In shops tomorrow: 16/10

Albums

As you'll have spotted by the fact there's no singles to really recommend (Duke Special kind of, we're gravitating towards the Knife single, but the new Jamie T, who we had such high hopes for, is rubbish) there's not that great a range of pickings this week. Still, any week with a new Clinic album is reason to perk up around here, despite the fact we already know what it sounds like - some of it will be slow and haunting, some of it will be spooked and feature tribal percussion, some of it will be very fast and fuzzy, there'll be elements of Suicide and the Velvets and you'll be able to make out one word in six. Visitations is all in all on the darker side of their oeuvre and not a place to visit with the lights off. In contrast, braver souls then ourselves have tried to second guess Warn Defever of His Name Is Alive with precious little success, and Detrola, which we thought we'd already covered here before but never mind, disappears regularly at completely different sonic angles from soul to electro to what used to be called light pop. It's not like he's going to start gaining a single focus now, after all. Piney Gir would probably argue much the same, having made her name through both playful electronica and bubblegum rock'n'roll, then gone off to do garage rock with the Schla La Las, and now turns up in a near-trad country setting with her Country Roadshow and its Hold Yer Horses. Infantjoy quite like confusing the listener too, ex-Auteur James Banbury and the irrepressible Paul Morley, which explains why the press release is so difficult to decipher, determined to pull Erik Satie into the modern age of ghostly synths and dark electronics, Tunng and Sarah Nixey featuring on With. Somewhere in the middle: now on EMI and causing much wavering around here as to whether it's any good or not, although at least he's got decent cover art sorted for once, Badly Drawn Boy's Born In The UK, and the rumbunctious glam of The Blood Arm's Lie Lover Lie. Compilations? Radio 1 have finally issued a Live Lounge double CD with not enough of the signature cover versions, but significant space should be kept for Colours Are Brighter, the Belle & Sebastian curated attempt to make an album of songs for children in aid of Save The Children. It kicks off with Four Tet in a primary coloured mood and continues with Snow Patrol covering Kim Wilde's brother Ricky's I Am An Astronaut, the curious skiffle of Franz Ferdinand, the Divine Comedy covering AA Milne, some ever ace Half Man Half Biscuit, an oddly sombre Jonathan Richman, the Flaming Lips, Kathryn Williams, vintage Ivor Cutler and, er, the Kooks. Lead reissue of the week is the much put back out X-Ray Spex' Germ Free Adolescents, punk's most withering assault on style and consumerism as opposed to the general dole office doldrum fighting of most. On reflection, Poly Styrene even sounds like a London Kathleen Hanna.