Latest releases reviewed

LOVE OF DIAGRAMS
Mosaic
Matador
***

Veritable veterans in their native Melbourne, the Love of Diagrams youngsters now take their intriguing post-punk grind to the rest of the world, thanks to a hook-up with Matador for their second album. Buzzing with an admirable confidence in their own ability to carry off these jerky, wobbly grooves and riffs, the LOD trio have certainly listened to the right bands and probably in the right order too. For instance, you'll hear echoes of Martin Hannett's seminal production work on the Factory conveyor belt, and there's more than a trace of Liquid Liquid to how LOD push and pull their beats along. This energetic approach to form and function is often more than enough (check the rush of energy that makes Pace or the Patience such a searing wow). Over a full album, however, such reliance on dynamism only serves to show up a lack of personality. www.loveofdiagrams.com  JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Pace or the Patience, Confrontation

TORI AMOS
American Doll Posse
Epic
****

You wonder what George Dubya has left to play on the White House dansette - seems that everyone from Bruce to Norah Jones is jumping on the Bush-bashing bandwagon. Scratch Tori Amos off the Prez's listening list, thanks to opening track Yo George. But, Tori being Tori, you can expect American Doll Posse to be anything but straightforward. On her ninth studio album, Tori is joined by four strong characters, each of whom is based on a classical Greek goddess, and represents a different facet of Tori's complex personality. Isabel is the politically outspoken one, Pip the slutty, rebellious one, Clyde the sensitive, emotional one, and Santa the sensual one. It may sound like Tori's going all daft and conceptual on us, but these multiple personalities actually sit very comfortably together, combining to create a satisfyingly rounded album that shows all of Amos's inner strengths. www.toriamos.com  KEVIN COURTNEY

Download tracks: Big Wheel, Teenage Hustling, Secret Spell

DINOSAUR JR
Beyond
Fat Possum Records
****

Remember Lou Barlow and J Mascis's legendary bust-up in 1989? The two have made amends, reuniting with drummer Murph for an original line-up release. Who cares if moolah was a motivator, or that they sound like they did back in their pre-grey days? This is explosive, ear-splitting rock that makes 2007 sound like 1987 all over again. Steered by Mascis's heavy- duty guitar rolls and parched vocals, Beyond is dominated by such

grungy classics-in-waiting as Almost Ready and Been There All the Time. Quieter moments (We're Not Alone, I Got Lost) creep up unexpectedly, and two Lou Barlow-penned songs (Lightbulb and Back to Your Heart) are not just variations in tempo and style - they're two of the album's best tracks. Dinosaur Jr have not only managed the unlikeliest of come- backs, they've bettered most of their back catalogue. www.dinosaurjr.com SINÉAD GLEESON

Download Tracks: Almost Ready. Back to Your Heart

MANIC STREET PREACHERS
Send Away the Tigers
Sony/BMG
****

For such an established band, Manic Street Preachers must surely be in the most unenviable position, having in the past been hung on their own petard via their sloganeering, revolutionary posturing and headstrong use of leopardskin print. Send Away the Tigers is the album that will most certainly save them from implosion; what with 2004's banal Lifeblood, it seemed that a new record might be something the world just didn't need right now. And yet this is a beaut of a rock album, totally match fit and rearing to go. First single Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (a duet with Cardigans' Nina Persson) is a blend of power, glory and pop music; Autumnsong is one big anthem, while the likes of Imperial Bodybags are big, dumb and full of fun. Politics still drive the lyrics, but when the songs are this good, it's allowed. www.manics.co.uk TONY CLAYTON-LEA

Download tracks: Your Love Alone Is Not Enough, The Second Great Depression, Autumnsong

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Mute Audio Documents
Mute
****

This 10-CD collection from the ground-breaking record label is a superb survey of early-1980s British post-punk industrial, electronic and alternative music. It kicks off with Mute's first releases, TVOD and Warm Leatherette, by The Normal (label founder Daniel Miller's own band), and this comprehensive retrospective mixes little-known electro-industrial outfits Silicon Teens, DAF, and Smegma with chart-breaking pop upstarts Depeche Mode (People

Are People, Master & Servant) and Yazoo (Only You, Don't Go) and austere indie pioneers Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (The Moon Is in the Gutter), The Birthday Party (Jennifer's Veil) and Einstürzende Neubauten (Tanz Debil). Mute Audio Documents is some serious fun for teenage neophyte and middle-age completist musos alike. www.mute.com JOCELYN CLARKE

Download Tracks: TVOD, The Normal; Say a Spell, The Birthday Party; Everything Counts, Depeche Mode

DRY COUNTY
Unexpected Falls
Lazybird
***

There are welcome surprises on this long-in-the-works debut album from Dublin act Dry County. Anyone who has seen the band live will have been impressed by their sturdy, steady blend of conventionally crafted songwriting and careful wash of experimental sonics. Here, though, Dry County have decided that those strange rubs of electronic noises and melancholic swabs of sound are more alluring when it comes to plotting a full album, and so Unexpected Falls is perhaps more adventurous than the band may have initially intended. Attention,

An Array of Davids and Stop, Proceed are crisscrossed with effects and oddities, each adding to the sense of a band alive to the possibility of out-there pop. Yet for all the experimentations, Dry County still need songs and melodies, and it's this lack of structure that means the album occasionally stumbles when it should soar. www.myspace.com/drycounty05 JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Attention, Stop, Proceed

ELLIOTT SMITH
New Moon
Domino
****

When Elliott Smith died in 2003 from self-inflicted stab wounds, the world was deprived of one of the best under-the-radar singer-songwriters that the US post-grunge scene had produced. Despite the rise in his profile following his Oscar shortlist for soundtrack songs on Good Will Hunting, Smith remained a cult item. Indeed, the shift in public awareness of his music (a bruised, often beautiful mixture of Beatles- influenced melodies with inordinately solitary and sombre lyrics) ensured that Smith simply reverted to type and refused to play the major-label game. Thankfully, this two-CD set is no barrel-scraping exercise, but mostly previously unheard recordings from his pre-Oscar nightmare, tracks that didn't make the cut on 1995's Elliott Smith and 1997's Either/Or. They are, to a song, just gorgeous. Upbeat, downbeat, pop songs, ballads: deceptively simple yet strong as steel. www.dominorecords.com TONY CLAYTON-LEA

Download tracks: Georgia Georgia, Whatever (Folk Song in C).