The latest releases reviewed.

MR HUDSON & THE LIBRARY A Tale of Two Cities Universal ***

With his trilby, greatcoat and nonchalant air of decadence, Ben Hudson may look like a character from a Dashiel Hammett novel, but his milieu is hip-hop and r'n'b - with a vintage twist. Beneath the Roots-influenced breakbeats and Just Jack-ed up raps lies a love for jazz, Cole Porter and dub reggae, topped up with a taste for the finer things in low-life. Hudson's strange brew of tastes ensures that A Tale of Two Cities sounds like little else going on around it, although sometimes the mix coagulates into a bland, acid-jazz broth. The album reads like a post-modern film noir, with traffic noises and rain sweeping across the speakers, as Hudson metaphorically turns his collar up against the coldness of modern relationships. He updates the lyrics to such classics as The Street Where You Live and Everything Happens to Me, adding in tower blocks and car clampers, but Hudson is better when he's taking his own ideas and putting an old-fashioned spin on them, such as in Cover Girl, Ask the DJ and Bread and Roses. www.mrhudsonandthelibrary.com Kevin Courtney

POP LEVI The Return to Form Black Magic Party Counter Records ****

As the title suggests, there's a certain amount of alchemy to Pop Levi's debut, from the devilish bass rubs to the dark glam rock strutting. It's as if Levi's pop cauldron is a steamy broth of former projects - Super Numeri and Ladytron - watched over by the ghost of Marc Bolan. Ninja Tune created a label offshoot just for him, so Levy must be doing something right - and based on these 11 tracks, he certainly is. With the sublime heartbreak of Skip Ghetto, bluesy handclap anthem Dollar Bill Rock and Flirting, a 1960s polka shuffle, here's a man who does eclectic without batting a mascara-ed eyelash. For all the cosmic weirdness and glitchy diversions (backwards samples, odd instrumentation) Levi's mantra is one of love, albeit one by the light of the moon. Futuristic pop at its finest. www.poplevi.com Sinéad Gleeson

LAVENDER DIAMOND The Cavalry of Light Rough Trade ****

Lavender Diamond supported The Decemberists at Vicar St last week. It won't be their last time in Ireland, judging by this, their debut EP, which lasts more than 20 minutes and is one pure blast of sonic pleasure. Comprising the Thackery-esque named Becky Stark - all the way from rural Maryland via Rhode Island and Los Angeles - Lavender Diamond employ perfectly concise ambient pop/folk that sounds, as if Pentangle had been produced by the combined knob-twirling efforts of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and William Orbit. There are a mere four songs here (You Broke My Heart, Please, In Heaven There Is No Heat and Rise in the Springtime). They are each of them quite gorgeous slivers of music, with Stark's lyrics and vocals highlighting a true maverick talent in the making. www.lavenderdiamond.com Tony Clayton-Lea

THE FALL Reformation Post TLC Slogan ***

When he's not punching band members, Mark E Smith is punching out his never-changing, never-ageing post-punk drone. The title of his umpteenth album hints at a mellowing of sorts for the legendary curmudgeon, and tracks such as Reformation, Fall Sound and The Usher and Scenario see Smith holding a mirror up to his own mythology and trying to see his real self behind the perma-scowl. There's evident camaraderie between Smith and his current band, which includes bassist Robert Barbato, guitarist Tim Presley and Smith's new partner, Elena Poulou, on keyboards; no doubt it will all end in tears on the next tour. A road-weary cover of Merle Haggard's White Line Fever leads into the mock-epic Insult Song, while Over! Over! finds Smith closing a chapter on his life and looking forward to opening the next one. Poulou takes lead vocals on The Wright Stuff, a meandering dissertation on fame and all that stuff, but it's the barking sneer of Smith on Systematic Abuse that really proves it: The Fall are still in rude, rocking health. www.thefall.info Kevin Courtney

FUTURE PILOT AKA Secrets from the Clockwise Creeping Bent ****

For many years, Future Pilot (aka Sushil Dade) has been a honeypot, tempting some of music's more interesting, experimental names to his Glasgow studio. Dade says it's because he makes fine tea. It must be a heady elixir, because on this, his fourth album, there is a heavyweight list of collaborators including members of Sonic Youth, The Stooges, Belle and Sebastian and Can. They join Dade as he attempts to meld Asian influences with bits of folk, jazz and his peculiarly Scottish take on American pop of the 1960s. And it works a treat. Eyes of Love (with Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch) has a two-tone confidence and bounce, while Can veteran Damo Suzuki's disembodied voice on closer Festival of Lights (Suzuki literally phoned in his performance) adds a spectral might. Quite why Dade isn't received as a British great is a mystery. Maybe more people just need to taste his tea. www.futurepilotaka.com Paul McNamee

KLAXONS Myths of the Near Future Rinse/Polydor *

Raving? The Klaxons are not raving by any stretch of the imagination. Having jumped off the ridiculous indie rave bandwagon with indecent haste, the act tipped for greatness by various pundits may well be forced to hitch a ride on it again pretty sharpish, such is the state of cluelessness demonstrated on this debut. There are no redeeming features on this woeful mess of an album, nothing to indicate that Klaxons have the remotest notion what they're doing or that they've learned anything from previous rock acts who made a pass at electronic music only to regret it the following morning. Golden Skans is particularly risible, a track that has a go at recreating rave's euphoric bliss with a half-hearted stab at a hardcore happening. And the less said about how they've butchered Grace's It's Not Over Yet the better. You'd need more than happy pills to endure this again. www.klaxons.net Jim Carroll

VARIOUS Fred Deakin Presents The Triptych Family ****

You have only to scan the sleeve-notes to realise that Fred Deakin is a dude who has been lost in music for a very long time. Deakin, is one half of Lemon Jelly (the half also involved in the Airside design studio), and his Triptych is what mix-CDs should really be all about. Wide and deep in equal measure, the three discs are home to a bewildering and bemusing selection of sounds. It's a sure sign of a life spent digging in crates and bugging record shop serfs when you have house, hip-hop, pop, whacked-out folk and Icelandic jazz-funk (come on down Mezzaforte) in the mix and all making sense. You really have to experience the wonderful way Bill Swan's lonesome Don't Be Cruel blends into the hippieshake of One Way Ticket from Mama Cass to understand what Deakin is on about when he talks about how deeply he loves every one of these records. www.familyrecordings.com Jim Carroll

MARISSA NADLER Songs III: Bird on the Water Peacefrog ****

A member, along with Animal Collective, Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, of the so-called New Weird America movement, Marissa Nadler is a singer of rare talent and a songwriter of exquisite craft. Her new album is her best, a progression from the lonesome melancholia of 2004's Ballads of Living and Dying and 2005's The Saga of Mayflower May. Featuring Nadler's breathy mezzo-soprano, delicate melodies and signature American Gothic lyrics (Poe hovers like an unquiet shade) Songs III also displays a more evolved sonic palette, which mixes cello, mandolin and percussion with electronica and distorted electric guitars, from the elegiac Thinking of You and the lovelorn Bird on Your Grave to the tender Feathers and a haunting cover of Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat. www.peacefrog.com Jocelyn Clarke