Mansun: Little Kix (EMI)

With their fab debut, Attack Of The Grey Lantern, in 1997, this Chester four-piece proved that musical proficiency and pop brilliance were not mutually exclusive. With the follow-up, Six, however, Mansun went down a doomed musical path, straight towards the abyss of prog-rock, only pulling back from the brink with the closing track, Being A Girl. On this new album, singer and main songwriter Paul Draper flirts with 1980s epic synth-pop, injecting songs like Butterfly (A New Be- ginning), Comes As No Surprise and Song 4 2 Lovers with a horizon-gazing irony, while the band uses its considerable skills to reconstruct the bubblicious bombast of the era. It's as if Mansun have taken it upon themselves to atone for the sins of Ultravox, Simple Minds et al - and come damn close to succeeding.

By Kevin Courtney

The Big Picture (Rawkus)

Like Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., New York rapper Big L was fatally gunned down, another victim of hip-hop's death waltz with guns and gangs. Unlike those two icons, however, Big L had never reached the same levels of fame and fortune, so this posthumous release aims to set the record straight. Only 25 when he died, Big L's document of a ghetto-fabulous lifestyle did not carry the same cliched baggage as his peers. With production from such aces as Pete Rock, Lord Finesse and Premier underlining Big L's champion rhyming style, much of The Big Picture is on point. Tracks like Size 'Em Up and Ebonics are robust and magnetic, powerful indications that Big L's death robbed hip-hop of a strong, individual talent.

By Jim Carroll