Latest CD releases reviewed

THE CURE
The Cure Geffen
***

If a travel agent added Hell to its brochure, Robert Smith would be first to book a holiday there. He's always seemed a mere tourist of the dark side, and you suspect he's just a happy, normal guy underneath the bird's nest hair and smudged lipstick. But he does doom 'n' gloom very well, and there's no shortage of self-mortification on The Cure's latest album, their best in yonks. Smith's bereft bleat can get a bit tiresome, but it rings true on Lost, Labyrinth, Anniversary, Us or Them, The Promise and Going Nowhere. Producer Ross Robinson, who has worked with the satanically majestic Korn, brings out The Cure's every musical nuance, while the uptempo songs (Before Three, The End Of The World, alt.end, Taking Off) make few concessions to whimsy. You've bought enough albums by postpunk-influenced bands - might as well grab the latest by an original 1980s master. www.thecure.com - Kevin Courtney

SIGUR RÓS
Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do EMI
****

Written for seminal US choreographer Merce Cunninghams's 50th Gala performance Split Sides, and first performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave festival last year, Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do is Sigur Rós' most eccentric release to date - and their first release with new label EMI. The 20-minute instrumental piece, divided into three sections, combines found sounds, guitar drones, music box piano, electronic noize with simple melodies and sinuous polyrhythms to create a densely textured and pulsing soundscape. It returns the post-rock Icelandic collective to the menacing ambience of Von, its astonishing début, and recalls the aleatory music of Cunningham's longtime collaborator and mentor John Cage: elegant music of chance for Cunningham's chaotic dance. Brooding, dark and mysterious, Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do is Sigur Rós at their idiosyncratic and experimental finest. www.sigur-ros.com - Jocelyn Clarke

EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Tabula Rasa Mute Records
***

First released in 1993 and now re-packaged with a second CD, Tabula Rasa marked the German art noise band's most accessible album to date. Accessible here is a relative term; Einstürzende Neubauten had previously employed rocks, saws and, most memorably, drills to formulate their industrial rock. On Tabula Rasa they nervously approached the idea of musical convention - most notably on the standout track Blume, which is as near as they ever got to This Mortal Coil territory. Apart from the "proper" songs, there is plenty of strum und drang here, as well as some mesmerising moments of bombastic rock (check out the 15-minute closer, Headcleaner). Fronted by Blixa Bargeld (of Nick Cave and Bad Seeds fame), Einstürzende Neubauten were a massive influence on bands such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, and arguably on the Aphex Twin later. But their uncompromising sound doesn't make them a good bet for the casual listener. Let's just say if you preferred PIL to the Sex Pistols you'd be a contender here. The bonus disc has some nice pictures of rocks and hammers (seriously) and French, English and Japanese versions of their songs.
- Brian Boyd

THE HIDDEN CAMERAS
Mississauga Goddam Rough Trade
***

Easily one of the best gay-Canadian-church-folk collectives to have emerged in the past two years, The Hidden Cameras follow 2003's divinely smutty The Smell of Our Own with something equally celebratory, but ultimately less passionate. Like the poet who had tasted and tested too much, Joel Gibb no longer sounds so outrageous exhorting bodily fluids behind the sacred and sexual surge of key-track Music Is My Boyfriend. There's still a priapic swell to the symphonic pop of Doot Doot Ploot and The Fear Is On but, while Gibb's muse can handle sex and love, we rarely get them together. Build the Bone and We Oh We are engaging exceptions, but without that still-tantalising power of innuendo songs of post-coital recovery or enema desires play out quickly, robbing the hallelujah from Gibb's climax. www.musicismyboyfriend.com - Peter Crawley

SECRET MACHINES
Now Here Is Nowhere Reprise
****

The first time you hear Secret Machines, you'll play spot-the-influence. The second time you hear Secret Machines, you'll realise that this is much more than those influences mashed together. By the third listen, they may well be your favourite new band. The work of three Dallas kids who relocated to New York, this is music that rattles with confidence, oozes ability, rolls into every musical categorisation imaginable (splashes of Pink Floyd, Mercury Rev, space-rock, Kraut-rock and psychedelic soul drench Pharaoh's Daughter) and is heavy in every sense of the word. Yet for every progressive wig-out (First Wave Intact, nine epic minutes of fierce, fulsome, melodic assault and battery), there's an alt-pop gem (Sad, Lonely or Nowhere Again) tucked into the margins. Extra-terrestrial rock 'n' roll's classic hits. www.thesecretmachines.com   - Jim Carroll

THE BEES
Free The Bees Virgin
***

If you've heard The Bees' début album, Sunshine Hit Me, you'll know the Isle of Wight duo to be musical butterflies, flitting from style to style, and leading the listener down a leafy time-tunnel. Free The Bees is immersed in a murky 1960s genre pool, filled with echoes of Small Faces, Yardbirds, Otis Redding, Booker T & The MGs, Country Joe & The Fish, The Spencer Davis Group and - probably - the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The references might be clearly signposted, but it's still easy to lose your bearings when the tracklist flips from the countrified stomp of Wash in the Rain to the go-go grunge of Chicken Payback to the Cossack reggae of The Russian. The sweet soul ballad I Love You seems incongruous here, while The Start sounds like something Sonny & Cher might have done to seem cool and groovy. The Bees have opened another hornet's nest of ideas, but there is some honey to be found here. www.thebees.info  - Kevin Courtney