Latest CD releases reviewed
Nouvelle Vague Peacefrog
An album you will either treasure close to your heart or consign immediately to the novelty bin, Nouvelle Vague takes 13 post-punk classics, reupholsters them with bossa-nova stitching and resells them as coffee-table jazz classics. It shouldn't work - it shouldn't even be allowed, I hear some shriek as they stomp their Doc Martens - but it does, gently spraying beams of sunlight into such dusty classics as Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough, The Clash's Guns of Brixton, PIL's This Is Not a Love Song and, most satisfyingly, Dead Kennedys' Too Drunk to Fuck. Using young female vocalists who had never heard the original tracks, French producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux have fashioned a work of wonder, magic and probably unfettered infuriation to hard-bitten fans and purists. www.peacefrog.com Jim Carroll
Bubblegum Beggar's Banquet
Welcome to Lanegan's gumball. The former singer with Screaming Trees and current guest vocalist with Queens of the Stone Age has enlisted the help of some friends, including Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan, Greg Dulli and Polly Harvey, to craft his finest solo album to date. Lanegan may look grizzled and wasted, but Bubblegum is bursting with fine tunes and superlative performances, not least from the ol' Langer himself. When Your Number Isn't Up and Methamphetamine Blues grunt and grind like Tom Waits in a chain gang, and Hit the City swerves on a reckless bassline, crashing headlong with Polly Harvey's graceful screech. Wedding Dress is redolent of Smog's Bill Callahan, Like Little Willie John is as rootsy as you can get without being a blind old bluesman, and Driving Death Valley Blues would have given Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's last album a much-needed fuel injection. www.marklanegan.com Kevin Courtney
Ancestry in Progress Luakabop
"I'm a native African," scats Congolese-born Marie Daulne over her fifth album's slickly produced intro, "bringing in a new way of appreciation." Well, sort of. Originally an a cappella quintet, this is Zap Mama's first solo outing, and Daulne's growing fascination with the American mainstream mutes her Pygmy chants and African polyrhythms for the generic familiarity of hip-hop guest appearances and fashionable dancehall riddims. It's hardly selling out, though: The Roots and Erykah Badu successfully funnel Daulne's ancestral echoes into the sounds of right now. OK, the once incomparable Zap Mama sound now blends right in with sophisti-pop, r 'n' b and the production zip of Timbaland, but the luxuriant and limpid beats of Sweet Melody, Vivre and Cache Cache will bring in your appreciation. Just not in a new way. www.zap-mama.com Peter Crawley
Fur Domino
The Archie Bonson Outfit ply theatrical denim-rock as unwieldy as their name. Though signed to indie staple Domino, the UK west country three-piece unabashedly tout a back-to-basics stomp-rock manifesto. Recalling Oasis at their most inelegant, this is music to clap hands and spill Special Brew to. Admirers of the proudly unsophisticated will relish the rough ferocity of début single Kangaroo Heart, a Bowie anthem re-recorded by your school's woodwork class. Elsewhere, the plod and grind of opener Butterflies suggests the Manic Street Preachers yanking at their instruments with oven gloves on, Islands captures the nudge and wink of the glam second division without the exuberance, and Pompeii sounds like the Australian Doors' lost rehearsal tapes. Stoopid, but not necessarily in a good way. www.archiebonsonoutfit.co.uk Ed Power
Second Level Crossing Lazybird
The world has been waiting a long time for a song called Chamber of Commerce and now, thanks to Dublin space-cadets Rollers/Sparkers, it can happily end its quest and put its feet up. That track is one of nine weirdly-bearded, sonically-enhanced bobby-dazzlers which make the Rollers/Sparkers' début album a joy to behold and even more pleasurable to listen to. Musically, Second Level Crossing is as wide as it is deep, taking off from where their Geography for the Leaving EP left off. The album's highlight, Song for Sick Children, starts out as a delightful, twittering slumberfest until it is poked into more frantic action halfway through. Both Criss Path and their anthem for ambitious chambers of commerce everywhere also catch the ear, as much for their sulky melodies as their boisterous shrieks and squalls of noise. www.rollerssparkers.com Jim Carroll
Good News for People Who Love Bad News Epic
Formed in 1992 in the Seattle suburb of Issaqua, Washington, Modest Mouse have been beavering away on the underground for the past decade, creating musical moonshine outside the gaze of the mainstream. Led by Isaac Brock, whose voice is a cloudy distillation of Wayne Coyne, Kurt Cobain, Jonathan Donahue, Jack White and Sylvester the Cat, MM are making their major label début with this collection of 16 weirdcore alt.rock tunes, featuring guest spots from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and fellow weirdos Flaming Lips. The World at Large and Float On are two halves of the same song, and there's a dash of Deserter's Songs in the mix; but the mischievous twists of Bury Me With It, Dance Hall, Bukowski, Blame It on the Tetons and The Good Times Are Killing Me suggest that Brock's not too concerned with mapping a new Americana, but is content to discover odd little nooks along already-charted musical routes. www.modestmouse.com Kevin Courtney
