POP/ROCK

Latest releases reviewed

U2
18 Singles
Island

With two Best Of collections already out there (one spanning the 1980s and the other the '90s), you might wonder why we need yet another album of U2 hits. That's like asking why we'd need another visit by the Pope. With 18 Singles, however, you get three decades' worth of hits on one CD, and it's worth it just for the cuts from their three finest albums, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and All That You Can't Leave Behind. Plus, you get the charidee song they recorded in Abbey Road with Green Day earlier this year, a cover of The Skids' raucous The Saints Are Coming, and another new track, the piano-punching, string-scraping Window in the Skies. What you don't get are such exuberant early tunes as Out of Control and 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, unless you have one of the limited number of CDs featuring I Will Follow as a bonus track. You could call this their real Best Of, if it wasn't for the presence of Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own. www.u2.com - Kevin Courtney

THE SAINTS
Imperious Delerium
Cadiz Recording Company

Australia's Saints were one of the first non-UK and US bands to make an impression on the scene-makers of '70s punk rock. The tone was set by their 1977 single, Stranded: buzzsaw guitars, splenetic attitude, frenetic pace. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since the band's heyday, but lead singer Chris Bailey was never one to give up the ghost. So, hot on the heels of 2005's Nothing Is Straight in My House, Imperious Delerium sees the band once again re-enter the fray with a series of basic punk rock moods. Basic by name does not necessariy mean basic by nature, however: there are tunes here that certain NYC neo-punk bands would be proud to pilfer. There are also songs that run the gamut from cute pop (So Close) and reflective, almost forlorn folksiness (War of Independence) to full-on rockers (Drowning). It all amounts to the kind of record you'd be proud to tell people about. So here it is. - Tony Clayton-Lea

VARIOUS
Pop! Justice: 100% Solid Pop Music
Fascination

The demise of once sturdy standard-bearers Smash Hits and Top of the Pops might indicate that pop in all its glorious fabulousness is on the wane, but try telling that to Pop! Justice, a sharp, sassy and sarky website documenting all musical things bright, breezy and bubbly. Pop! Justice's definition of pop is as wide as it is tall. That's why its new giddy compilation has room for PJ faves Sugababes, who turn Arctic Monkeys' I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor into an oddly alluring glammy shimmy, and Girls Aloud as well as Annie, The Automatic, Justice vs Simian and Franz Ferdinand. What all of these acts share is a passion for that euphoric moment when a killer hook or melody meets an unstoppable chorus. As Jon Savage comments in the sleevenotes, the best pop songs may be ephemeral, but they also have the potential to become perennial. www.popjustice.com - Jim Carroll

THE CORRS
Dreams - The Ultimate Collection
Atlantic

Five years after their Best Of collection, it's time for the first family of Irish pop to upgrade to "ultimate" and add in some of their recent releases, collaborations and cover versions. The Corrs' enormous talent has never been in dispute, but there is a definite issue about the safe, comfy and lukewarm way they've chosen to use it. Such songs as Runaway, Only When I Sleep, What Can I Do and Forgiven Not Forgotten were well-deserved hits, but you sorta wished they'd taken more risks with the music, and moved towards an edgier, more dangerous pop sound instead of just getting mumsier with each passing year. Breathless underlines the decline: co-written and produced by Mutt Lange, it sounds just like something his wife Shania Twain would have done in her beauty sleep. Fans of that sort of thing will probably thrill to Andrea's duet with Bono on When the Stars Go Blue, or the version of Ruby Tuesday featuring Ronnie Wood, but the rest of us may sigh for the sexy pop classics that might have been. www.corrs.net  - Kevin Courtney

BRAKES
The Beatific Visions
Rough Trade

Brevity is the soul of Brakes, whose debut, Give Blood, was recorded in just seven days and lasted all of 29 minutes. A whole year later (what took them so long?) the band return as something more than a side project, frontman Eamon Hamilton having quit his day job with British Sea Power. That could explain the extra attention afforded to all 28 minutes of The Beatific Visions, an album that still accelerates through the chinks and chicanes of punk, but which also calms down long enough to draft in soft wisps of slide guitar (Mobile Communication), bittersweet acoustic ballads (Isabel) and giddy bursts of retro-pop (Beatific Visions). The only band for whom two-minute compositions seem unwieldy with contemplation, Brakes still aren't easy to digest - some of the musical lurches are enough to give you hiccups. But, rest assured, even the egregious moments pass by in a heartbeat. www.brakesbrakesbrakes.com - Peter Crawley

UNITED STATE OF ELECTRONICA
Sonic Boom Recordings

First formed as a lark, when a Seattle pop group briefly posed as German electronicists, this rock/dance septet have either become quite serious about the act or are taking the joke too far. From the Daft Punk-worshipping It Is On!, with its damp 4/4 stomps and vocoder-trilled instructions to "Show 'em how it's done! Don't stop! Give it all we've got!", the album has the perky insistence of a merciless aerobics instructor. In fairness, any album that unceasingly addresses listeners as "party people" expects a little reciprocal idiocy. But surely no self-respecting party person deserves some store-bought positivity about "musical revolutions" or a positively wretched "rap" which the B-52s might have found toxically chipper. In a more suggestible state of mind, these stale exhortations to join the party may move you, but those in full possession of their faculties should be bored rigid. www.usemusic.com - Peter Crawley

DEPECHE MODE
The Best of - Vol 1
Mute

Outside of U2, has there ever been such a radical image makeover of a pop/rock group over the past 25 years? Depeche Mode started out in the early '80s as a bunch of babyfaced Basildon boys singing synth-driven ditties such as Just Can't Get Enough, New Life and See You. Within a decade or more, lead singer Dave Gahan was looking death in the face through heroin addiction, Martin Gore was dressing up in S&M/fetish gear, and they were writing songs such as Shake the Disease, Strangelove, Suffer Well and Master and Servant. This very useful collection (which also features 23 promo videos and a 30-minute short film) highlights a band, once on the edge of a collective personal precipice, that can effortlessly manage to blend the darker side of the human spirit with the brighter side of pop music. And all without blinking a kohl-shaded eye. Fab. www.depechemode.com - Tony Clayton-Lea