Latest releases reviewed

GIRLS ALOUD
What Will The Neighbours Say?
 Polydor
****

Tearing out the page in the rulebook that states no good music will ever find its way out of Popstar/You're A Star-type television shows, Girls Aloud administer the kind of alleviating nonsense that sounds absolutely brilliant comin' atcha from a radio. Cheryl Tweedy, Kimberly Walsh, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Nadine Coyle (bet she's thrilled skinny she was caught fibbing during Popstar's search for Six) might still be puppets to a degree, but at least the people who oversee such things have the sense to surround them with excellent modern pop songwriters. A cover such as The Pretenders' I'll Stand By You might grind the sound of Girls Aloud to a halt (it stinks of manipulated mid-set lighters-in-the-air), but the quality of the remainder is sky high: The Show, Love Machine and Deadlines & Diets (the girls' sublime All Saints moment) constitute the kind of pop music we've simply got to fling at our young and impressionable for fear of them thinking a lug-head like Brian McFadden is the real thing. www.girlsaloud.co.uk Tony Clayton-Lea

DEVANDRA BANHART
Nino Rojo
 XL ****

Magical, unnerving, eerie, wide-eyed and wayward, Devandra Banhart's second album in 2004 is truly something to behold. As with its predecessor Rejoicing In the Hands (Of the Golden Empress), you'll be wowed and enchanted by what you hear, the San Franciscan new folkie packing his songs with offbeam hippy whimsy and slowhand melodies that weave wonderful spells. While Banhart may work in the same rooms as Sufjan Stevens, Vetiver and Joanna Newsom and there may be tips of the fedora due to Marc Bolan and Tim Buckley (particularly psychedelic Starsailor-era Buckley), there's a riot of originality twisting and turning at the heart of Nino Rojo. Throughout, Banhart's distinctive voice tucks into dark nursery rhymes like Little Yellow Spider with relish, while there's musical mischief aplenty lining Noah and the joyfully tousled Electric Heart.

www.xlrecordings.com -  Jim Carroll

JOHANN JOHANNSSON
Virthulegu forsetar
 Touch ****

In Johann Johannsson's second album, Virthulegu forsetar - an hour-long piece for brass, percussion, electronica, organ and piano - time slows down, almost stops and then speeds up again. Inspired by such numinous sources as Thomas Pynchon's novella The Crying Of Lot 49, cybernetics, thermodynamics and Nietzche's "eternal recurrence", Iceland's foremost genre-crossing multi-instrumentalist effortlessly transforms very heady cosmological theories into exquisitely beautiful musical ideas. Over four untitled movements, Johannsson varies and develops his central musical theme, first heard on brass, in different electronic and acoustic instrumentation (organ and glockenspiel), its tempo progressively decelerating and accelerating with a solemn ineluctability. Virthulegu forsetar's reflexive musical and temporal entropy, both a degenerative and regenerative impulse, achieves an astonishing visceral force and urgency: Johannsson's genius is to infuse his very postmodern music with a rare expressive intensity. Sublime.

www.touchmusic.org.uk - Jocelyn Clarke

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Even Better Than The Real Thing Vol 2
RMG/Today FM**

You know the routine: grubby Irish indie bands and singer-songwriters interpret the works of such shiny pop icons as Britney, Jamelia, Kylie, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake and Sugababes, live on Ray D'Arcy's show on Today FM. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but the writers of these fine pop songs can rest assured that their tunes haven't been completely butchered. Besides, it's all for the National Children's Hospital, so they're giving up their oul' hits for a good cause. Bell X1, The Walls, The Frames, Roesy and Declan O'Rourke clearly got a laugh out of doing such girlie songs as Slow, These Words, Naughty Girl and See It In A Boy's Eyes. Dry Your Eyes and (Feck It) I Don't Want You Back, on the other hand, sound a little wet in the hands of, respectively, Brian Kennedy and Mickey Harte. Cellist Vyvienne Long does a nice, quirky reading of Seven Nation Army, and Paddy Casey does No Diggety with flair. But try as they might, The Dublin Gospel Choir can't redeem Casey's own Saints And Sinners.

www.todayfm.com - Kevin Courtney

VARIOUS
The Rat Pack - Boys Night Out
Capitol/EMI **

It was a time of martinis, tuxedos and liver damage, when men were men and women were dames, dolls, quails or chicks. Such is the nostalgia market for the Rat Pack "innocence" of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin, Capitol coughs up another collection of sweet brass and softly-gliding strings while two of the most distinctive vocalists of their generation (and Dean Martin) croon out the barrel scrapings of their catalogue: You Can't Love 'Em All, Ol' MacDonald, There is Nothin' Like a Dame and other apostrophe'd curios in which true loves abound and chicks with curves wiggle. Failing to capture the trio's live camaraderie (they sing together here just once), this compilation of individual studio recordings may disappoint surviving fans and simply bewilder potential new ones.

www.musicfromemi.com  - Peter Crawley

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Ten Summer Nights It Is 
Records ***

This is a canny undertaking by a fine new venue on Dublin's north side: a compilation album recorded over 10 nights, featuring one track each from 10 performers, with a bonus live DVD, all in aid of Brainwave. But good intentions don't automatically yield a successful outcome and Ten Summer Nights delivers sporadically, soaring to great heights on the back of Chiara Browne And The Rose Ponies (Rescue), dropping in altitude on the back of The Pale's Sleeping Pattern and repeating its dip/soar pattern repeatedly between takes from Eoghan Scott, Q, Horn Of Plenty and Sonny Condell, among others. There are plenty of bellypunches delivered with its opening salvos, but repeated exposure breeds both familiarity and an aching sense of having tread many of these floorboards before. www.10sn.info - Siobhán Long

JOE DOLAN 
00JOE
EMI ***

The name's Dolan. Joe Dolan. Ol' Thunderballs is back, and he's got another array of well-known tunes in his sights. He's already released "ironic" versions of Blur's The Universal and Pulp's Disco 2000, and "rubbish" versions of REM's Everybody Hurts and Talking Heads' Psycho Killer, but this time round, double-oh Joe has decided to show some mercy - his only targets are songs we probably don't care much about anyway. Our man in Mullingar takes on Leo Sayer's Have You Ever Been In Love, Paul Brady's Crazy Dreams and The Drifters' Under The Boardwalk, and adds a few originals of his own: Sometimes Love Must Say Goodbye, The Only One, The Way I Feel About You and Girl Of My Dreams. It's pure cabaret from beginning to end, and as such will not trouble rock and pop fans, being tailored purely for Christmas parties and Late Late Show slots. Still, I can't help wondering how Joe would have handled Hey Ya.

www.joedolan.com  - Kevin Courtney