Latest releases reviewed

TEARS FOR FEARS 
Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92) 
Mercury 
**

We are trapped in a 1980s fugue right now, and it seems there is no escape until the 1990s revival kicks in around 2008. Meanwhile, everyone from Duran Duran to OMD is enjoying a reappraisal - can't be too long before Level 42 are restored to their former thumb-slapping glory. When Gary Jules bagged the Christmas Number One with his version of TFF's 1982 hit, Mad World, the scene was set for the return of one of the decade's most successful duos; now we hear that Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have put away their age-old differences and are going back out on tour. Radio still loves such tunes as Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Shout, Head Over Heels and Woman In Chains, and it's hard to feel the familarity without the attendant twinge of adult contemporary contempt. The Beatlesque mini-epic, Sowing The Seeds Of Love, though, with its kitchen-sink production job, is still impressively pretentious and over-the-top. - Kevin Courtney

LOW 
The Great Destroyer 
Rough Trade 
*****

Minnesota's favorite shoe-gazing alt.rock trio actually rock out on their superb, groundbreaking new album. With its iconoclastic embrace of lush harmonies, driving rhythms, lo-fi electronica and spare melodies, Low's seventh album in 10 years marks an extraordinarily liberating leap forward from the oracular intensity of their last album, Trust, or the eclectic introspection of their career anthology, A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief. The Great Destroyer dazzles in its seamless fusion of styles and moods, not least in how Low have discovered how to infuse their spare, otherworldly lyricism with new expressive passion and force, from the acoustic folksy intimacy of When I Go Deaf and the searing guitar assault of Monkey to the slow-burning joy of Silver Rider and Broadway (So Many People).

www.roughtraderecords.com - Jocelyn Clarke

M83
Before the Dawn Heals Us 
Gooom Discs/Labels
***

Once you've gone higher than the sun, coming back down to earth can sometimes be a bit of a drag. Given the avalanche of positive press which the fascinating Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts album triggered, it's to M83 mainstay Anthony Gonzalez's credit that he didn't simply reach for the repeat button or lose the plot when it came to a follow-up. While Gonzalez's sense of adventure is every jot as grand, orchestral and ambitious as before, there is a far more pronounced psychedelic wash to this one, from the explosive rush of Don't Save Us From The Flames to the glittering, soft-focused space-pop of Can't Stop. Despite an inability to maintain such dramatic soundscapes for the entire duration of the album, there's enough here to suggest that Gonzalez could well be on the right path.

www.ilovem83.com  - Jim Carroll

NICK KELLY 
Running Dog 
Self Possessed Records
***

Having long eschewed the rigmarole of the music industry, the one-time Fat Lady Sings frontman now defines success on his own terms and his own label. His long-gestated follow up to 1997's Between Trapezes - a fan-subsidised solo debut - is a mixed bag of understated folk-rock. Kelly's emotional palette remains nicely smudged right from the marching beat and stately arpeggios of opener You're Gonna Fall, a wry and sour love song about landing an angel by clipping its wings. But the album's meandering progression whisks us from the fantasy of a jilted lover to a mawkishly "chin-up" ballad, while a working-drone indictment, Tamagotchi, simply suggests he should update his metaphors. The Loneliest Ghost in Pere Lachaise, however, distracts from the album's scrapbook disconnection with Kelly's ability to float a clever lyric on a curiously beautiful melody.

www.nickkelly.ie  - Peter Crawley

THE BEAT UP Black Rays Defence
Fantastic Plastic Records
**

They changed their name from The Beatings to The Beat Up, which is a bit like John Penis changing his name to Fred Penis. While their contemporaries are pushing a post-punk, art-rock agenda, this London quartet are going for an old-fashioned, fuzzed-up garage-punk sound reminiscent of The Dead Boys, The Ramones, The Cramps and Johnny Thunders; you can even hear the crackle of beat-up old Vox amps in the mix. Of course, we've heard this sort of thing a million times before, and there's little here to distinguish The Beat Up from the garageloads of past punks, but they do succeed in stamping their own bootprint on such scuzzy tunes as Bad Feeling, Messed Up, Damage and Detonator. Ex-My Bloody Valentine mad genius Kevin Shields produces and mixes, adding a nice, crushed-velvet sheen to the guitars, and the band swagger smoothly enough through these ten quickfire tracks. www.thebeatup.com - Kevin Courtney

THE FIERY FURNACES
EP 
Rough Trade
***

Brother-and-sister duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger are the opposite of cute; their album of last year, Gallowsbird's Bark, was a strange, left-of-centre record that dipped into the sidelines, yet marked the duo out as ones to cautiously watch. This follow-up is nowhere near as wilfully abstract, and could be seen as an attempt to corner the market in imaginative, slightly barking-mad pop. Blending alliterative lyrics that defy reference or categorisation (oh, alright, then - how about Edward Lear-meets-sea-shanties-meets-Louis McNeice?) with the stop-start avant-pop so beloved of the Virgin record label in the early 1970s, the result might seem as if it's too weird for words. Actually, it isn't. The aural equivalent of a bracing walk along windswept cliff tops. Careful!

www.thefieryfurnaces.com  - Tony Clayton-Lea