An exclusive preview of next month's album releases

Artist Monstrance

Related articles

• Autokat, The Windmill, London
• Record Label PR File: Peacefrog
• 'Best mix CDs should offer insight into a DJ's personal taste'
• From punk to profits: MBop founder has seen both sides of music business
• The Gossip's Beth Ditto speaks out
• Arab Strap on misery, therapy and cathartic songwriting
• Kate Jackson: why The Long Blondes' singer loves stilettos and Suede
• Wake up to the sounds of the Sami
• Findlay Brown, Bardens Boudoir, London
• Grindie music: what happens when indie and grime collide
• Talking Jazz
• !!!: The band with an unpronounceable moniker
• Souther Still, Soho Review Bar, London
• Day In The Life: Sean Adams of Drowned in Sound
• Essential gig guide
• Los Campesinos! Spitz, London

Title Monstrance

Label Ape

Monstrance marks the first recorded reunion of old XTC compadres Andy Partridge and Barry Andrews since the latter left to form Shriekback. They're joined on these improvised instrumentals by Shriekback drummer Martyn Barker, who provides a varied backdrop to their guitar and keyboards. Opener "I Lovely Cosmonaut" is typical, moving tentatively from a bricolage of electronic noises and guitar phrases to a surging, riff-based conclusion. Can are an obvious influence, with Partridge simulating Michael Karoli's guitar, and Andrews emulating Irmin Schmidt's whirling organ, on "Ur Tannoy", and Barker setting up Jaki Liebezeit-style cyclical patterns for"Winterwerk". There's an overall mood akin to ECM's chamber-jazz output throughout this absorbing and accomplished display.

Artist Kidz In The Hall

Title School Was My Hustle

Label Rawkus

Jabari "Naledge" Evans and Michael "Double-O" Aguilar don't have hip-hop's usual surly chippiness, probably because they're already high achievers - college graduate Naledge was a published author at 15, while Double-O was part of the USA's 2004 Olympic track team. As Naledge says, "It's good to be alive, dog, it's great to be me/Black, educated, gettin' paid to MC". His style has striking similarities to Kanye's, which doesn't harm, and he's not too removed from the streets to escape the familiar temptations, admitting, "I know I preach a lot of shit - I guess I'm just a hypocrite". But there's wisdom in rhymes like " Jesus ain't died for me to drive a Lexus/He died for me to save the world". The horn samples and soul-flute loops of Double-O's grooves, meanwhile, subtly underscore the tracks' anxieties.

Artist Maximo Park

Title Our Earthly Pleasures

Label Warp

Regret and reading are the dominant themes on this follow-up to A Certain Trigger, with singer Paul Smith presumably one of those people who measures out his life by his changing taste in literature. "I buy books I never read - and then I tell you some more about me!" he admits on single "Our Velocity", a frantic guitar rocker with Devo-esque synth figures, while "Books From Boxes" finds him preparing to move on again, performing one of those periodic stock-checks of possessions that serve as life-markers. "This is something new, but it turns out it was borrowed too," he reflects ironically over the jangly guitar arpeggios. Throughout, Smith's north-eastern brogue lends the songs a flinty authenticity that spikes their more fancifully literate aspects.

Artist Bill Callahan

Title Woke On A Whaleheart

Label Drag City

The Smog frontman seems fascinated by the Great Wheel Of Life on this solo debut, from the opening track "From The Rivers To The Oceans" employment of the interaction of rain, river and sea as the motif of an eternal cycle ("We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days"), through the tree/life metaphor of "Sycamore", to "The Wheel" whose turning "[drives] bad deeds six feet deep". Elsewhere, there are songs about the sexual urge ("A Man Needs A Woman Or A Man To Be A Man"), the improvement of society ("Day"), and the notion of doing something with such absorption it effects a physical change in you ("Diamond Dancer"), delivered via country balladry, spiky new-wave rock, tack piano stomp and sinister twang. Very much like a Smog album, in other words.

Artist Porcupine Tree

Title Fear Of A Blank Planet

Label Roadrunner

Prog-rock has always been at its most potent when leaving the myths and legends behind and confronting societal unease and its dystopian outcome. Porcupine Tree, in which the talents of ex-Japan keyboardist Richard Barbieri are harnessed to the guitars, vocals and vision of songwriter Steven Wilson, grapple on this ninth album with our drift towards jaded desensitivity, regarding sex as "one of the empty ways of using up a day ", and in the 18-minute centrepiece "Anesthetize" attacking the demotivating effect of TV: "I'm totally bored, but I can't switch off". Powered by the virtuoso drum barrages of Gavin Harrison, the dark keyboard backdrops, heavy riffs and nimble guitar solos combine in what might best be described as an atmosphere of sleek, euphoric gloom.

