In shops tomorrow: 11/12

Singles

You'd think it was nearly Christmas or something, the way the schedules have been overtaken by transient nonsense. Still, room still for Kubichek!, who emerged with the blinding Nightjoy a good eighteen months ago and are already planning a brekathrough single in, um, Nightjoy in a couple of months or so. In between, Outwards serves as an introduction. Now free of band duty Charlotte Hatherley has meanwhile been taking confident steps out on her own, teaming up with Eric Drew Feldman, Rob Ellis and the surely soon ennobled to Swindon Andy Partridge on her second album, due in March and preceded by 7" Behave.

Albums

A good week if you like mid-price Platinum Collections; otherwise enjoy/endure some Sonic Youth castoffs, The Destroyed Room collecting B-sides, soundtrack songs, compilation appearances, continental bonus tracks, outtakes and previously unreleased jetsam from their Geffen years. The top notch Izumi Christmas compilation It's Not Like Christmas should hit shelves at some poiint this week too.

DVDs

2002 Pogues documentary/rubbernecking Shane MacGowan: If I Should Fall From Grace, a patchwork of live footage and archive interviews is issued on DVD for the first time, and at an appropriate time too.

Books

All of these have been out for a month, we just somehow missed them at the time. A music book is good if it makes you want to make a shopping list of songs, albums, nay, artists you want to check out, and Gary Mulholland's This Is Uncool certainly did that for us, listing what for him were the 500 greatest singles since punk and disco. Despite being a track man he's now bent at the knee towards the longer format, Fear Of Music being the 261 finest examples between 1976 and 2003. We had a flick through this the other day and his inspiring enthusism and way with critique are undiminished. We'd have had a flick through the second lot of Popjustice's wry cartoon reimaginings of the life stories of the stars but we couldn't find them anywhere in Waterstones. Obviously, going by the entire slant of the coverage, we now know we should have looked in the children's section. Because they've got cartoons in, you see. A Boy Called Pete (surely that'd fall out of date on a weekly basis?), A Girl Called Britney (ditto), A Boy Called Michael (Jackson) and A Boy Called Elton (safer ground, that one) are the subjects in question.