In shops tomorrow: 28/10

Singles

We should be grateful of the Futureheads' Area for many reasons - it's a new track released as a single that isn't being followed by a reissuing of the album, the extra tracks feature Ross and Jaff on lead vocals, there are few who would write a song around home security. Oh, and that it's great.

We could have seen King Creosote earlier in the year but ended up having other things to do, which by all accounts is unfortunate. Bootprints comes off the KC Rules OK album and is backed by the Earlies on more immediate form than usual. Must check if this is one of the tracks with KT Tunstall on backing vocals.

Can't find links for these, but the Spinto Band's Lipsish double A-side Mountains/Brown Boxes is on vinyl only, while the mighty Young Knives are probably as perplexed as us by the two reviews that compare The Decision to the Darkness. The big one, though, is the giant-sized 'here comes 2006!' sign that is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's 7" only Is This Love?

Albums

To start this section, an album you may have already - Want One + Want Two equals Rufus Wainwright's double album Want, apparently the way he wanted it all along, although why he didn't just release it that way is unclear.

Back earlier in the year, before all this Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! nonsense, the smart money for the first band to be declared The New Arcade Fire was on Thunderbirds Are Now!, a Detriot collective with Byrnesian vocals, plenty of synths and disco-punk stylings pickpocketed from Andy Gill. Justamustache finally gets a proper British release this week, as does another long-released in America favourite of the art-jerk cognescenti, Les Savy Fav's final album Inches.

Ah, Th' Faith Healers. The first band signed to Too Pure, their discordant yelping akin to inventing lo-fi a couple of years too early and compensating by dumping all the distortion and feedback possible on top like Wile E Coyote with his new bag of Acme Quick Drying Cement, god knows what their Peel Sessions sound like.

On a very different tack, there must have been hundreds of Very Best of Slades released down the years, but this double set with a cover seemingly developed in Microsoft Paint presents their hard boogie as something to be admired in itself rather than a means to a Christmas song pension plan end.

Inevitably, NME Presents The Essential Bands is if anything safer than those Best Bands Ever compilations, only The Automatic - ah, the buy-in - and Test sodding Icicles likely to scare the kids. For the wider picture we must look at Children Of Nuggets - Original Artyfacts From The Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1995, which transcends its attempt at lineage from the original Lenny Kaye curated compilation classic and the idea everyone was mad about it for 19 years. A few names you might recognise creep in - early Bangles, XTC's own Dukes Of Stratosphear, the Cramps, Revillos, Teenage Fanclub, the inevitable Julian Cope, Inspiral Carpets, early Primals and even the La's There She Goes - but there's plenty of retro-flavoured powerpop goodness to newly mint.

But what are we going to get the kids this Christmas? Probably more early twentysomethings than six year olds have been awaiting Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow: The Album - featuring The Stoke-On-Trent Song! - but you don't need to go all Daily Mail to appreciate Hello Children Everywhere, three CDs of Junior Choice favourites from the 1920s to early 1970s incorporating everyone from Rolf Harris to Max Bygraves (Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen By The Sea) via the Kingston Trio, Bernard Cribbins' Right Said Fred, Scaffold's plain scary Lily The Pink and Peter Sellers doing Any Old Iron. What child of the modern age would get any enjoyment from this is a moot point, but we would.

DVDs

Franz Ferdinand's DVD debut will be assured to have smart menus if nothing else. Luckily there is something else - two full gigs plus a full set of offcuts, two documentaries, one inevitably titled Tour De Franz, and, ulp, karaoke tracks.

You can't help feeling, though, that that whole artschool schtick and design awareness might have led to something with more side to it like, say, Kaiser Chiefs - Enjoyment, also built around two full gigs but also a 90 minute documentary voiced by Bill Nighy which tells their story from Parva's inception to 2020.

Speaking of art school, Radiohead - Live At The Astoria does what it says on the tin, assuming you'd written 'recorded in 1994' on the tin in magic marker first. One final quick sidenote - Guided By Voices - The Electrifying Conclusion is actually out this week.