Artist The Indo British Ensemble

Title Curried Jazz

Label Harkit

In America, John Mayer's pioneering Sixties band incorporating Indian modes into jazz went by the self-regarding name Indo-Jazz Fusions; in Britain, our attitude was rather less precious, as witness the terrible title and tawdry sleeve of this reissued album by a group put together by Victor Graham to play compositions based on Indian ragas. The results, though, weren't too bad. Kenny Wheeler's flugelhorn traces intriguing lines around the drums and tabla of "Yaman", and Ray Swinfield and Sitara Kumar's flute and tamboura herald the stately progress of "Lalit", which recalls Sun Ra. The closest it gets to Graham's aim of "happy, exotic music", however, is "Pahari", a flute-led groove sounding like a soundtrack from a Sixties Euro-thriller.

Artist Grant-Lee Phillips

Title Strangelet

Label Cooking Vinyl

Strangelets, apparently, are some form of subatomic particle that can pass through the earth in 26 seconds. The same couldn't be said of the songs on Grant-Lee Phillips's latest album, which need time to unfurl their meanings - especially since his languid delivery leaves their lyrics partially obscured. But there's plenty to enjoy here, from the mandolin and guitar in gentle collusion on the anthemic "Fountain Of Youth", to the lilting guitar, vibes and fiddle that comprises "Killing A Dead Man". Along the way, the singer's influences leap out: the Bolan inflections and T. Rex swagger of "Hidden Hand" and "Johnny Guitar", the dry "Instant Karma" tone of "Raise The Spirit", and most impressive of all, the Sgt Pepper psychedelic strings and horns on " Dream In Colour" and "Chain Lightning".

Artist Hoodz Underground

Title Bringin' It Back

Label Trackshicker

Having seen virtually every local act, from Arctic Monkeys to The Long Blondes, score chart success, Sheffield hip-hop collective Hoodz Underground have decided that after 15 years, now is the time to stop whinging about the unfairness of the UK rap scene, and finally drop their debut album. Employing sinister string and horn samples, the eight-strong team offer stark sketches of urban life, most vividly in the joyrider tale " Twockers", alongside thoughtful denunciations of policing attitudes and racial disadvantage in "How Do You Feel" and "Home Of The Streets". There's a range of decent skills on show - I particularly liked the line in "Havoc" about having "more spit than El-Hadji Diouf", although the same track's rhyming of "Taliban" with "McManaman" rather dates its origin to five or 10 years ago.

Artist Various Artists

Title 20 Ways To Float Through Walls

Label Crammed

Belgium's Crammed Discs has delved into hidden corners of modern music for 25 years, in the process transforming itself into a discerning world-music outlet. This compilation is a whistle-stop tour taking in modern Brazilian Tropicalismo from Apollo Nove, DJ Dolores and Zuco 103, febrile Congotronica from Kasai Allstars and Konono No.1, 21st-century Balkan gypsy music from Taraf De Haïdouks, infectious Tuareg trance from Tartit, Parisian downtempo from Snooze, and ambient-folk from the UK's Wise In Time. Of particular note are the transcontinental crossover combinations pairing Taraf De Haïdouks with British folktronicists Tunng, and Macedonian gypsy-funk band Koçani Orkestar with Chilean remixer Señor Coconut.

Artist Golden Smog

Title Blood On The Slacks

Label Lost Highway

Alt.rock supergroup Golden Smog has always suffered from being an afterthought in the careers of sundry Jayhawks, Soul Asylums and Wilcos, and is further depleted here by the absence of the latter's Jeff Tweedy. This leaves the songwriting burden on the shoulders of Gary Louris and Marc Perlman, who eke out the handful of new songs with a couple left over from the Another Fine Day sessions. But it's easy to understand why the janglesome "Can't Even Tie Your Own Shoes" and "Look At You Now" were leftovers. A cover of "Starman" likewise lacks Bowie's charismatic swagger, though there's some compensation in the Tropicalismo-style instrumental "Magician" and "Scotch On Ice", a Dylanesque tribute to a lover who "likes it rough, with handcuffs and stuff", who turns out to be a blow-up sex doll.

Artist Reeta Rio

Title Karma Kab

Label Ruddy Dog

A concept album supposedly drawing on the "musical essences" of all seven continents, Karma Kab is an exercise in what used to be known as "intelligent house music", which is effectively just ambient house that makes too many demands on one's attention. In this case, the demands are ill-founded - as is the concept itself, few of the tracks having any connection with their avowed location. "Ka" (Africa), for instance, is just an ersatz reggae groove with noodling electric piano, while the mundane keyboards of "Maya" are far too dull (and unsubtle) to represent South America. The album's main fault is that despite the geographical intentions, none of the tracks actually go anywhere: once the grooves are set up, the guitar and keyboardsmeander aimlessly around, with no sense of musical narrative.

