all too often here he seems to be grumbling ineffectually to himself.
Big Dada
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