Latest releases reviewed.

VARIOUS
Ze Christmas Record Reloaded 2004 Ze
***

Christmas just wouldn't be the same without a record specially for the season, and it's provided this year by the Ze label's blast of rejigged and remastered Yuletide cheer. Ze may be unlikely followers of the Christmas album tradition set by Brian Wilson, the Motown gang, Elvis and James Brown, but follow it they did. Originally released in 1981 and re-released in 1982, it features each act on the New York's no-wave label recording what they considered loosely to be a Christmas track. While the likes of the classic Christmas Wrapping from The Waitresses and Christmas Time in Motor City from Was (Not Was) tick most or all of the seasonal boxes, the tinsel is missing from Suicide's dark and gloomy Hey Lord and Lisi's eerie My Silent Night. Some of you may feel happier sticking with Frosty the Snowman. www.zerecords.com - Jim Carroll

KT TUNSTALL
Eye to the Telescope EMI
****

She waits until December to release this?! When all the Best Albums of the Year lists have been signed, sealed and delivered?! There should be a law against compiling such lists so early, as Eye to the Telescope stealthily sneaks into this writer's Top 20 for 2004. Chinese blood, Scottish heart is the battle cry from Tunstall, who grew up in the town of St Andrews, influenced by her physicist father, her metal-loving brother and David Bowie's Hunky Dory. Thankfully, her début owes little to no one. By no means unique, Tunstall nevertheless has a way with melodies, which are quirky enough to intrigue and commonplace enough to have you humming along instantly. Dark, grizzled blues is more an undertone than an obvious influence; ditto with tough-love/fuck-you pop music. This is good, really good. What KT does next should be even better. Tony Clayton-Lea

MICAH P. HINSON & THE GOSPEL OF PROGRESS
Micah P. Hinson & The Gospel of Progress Sketchbook
****

The name may suggest that Micah Hinson has blown this way from a Tom Waits song by way of Jim Jarmusch and Flannery O'Connor, but that handle is the Tennessee native's very own. Hinson may only be 23 years of age, yet he's quickly amassed the life experiences necessary for his self-titled début to be something of a masterclass in how to write songs about desperation, despair, anxiety, estrangement and the like. There are distinct echoes of Will Oldham and The Czars' John Grant to his voice and phrasing, but the music Hinson pulls together behind such mighty songs as I Still Remember and Stand in My Way carry only hints and traces of their country roots and folksy leanings. Thanks to the graceful, lovelorn tones of this début, Hinson is a name we'll be reckoning with for quite some time to come. www.sketchbookrecords.com - Jim Carroll

LINDSEY LOHAN
Speak Casablanca
*

There must be some sort of music/movies exchange programme, whereby Björk gets to try her hand at overacting, and in return Juliette Lewis gets to play the pop diva to the max. Hollywood starlet Lindsay Lohan, fresh from her successes in Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, is adding to the already overflowing pile of teen pop-Korn; but she can't seem to decide if she wants to be Britney or Avril, or whether to look back to Cyndi Lauper or Joan Jett, so she just ends up skating into that awful abyss between Kelly Osbourne and Tiffany. If this was the soundtrack for a movie about a fictional pop tart who self-immolated in a backstage hissy fit, then maybe it would have a legitimate reason to exist, but this is for real - there's no script, even though Lohan sounds like she's reading from one. On such quasi-1980s anthems as First, Symptoms of You, Over, Anything But Me, Disconnected and Very Last Moment in Time, Lohan sings like a freaked-out teenager who is on the verge of going postal. When she's not too sure of her motivation, she simply screams her way through and hopes for the best producers and writers Hollywood money can buy. I suppose this means that Natasha Bedingfield will be the next Bond girl. www.lindsaylohanmusic.com

Kevin Courtney