The latest releases reviewed

JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN
To Survive
Reveal Records
***
It's easy to get caught up in Joan Wasser's pre-Police Woman past: violinist extraordinaire as a teenager, Jeff Buckley's girlfriend at the time of his death, collaborator with Anthony and the Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright (who guests here). This second album with her two bandmates, similar to her Real Lifedebut, never deviates from its straightforward course of piano-led lounge ballads. Comparisons to Feist (in particular her Let It Dierecord) are unavoidable; although Wasser has a similar voice, she lacks the diversity of the Canadian's music. The problem is inconsistency: for every flowing slab of gorgeousness ( Honor My Wishes, Start of My Heart), tunes such as To Be Lovedand Magpiespass by far too inconspicuously. Smooth and graceful in equal measures, but uncomfortably insipid at times.  www.joanaspolicewoman.com
BRIAN KEANE
Download tracks: Honor My Wishes, To Be Lonely

BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY
Lie Down in the Light
Domino
***
Will Oldham has come a long way from the bleakness of I See a Darkness. Since his lovelorn Ease Down the Road, BPB has been replacing melancholy with mellowness. Trademark tales of angst and heartbreak are still here, but the balance tips towards languid contentment. Most striking is how Oldham maintains his country/folk course while bringing something fresh to each album. Musically he has left behind the bare-bone arrangements of the past. Rhodes and clarinet ( For Every Field There's a Mole) sit alongside banjos and strings, and there is barely a hint of percussion throughout. Oldham even steps outside of his vocal comfort zone, and not just on duets with Ashley Webber. It's the sound of an artist in love with his art, and one slowly gravitating towards the same niche of classic songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young.  www.myspace.com/princebonniebilly
SINÉAD GLEESON
Download tracks: For Every Field There's a Mole, Missing One

CARLY SINGS
The Glove Thief
Carly Sings Recordings
***
From the retro cover of Blue Note cool and classic vinyl album design to the musical mix of Julie London and early Everything But the Girl, Ireland's newest Cappuccino Kid, Carly Blackman, has most stylistic bases covered. Let's put it this way: if this album were a movie, it would be Eric Rohmer's My Girlfriend's Boyfriend. Defining Blackman in such referential terms, however, might be a tad unfair. Despite the languid, inherently smart nature of the music (which conjures up a type of cerebral sonic chic akin to The High Llamas jamming with The Go Betweens) this is at heart a pop record imbued with moods, textures, depth and humour.  www.carlytunes.com
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
Download tracks: You Are Travelling, The Only Human Left

A HUMAN
Third Hand Prophecy
Wall of Sound
***
If this London six-piece know anything about music, it's how to make killer intros - every track opens with a fish hook of dirty pulses that reels in the listener. On a record that will elicit many responses, most of the songs will cause your feet to shuffle. But Dave Human's stream-of-consciousness stories are guaranteed to make you listen. His vocals are part-cabaret, part 1980s New Romantic. These woebegone tales of death, bedsits and mundane lives ( The Fraudulent Truth of an Office Worker) glide over bassy electro frameworks. In this indie electronic vein, their cover of America's Horse With No Namecould have gone horribly wrong, but instead works brilliantly. Bucking the trend of what's come before, the album closes with a guitar-and- percussion epic, Sun Will Rise, proving A Human are full of pleasant surprises. www.myspace.com/theahuman
SINÉAD GLEESON
Download tracks: Golden Mil, Sun Will Rise

THE FRATELLIS
Here We Stand
Universal
***
Following a debut sturdy enough to contain the incorrigible Chelsea Daggerand the iPod-flogging Flathead, this Glaswegian trio's pores ooze retro pop like a hobo sweats booze after a night on discount vodka. Nothing much has changed with Here We Stand: Mistress Mabel's aggressive pop clobbers you with its hyper Lady Madonna-esque femme - a thematic paint-by-numbers after Chelsea Dagger. Track after track cements their ties to early Beatles, Kinks or their contemporaries The Kooks, but with extra sugar. While the album's muscular pop might leave you feeling roughed up by halftime, it's an ideal candidate for no-strings fun. Little surprises such as Milk and Moneyhint that one day they might do more than make crowds jump up and down in their festival wellies.  www.thefratellis.com DEANNA ORTIZ
Download tracks: Baby Doll, My Friend John

JULIET TURNER
People Have Names
Hear This! Records
*** *
Just as Juliet Turner's palate for life's salty and sweet moments has evolved, so her palette of sound has rumbled onwards as well, and her appreciation for life's minor chords has grown. The title track (left to the end of the album, where it can seep into the subconscious) is a thought-provoking meditation on life's defining qualities: "It's the work of a lifetime to love and be loved in return/To love to the end." Lyrically, Turner's attention turns to the big and small-ticket stories: loneliness ( Tuesday Night Ladies), romance ( High Hopes) and the contradictions of youth and age ( The Elder of the Tribe). Arrangements are spacious and unforced, with suitably tinted brass and strings, and Turner's wisdom in letting her CDs percolate for Olympian periods is palpable on this gorgeously taut collection.  www.julietturner.com SIOBHÁN LONG
Download tracks: Luisa, People Have Names

ALPHABEAT
This Is Alphabeat
Charisma
*** *
In Alphabeat's world, everything is as cute as the proverbial puppy. These six Danish kids are having the ride of their lives on a high-energy, DayGlo pop rollercoaster - and they don't give a fig about how odd they may look or sound. After all, to Alphabeat's way of thinking, idiosyncrasies are to be celebrated rather than hidden. Applying this approach to the business of making tunes may explain how they can get away with transforming John Lydon's Public Imagefrom a primal punk scream into a mind-boggling pure pop shriek. They can do similar mischief with their own material, and both the hit single Fascinationand the riotous theme tune Fantastic Sixare walls of sound. By the time the euphoric, trail-blazing 10,000 Nightssweeps by, you know that any effort to resist these beams of sunshine pop are futile. www.myspace.com/thisisalphabeat
JIM CARROLL
Download tracks: 10,000 Nights, Fascination