Artist Various Artists

Title Goodbye Nashville Hello Camden Town

Label Castle

Pub-rock is often dismissed as the John The Baptist-style herald to punk-rock's Messiah, rebelling against glam, prog and metal, and seeking to narrow the gulf between bands and fans by returning to the roots styles of early rock'n'roll. But as this anthology illustrates, compared to punk's three-chord trick, its proponents employed a range of styles, from the western swing of Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers to the proto-punk of Eddie & The Hot Rods. Much pub-rock was rooted in R&B, with old stagers like Zoot Money and Big Jim Sullivan joined by a new wave exemplified by Dr Feelgood; while The Kursaal Flyers, Fabulous Poodles and particularly Kilburn & The High Roads developed distinctive new strains, marked by a coarse, quirky Britishness.

Artist Black Cab

Title Jesus East

Label Stickman

Sounding like Primal Scream in the throes of a dark psychedelic seizure, Altamont Diary, the 2005 debut from Black Cab, was a sonic montage evocation-cum-tribute to the 1969 festival. This follow-up has no such unifying concept, but comprises a comparable blend of psychedelic elements, with backward guitars, heat-haze sitar and organ drones, rolling drum tattoos and slithering lead guitar figures congealing into chugging Neu!-beat grooves behind spacey vocal chants and murmurs of lines like " I'm in a future I don't understand" and "My heart is on fire" . There's a heartfelt tribute to Syd Barrett in "Underground Star" , and Grateful Dead member Sam Cutler reminiscing on "Valiant" and "The Path" about "those magic moments, indescribably beautiful ". Recommended for Spacemen 3 fans.

Artist CocoRosie

Title The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn

Label Touch & Go

The main gimmick of duo CocoRosie resides in the contrast between Sierra Casady's opera-trained singing and sister Bianca's ickle-girly vocals, which occupy the fairytale territory between Joanna Newsom and Stina Nordenstam. But on this third album they've still yet to reach a satisfying accommodation between the two, which alternate with each other on tracks such as "Japan", whose singalong chorus "Everybody wants to go to Japan/Everybody just hold hands" illustrates the kind of faux-childlike whimsy in which the sisters traffic. Their songs, set to limp hip-hop beats and garlands of tinkling music-box, harp, pump-organ and piano are intriguing, even lovable in small doses, but infuriatingly twee after a few minutes.

Artist Wild Billy Childish

Title Punk Rock At The British Legion Hall

Label Damaged Goods

Touchy blighters, painters. Although in Wild Billy Childish's case, one suspects it's something of a career choice, fuelling rants about everything from reality TV, to Britain's nightlife, to just about anything on "Joe Strummer's Grave", a tirade set to one of several pilfered Kinks riffs. Mostly, though, Billy rails against the cult of celebrity. "I was asked to appear on Celebrity Big Brother," he reveals, "but only because I was some two-bit artist's lover." (He's one of the names in Tracey's tent.) Kurt Cobain and Jack White, meanwhile, are lambasted for " pissing on us from a great height" - an act repaid with interest by his appropriation of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" riff - while poor Kylie is savaged for the crime of quoting Billy's poetry. She'll know better in future, I'm sure.

Artist The Kamikaze Hearts

Title Oneida Road

Label Tangled Up!

Hailing from Albany in New York State, The Kamikaze Hearts deal in the kind of janglesome alt.country music that avoids the margins, settling instead slap bang in the middle of the mainstream thanks to tracks like "You Can't Just Get Up And Leave", a mandolin-rocker in the mould of " Losing My Religion", and "Wolfert's Roost", which captures the mood and sound of Asylum Records' heyday, albeit without David Geffen to drive their career along. Which is a shame, as songs like "No One Called You A Failure" and the attempted spirit-reviver "Top Of Your Head" develop a mysterious momentum of their own that hints at deeper resonances. "Guyana Central High School Class of '78" - which one presumes refers to the mass-murderer Jim Jones - is rather less engrossing, however.

Artist Efterklang

Title Under Giant Trees

Label Leaf

Efterklang are the Danish equivalent of Sigur Ros, a resemblance emphasised on this follow-up to 2004's Tripper by the addition of string players from Icelandic quartet Amiina. They do, however, use proper words in their songs, with "Himmelbjerget" ("Sky Mountain"), for instance, based on childhood memories of a great mountain which in later life is revealed to be quite small. The tone is somewhat sombre, with the ghostly choral murmur of "Falling Horses" appearing from a haze of shimmering strings like an oil tanker looming out of a sea mist, and the tentative plucked-string and drone setting of "Towards The Bare Hill" serving as backdrop for a male-voice choir. It's all beautifully rendered, with a little light respite coming at the end in the form of the kora, violin and marimba of "Jojo".

