In shops tomorrow: 23/1

Singles

Nothing to tear up the charts this week, but keep an eye out for Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan's unholy union bearing fruit of Ramblin' Man, North Eastern garage power trio The Motorettes' Super Heartbeats and the minute-long all-out primal charge of Be Your Own Pet's Let's Get Sandy. It seems the BYOP bandwagon has missed the mainstream altogether despite a series of gigs towards the end of last year that left one journalist comparing Jemina Pearl's stage antics to prime Iggy Pop. Iggy, of course, likes to strip to the waist and sometimes beyond on stage. Erm, excuse us for a moment...

Albums

It's a spectacular week for LP releases, and not just for the time of year but for any time of year, we'd say. Of course most of the attention, and point of sale purchases, will be focused on Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, and we're going to cover that in more detail this week here. Appropriately, we're going to do it... on the Internet! Hope you've been saving up, though, as also available this week are Cat Power's glorious excursion into maudlin Memphis soul The Greatest - has Ms Marshall ever been in finer voice? We doubt it - the throw it all at the wall and watch what sticks excitement of Broken Social Scene's eponymous second album proper, Pitchfork-aided Neutral Milk Hotel/Yo La Tengo's more pastoral moments/David Byrne starved of oxygen near behemoths Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, perhaps less than sum of parts but still intriguing Tortoise and Bonnie Prince Billy teamup The Brave And The Bold, Jenny Lewis' downbeat, Watson Twins harmony-aided solo project Rabbit Fur Coat and, as a neat summary, Rough Trade's 2005 edition of Counter Culture, which finds room for The Boy Least Likely To, Nurse With Wound, Lightning Bolt, David Shrigley, Brakes, Princess Superstar and the Brodsky Quartet. About average fare, in other words.

DVD

The long awaited Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds DVD upgrade is finally unleashed in two parts, namely 1990 US road movie The Road To God Knows Where and 1992 Amsterdam set Live At The Paradiso. Meanwhile, almost shamefully, none of the online clearing houses are listing The Go-Betweens: That Striped Sunlight Sound, out on the 27th on Tuition DVD and comprising both visual and audio discs of a Brisbane concert in 2005 and an acoustic session with Robert Forster and Grant McLennan explaining and reworking some of their greatest hits. They don't cover Spring Rain or He Lives My Life in the latter but they do do Cattle And Cane and Bachelor Kisses, which'll do nicely for us.