POP/ROCK

Latest CD releases reviewed

HAR MAR SUPERSTAR
The Handler Record Collection
***

If you think of Har Mar Superstar as just a fat bloke in his underwear singing disco songs, think again. Beneath those YMCA fronts beats a muscle of pure love for the sounds of Prince, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner and Elton John. On his third album, Har Mar finally realises his funky vision: to make us party like it's 1983, get us dancing on the ceiling with our Caribbean queen, and jammin' till the break of dawn. Franz Ferdinand can keep their New Romantic pose - Har Mar's going to join Scissor Sisters on the dancefloor, to the tune of Transit, Body Request, Sugar Pie, Back That Camel Up and Bird in the Hand. Oh, and a cheerful, bright and "gay" cover of Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again (Naturally). Can you handle it? www.harmarsuperstar.com - Kevin Courtney

GOLDIE LOOKIN' CHAIN
Greatest Hits Atlantic
***

Can Welshmen bust a rhyme? These B-boyos from Newport are the newest rappers on the tower block, a hilarious hip-hop collective who speak their own slang and whose devoted fans are known as clarts. This team of "crack draw enthusiasts" have a design for life that revolves around toking, playing vintage video games and writing comedy rap songs that will make you splutter your Stella all down the front of your hoodie. Sampling cheesy tunes from the 1980s, GLC rap about life at the opposite end of bling, where nylon tracksuits, fake medallions, dodgy dope and mothers with male members are the norm. After a dose of Roller Disco, Half Man Half Machine and Your Mother's Got a Penis, you'll never take rap music seriously again. Safe as f***, you knows it, bra. www.glc.com - Kevin Courtney

BLINK
Deep Inside the Sound of Sadness Serene Records
***

You'd be forgiven for wondering who on earth are Dublin band Blink. They've been missing in action for the past five years (dealing with something called "life", I believe), so you'd also be forgiven for not giving a howling hoot about the band, either. And yet their third album (with a title that is perhaps more telling than it should be) is destined to be one of the best Irish records you'll hear this year. Never lumped in with the Aslans or Picturehouses of this dear little island, Blink always offered edgy yet focused rock music and with one exception here - the appalling Angel of Light (Catwoman) - little has changed. The quality of tracks such as The Tiny Magic Indian, Snow White Has Let You Down Again, Don't You Rollerblade In Nashville Tennesse? and Just Come Out is sky-high; these and others boast laser-sharp melodies, guitars that go zing and lyrics that are equal parts frisky and profound. The boat has probably been missed, let's be honest, but with a record as strong as this surely there are other methods of transportation? www.irishblink.com - Tony Clayton-Lea

CLINIC
Winchester Cathedral Domino
***

The ironic thing about Clinic's refusal to perform or be photographed without their surgeon's masks is that musically they have always been the most transparent of groups. With a debt to Krautrock that has occasionally verged on pastiche, the Liverpool four-piece are surely one of the least-experimental experimental artists in recent memory. Album number three revisits familiar territory, plying shuffling melodies, twisted guitars and vocals so airy and diffident they sometimes sound as if they've drifted in from a different record entirely. All good news for the Clinic fanbase, which will see Winchester Cathedral as a refinement rather than regurgitation of a blueprint that has remained substantially unaltered since their 2001 début. For those who always feared Clinic as an act in a self-imposed rut, however, the project is a case of suspicions vindicated. www.cliniconline.org - Ed Power

THE BLACK KEYS
Rubber Factory Fat Possum
***

Had The White Stripes stuck to messing around in a Detroit basement, the world might have proved more amenable to The Black Keys. But fate deals cruel hands, and it seems that the world is happy enough with one colour-coded duo making a blues-infused rocky racket, thanks all the same. It's a pity because, as they showed with last year's sleazy Thickfreakness album, Ohio's Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney create the kind of ragged, raw rock that only two men who met while mowing lawns for a dodgy landlord could make. Recorded in an abandoned tyre factory, Rubber Factory oozes greasy blues and stomping soul from every pore. That such gritty, punchy, scratchy sounds are created by a sparse set-up of drums-and-guitar may beggar belief, but the proof is certainly in the cooking. www.fatpossum.com - Jim Carroll

KASABIAN
Kasabian RCA
****

Probably the best album recorded on a farm by a bunch of die-hard Leicester City fans you will hear this year, Kasabian (the record) may not be the future of rock 'n' roll, but it is a lot closer to the mark than most other début albums. The notion of mashing rock and dance together has been approached from every possible angle, so there's little fresh substance to Kasabian's sound; their revolution comes in the style. Fired-up, blistering rock-and-beatbox fusions, Club Foot, Reason Is Treason and Lost Souls Forever are fuelled by passion, intrigue, excitement and the cocksure brains and brawn of a crew who know that the future might well sound like the past, but that it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. The smartest post-baggy fire-and-brimstone album on the block. www.kasabian.co.uk - Jim Carroll

THE FIERY FURNACES
Blueberry Boat Rough Trade
****

"A looby, a lorden, a loggerhead lozel/A lungy old laughback gave me a proposal." Well, nobody said it would be easy. Less than a year since their compelling and bewildering début, restless US indie siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger make it a challenge just to keep pace. With a whole concept album crammed into the first song (the 10-minute-plus Quay Cur), this gob-smackingly audacious follow-up sounds like an epic with attention-deficit-disorder. Exhilarating, amusing and frustrating (usually all at once) songs shear into distinct movements and careen between folk, blues-rock, electronica and cartoon soundtracks. Following the twists in tempos and lyrics feels like chasing a hare through a garden maze. Yes, the Dylansy doggerel and Beefheartian strangeness can be off-putting. No, you can't listen to it straight through without needing a lie down. But, frankly, there's nothing else remotely like it. www.thefieryfurnaces.com - Peter Crawley