Morphine: The Night (Rykodisc)
The fourth album by Massachussetts miserablist Mark Sandman has a tragic undercurrent; shortly after the album was completed, Sandman died of a heart attack while performing on stage in Italy. He has left behind a startling, sonically-challenging legacy: an album of low frequencies and low feelings, fuelled by the forlorn saxophone of Dana Colley and the fractured sentiment of songs such as The Night, Souvenir and Like A Mirror. Sandman himself plays two-string bass, tuned down to almost subsonic levels; the effect is one of rumbling unease, as though Sandman's deeply-buried fears were just beginning to boil over. Lisa Simpson would love this record, but Kenny G would run screaming in terror.
Kevin Courtney
Various: Modern Music For Motorvehicles (Twisted Nerve)
Proving that there is more to Manchester than Oasis and David Beckham's underwear fetish, Twisted Nerve's gallery of scoundrels and scallywags show off their wares for the year ahead with this themed album. Damon Gough and Badly Drawn Boy may be poised for King Kong heights, but Alfie, Dakota Oak, Sirconical and Andy Votel are also capable of scaling that skyscraper in time. All display beguiling electronic touches to various degrees of high or low fidelity, from Votel's dynamic elasticity to Alfie's chiming charm. As road-trips go, this one has plenty of vroom - though Badly Drawn Boy's Hawkwind ambitions on Skidding Out Of Control may take many on a bumpy detour.
Jim Carroll
Various Artists: Music from the MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack Stigmata (Virgin)
The goth-horror movie starring Gabriel Byrne rehashes The Exorcist story for the MTV generation, so the soundtrack has to have some suitably dark stuff to denote, like, evil, man. No Marilyn Manson in evidence here, but Chumbawamba open with some tired old agit-rock. David Bowie's The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell is so stupidly obvious, you wonder how much the person got paid for picking that song. Natalie Imbruglia has another pouting identity crisis on Identify, Massive Attack finally find a home for the turgid Inertia Creeps, and Sinead O'Connor joins Afro-Celt Sound System for Release, sounding not a million miles away from Thief Of My Heart. Billy Corgan spends the rest of the album creating some scary electronic moods with the help of Bowie's keyboardist, Mike Garson.
Kevin Courtney
Black '47: Trouble In The Land (Shanachie)
Ah, the Irish experience in America. Buildin' the railways, creatin' political dynasties, longin' for the auld sod, and goin' to see bands who sing about bein' Irish in America. Led by energetic ex-pat Larry Kirwan, Black 47 have been together for 10 years, playing the pubs and clubs of New York, and it sounds like they've soaked up a little Americana to add to their mix of rabble-rousing trad and raucous rock. Songs such as Bobby Kennedy, Fallin' Off The Edge Of America and Bodhrans On The Brain seem lost in a cultural back alley somewhere behind an Irish bar, and the Pogues/ Bob Geldof/Sawdoctors schtick sounds all too familiar. The stomping sax-rock of I Got Laid On James Joyce's Grave and the rough reggae of Desperate might be great gas in a sweaty Manhattan venue, but back home it sounds uncomfortably stateless.
Kevin Courtney