ROCK/POP

Latest cds reviewed

TOM WAITS **
Real Gone
Anti

Get on your muddy boots and miner's headtorch and prepare for a long spell down the old swamp. Recorded in an old schoolhouse in Mississippi, Waits's 20th album sounds once again as if a gang of zombies had risen up from the scrapyard, made instruments out of bits of old Chevys, and staged their own monster zydeco blues mash. The five-minute opening jam, Top of the Hill, tests your resolve with its grunting human beatbox and bottom-of-the-well vocals. Stick with it, though, and Waits delivers some richly grubby rags: Don't Go Into That Barn, How's It Gonna End, Green Grass, Dead and Lovely and Day After Tomorrow. There's no shortage of dirty ol' blues, but there's not enough heart - Waits is well and truly buried in his muddy genre, and you'll have to dig deep to find any real nuggets. Kevin Courtney

REM ***
Around the Sun
 Warner Bros

The 13th album from the long-serving Athens band is a laid-back, country-feedback affair, leaning heavily on rangy acoustic guitars, reedy keyboards and tunes so familiar-sounding you'd swear, as Stipe sings in The Worst Joke Ever, that you've "heard this one before". Leaving New York, The Outsiders, Final Straw and Wanderlust are quiet, breezy songs with an icy chill down the middle, and plain melodies that suggest Stipe & Co have been listening to such Sixties folk artists as John Sebastian, Thunderclap Newman and Peter, Paul & Mary. Oddly enough, the toned-down effect makes for one of their most consistent records in a while, and the crocheted arrangements leave room for Peter Buck and Mike Mills to weave in some gorgeous electric guitars and harmonies. One for the footsore old diStiples to put their feet up to. Kevin Courtney

KEN STRINGFELLOW ****
Soft Commands
Rykodisc

Since breaking up his influential US power pop outfit The Posies in the mid-90s, Ken Stringfellow has led a peripatetic life. He's been a sometime member of REM and his heroes Big Star; a producer for like-minded souls, including Damien Jurado; and a solo artist with two albums under his belt. Unsurprisingly, considering it was recorded in Seattle, Stockholm, New York, Paris and Senegal, Soft Commands is as ambiguous and bold as it is shapeless and sometimes infuriating. It finds Stringfellow working through a dozen tracks and as many musical styles. There's textured and layered Brian Wilson choruses on early highlight When U Find Someone, Leonard Cohen shadows across Je Vous En Prie, Jackson Browne grown-up pop sensibility on You Drew, and a very ill-advised flirtation with dub on Dawn of the Dub of the Dawn. Throw in ruminations on death and relationships and you have a heady mix that could easily be overpowering. But let it rest with you and it'll ease its quiet, well-produced way into your head. A curious, mixed-up, welcome affair. www.kenstringfellow.com Paul McNamee

CAN ****
Monster Movie ; Tago Mago ; Soundtracks ; Ege Bamyasi
Spoon/Mute

Remastered, repainted and rereleased, Can's latest rumble in the archives is an opportunity for those who know them just by name and Krautrock reputation to judge whether the fuss is warranted. Certainly, there were few precedents for the intriguing noises made by the Communism Nihilism collective, which set up base in Cologne in the late 1960s. Willingly embracing experimentation at all stages, Can merged boundaries until they ceased to exist, as founder members and former Stockhausen students Holgar Czukay and Imrin Schmidt looked towards Terry Riley and The Velvet Underground for ideas on electronic repetition and musical unconventionality. Their début, Monster Movie, remains stunning in its execution, Malcom Mooney's vocals a series of eerie clarion calls; 1971's Tago Mago uses drones and loops to create shimmering sonics; and 1972's Ege Bamyasi sculpts an alternative and bewitching ambient canvas. Essential. www.spoonrecords.com Jim Carroll

FATBOY SLIM ***
Palookaville
Skint

What the dance fraternity needs right now is a Norman Cook record full to the brim with ridiculously infectious funk soul stompers and the like. What's actually on offer from the man wearing the Fatboy Slim hat is an album you'd expect a fortysomething dance producer to make after four years of domestic troubles and beach-life strife. If Cook's 2000 album, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, was closer to the living-room than the dancefloor, this one inches even nearer to the sofa. There are some wonderfully madcap moments (Slash Dot Dash and, particularly, Jin Go Ba La's wig-out), but there are also many sombre, bittersweet moments of reflection, as when domestic woes and joys chime on El Bebe Masoquito and North West Three. Still standing, but maybe not grinning as much as before. www.fatboyslim.net Jim Carroll

JAMES YORKSTON AND THE ATHLETES  ****
Just Beyond the River
Domino

For James Yorkston, tragic love affairs aren't lessons learned but scabs to be picked at remorselessly. On his second album, the Scottish neo-folkie keens and bemoans as only the toweringly self-obsessed can. Yet his brand of dewey-eyed maudlin is peculiarly affecting, conjuring an air of mysterious sadness rather than mealy-mouthed depression. Realising, perhaps, that even the sulkiest listener can have enough of plaintive acoustic folk, Yorkston recruits Four Tet's Keiran Hebden to make his rootsy earnestness sound more ambivalent. This subtle intervention aside, however, there is little let up as Yorkston ruminates over lovers spurned, lost and cast aside. The result is a moving and rewarding album, if not quite the thing for that cocktail party you're planning. Glum 'n' glummer! www.jamesyorkston.co.uk Ed Power

DAWN KENNY ***
Sound
Run Records

Dawn Kenny has been mooching around the fringes of the elegant singer-songwriter scene in Ireland for a few years now; she and her piano have supported more headline acts than we care to recall, but there was always something about her music that stayed in the mind. Part Joni Mitchell lightness of touch, but ever so slightly lacking in arrangements, Kenny's second album at least ensures that it isn't all acoustic guitars out there, strumming away relentlessly. The songs aren't all up to it, but tracks such as Ten Good Reasons, Torn, Seven Days and The End of the World prove that Kenny can cut the proverbial mustard when she wants to. What's missing are the killer lines and melodies; on the basis of this very efficient record, though, they aren't too far away. www.dawnkenny.com Tony Clayton-Lea