In shops tomorrow: 3/9

Singles

Loads this week, which is good. So, in our usual lack of defendable order: when the Go! Team toured last spring of the new songs debuted Doing It Right's Northern soul/girl group/nursery rhyme melody sung in Japanese/usual Go! Team sound was the standout. It's lost the "G! O! Exclamation mark!" bit from the start, but it's no less effervescent for that. Possibly easier to listen to, in fact. Lucky Soul are supporting the Wedding Present on two dates on the latter's George Best anniversary tour in November, which must have its own rhyme or reason somewhere. One Kiss Don't Make a Summer is more of the usual soaring sixties summer sound. The reason why the Rumble Strips album has been delayed and delayed finally becomes clearer as the new wave summer smash of Girls And Boys In Love has turned up soundtracking the trailer to Simon Pegg's film Run Fatboy Run and apparently features heavily therein too. It sounds a bit like Dexys, but you knew that. That Emma Pollock reminds of the Delgados (Peloton mixed with Universal Audio, if we're being exact) on Acid Test is more inevitable and no less good for the soul. Those who desire a British Iron & Wine will not find many better candidates than Leeds' The Rosie Taylor Project, who on their Myspace biography refer to allegations from others that they are "just a rip off British version of Ryan Adams, when in fact we don't sound a lot like him no matter how hard we try". Fair enough. Bits of Nick Drake and Ben Gibbard also work their way into Black And White Films, their debut 7" on the fast rising Bad Sneakers records. Interpol's Mammoth sounds like Interpol, Editors' An End Has A Start sounds like Editors, and Kubichek!'s Method Acting sounds like a band who should ideally be spoken of in the same terms as both. Have I Was A Cub Scout or Voxtrot really paid back the faith we had in them at the start of the year? Decide for yourselves using Our Smallest Adventures and Firecracker respectively. Finally not even the cold, dead hand of Ronson can quell unlikely forthcoming Kevin Ayers collaborator Candie Payne's retro-futurist Dustyist One More Chance.

Albums

Pausing only to note with glee that a band have called themselves Ted Maul (and then see that glee dissipate on learning they're a death metal drum'n'bass outfit), we don't find a lot about this week. Annie Clark has long been more sidewoman than star in waiting, being guitarist for Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree, but as St Vincent Marry Me is an admirably diverse collection that races between chamber pop, folk, soul, cabaret pop and just about everything else apart from zydeco. Kate Bush meets Feist, let's go with. There's no real reason why Charles Thompson has gone back to using Black Francis, especially now the Pixies reunion seems to have declared on four DVDs and two years of festivals (wasn't there supposed to be an Albini-helmed Breeders album this year?), but while Bluefinger is no Doolittle it recaptures something of the barely contained maverick essence of his earliest superior solo work. That's your lot for new releases, so into the remastered bins we delve with Dexys Midnight Runners, who perhaps tellingly have left the expansion of Too-Rye-Ay until last, even after the compilation of songs by a version of the band that never recorded an album (The Projected Passion Revue). This of course is the Emerald Express/dungarees/one hit wonder/actually it was meant to be Jocky Wilson all along as Rowland's idea of a joke version of the band. B-sides, live versions and 'that' pad it out to a second full disc. Coincidentally Kevin Rowland also gets a go as the compiler of the latest in the Motown Made To Measure archive celebrity choice series. Pink Floyd's The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn also gets a good going-over including a reproduction of a Syd Barrett notebook, stereo and mono versions and a third disc of bonus tracks including everything from the celebrated singles of the time (Arnold Layne, See Emily Play) and, oh joy, alternate takes. Apparently the fans are up in arms that EMI aren't bothering with many an unreleased track only available on bootlegs but we don't care what other baggage it carries around these days in the prog/psychedelia/Cult Of Syd sense, too much of it invented much that we hold dear today to dismiss. Bestival next weekend, so Rob da Bank gets to reuse Sunday Best's A-Z idea on A-Z Of Bestival 2007, actually Bonde Do Role to Zion Train, but nobody's counting. And while the market seems sluggish if not non-existent, that never stopped Stiff Records before, so now you can buy a cut and shut of Tenpole Tudor's decidedly odd Eddie, Old Bob, Dick And Gary/Let the Four Winds Blow: The Stiff Anthology and Jona Lewie's Kitchen At Parties containing On The Other Hand There's A Fist.