Artist The Bishops

Title The Bishops

Label 1-2-3-4

Young R&B blades The Bishops clearly have a thing about the Sixties. They're to be found emulating the harmony vocals of The Hollies and The Searchers on "Sun's Going Down"; essaying a convincing impression of The Yardbirds on "Breakaway"; approximating the Stones' chunky fuzz-bass sound on "Will You Ever Come Back Again"; and even recalling Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich with the oompah-polka riff of "I Can't Stand It Anymore" - an unpardonable act of disinterral that one can only imagine was accidental. Just as well, then, that they recorded it at Liam Watson's celebrated analogue oasis, Toe Rag Studios: the warmth and immediacy thus instilled is nowhere better represented than on the opening "Menace About Town", a dead ringer for Dr Feelgood's "Roxette" riff.

Artist Various Artists

Title The Ref-O-Ree Records Story

Label SPV Blue

Trying to run a record label specialising in soul and R&B in Nashville sounds as cockeyed as starting a bluegrass label in Detroit. So Ted Jarrett must have relished a challenge: Ref-O-Ree Records was the last of a string of labels with which he tracked Nashville's black music from the Fifties to the Seventies, their output anthologised on compilations from SPV Blue. The results show how reinvention played an important part in an era of swiftly-changing musical modes, as blues and R&B players like Roscoe Shelton, Gene Allison and Larry Birdsong adapted their approaches to match the changes in soul style, the latter in particularly tasty form on food-themed delicacies such as "I'll Pick My Own Chicken" and the deathless "Digging Your Potatoes".

Artist Abram Wilson

Title Ride! Ferris Wheel To The Modern Day Delta

Label Dune

A New Orleans-reared jazz trumpeter based in London, Abram Wilson rejects the restrictions of genre on this concept album about a young musician whose greatest wish is to escape his familial destiny of running his father's nightclub. "I want to be on the outside, I want some of the things I see," he explains over the opening track's loping bass and percussion, before heading off with a hip-hop brass band more suited to his style. But removed from his roots, he quickly falls prey to drug addiction and unscrupulous bandmates. Told through a mixture of spoken dialogue, soliloquy, agitated jazz and folk-blues motifs, Ride! is a thoughtful, stylish parable about the persistence of temptation facing musicians generally, and black musicians in particular.

Artist The Detroit Cobras

Title Tied & True

Label Rough Trade

Their first new record in three years finds the motor-city unisex combo delving further into their retro-rock influences, with covers of little-known songs by Gerry Goffin, Jerry Ragovoy and a pre-Dr John Mac Rebennack delivered in a mixture of Rachel Nagy's slinky, soulful femme-rock vocals, Mary Ramirez's rockabilly-metal guitar, and stomping Motown rhythms. There's a punchy version of American Breed's garage-punk anthem "Green Light", while James Brown's "If You Don't Think" is transformed into an out-and-out rocker; but the best is "Leave My Kitten Alone", in which Little Willie John's R&B standard becomes a driving rock number. By contrast, the more soul-styled cuts, such as " The Hurt's All Gone" just don't have the requisite bite.

Artist Cowboy Junkies

Title At The End Of Paths Taken

Label Cooking Vinyl

The alt.country pioneers' latest album is based around the theme of family, with Michael Timmins' songs reflecting the experiences of bringing up children and caring for ageing relatives - a succession of "mouths to feed, shoes to buy, rent to pay, tears to dry," as his sister Margo sings in "Brand New World". Their stately, restrained attitude is sustained through songs dealing with encroaching senility ("Spiral Down") and the conflicting adorations and irritations of hyperactive kids ("My Little Basquiat"), which finds them pondering the possibility of peace once the kids have grown up. Ultimately, the concluding "My Only Guarantee" offers little by way of comfort, echoing both R. D. Laing and Philip Larkin in its assurances that "I will fuck you up".

Artist Patrick Cleandenim

Title Baby Comes Home

Label Broken Horse

Crazy name, crazy guy. But neatly turned-out, one supposes. Neater than you'd imagine, as rather than denim, the Kansas-born songwriter sounds more like a sports casual kind of guy on this debut, his arrangements aping the MOR stylings of Sergio Mendes and Ray Conniff. It's fine for the opener "Baby Comes Home", all stealthy strings and cheesy horns, but the ghastly easy-listening vocal choir of "Cognac And Caviar" is simply beyond the pale. Tracks like "Birds Of Fashion" and "Until You Said I'm Gone" lack the relaxed command of easy-listening auteur Mitch Miller, and sadly, the saving grace of lounge music - the exotica experiments for which the likes of Les Baxter and Martin Denny employed instruments such as the marimba - are absent from this meekly conservative muzak.

To order any CD previewed here, call the Independent Music Service on 01634 832 789.