Bob Dylan - Modern Times

I'm not sure I'm buying into this whole Bob Dylan renaissance that, supposedly, started with Time Out Of Mind, the first in the trilogy that Modern Times brings to a close (Love & Theft being the piggy in the middle).
Time Out Of Mind was more than good and, for me, it brought to mind his last truly great album Blood On The Tracks, such was Dylan's willingness to actually reveal something about himself.
But Modern Times? For starters, I don't wanna know that this old man spends his downtime thinking about Alicia Keys (on the 12-bar opener, Thunder On The Mountain). For seconds, why doesn't Bobby give a shit about the music? Once again, it sounds like he's accompanied by a lacklustre bunch of musical journeymen, that he's standing in front of them, tapping his feet and shouting out what key he'd like them to play in, before heading to the booth to knob twiddle his vocals right out of the mix.
And, thirdly, it's time to admit that we're never going to get another Blonde On Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited or Bringing It All Back Home. Yes, his greatest days are long behind him. And it's no use saying "he's back". Because he isn't; he's been, he's gone, he's conquered and he's got nothing left to say. I want another Don't Think Twice, Zimmerman will dribble out the tepid Spirit On The Water, I desire Desolation Row, what I get is the throwaway Rollin' And Tumblin', I'd enjoy something on a par with Just Like A Woman, but Workingman's Blues 2 stutters out of the speakers.
A good Dylan album - which this is - is a disappointment. We want him back, but we can't have him back cos that was then and this is now, and the times, like Bob, have changed.

TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain

Art rock? I dunno, mate. But I love the fuzzy guitars, the whacky rhythms, Tunde Adebimpe's off-kilter vocals and the intelligence of all this. It's a bright, outstanding button in a New York box full of dull sameness. Refreshingly atmospheric, these are tracks to wallow in, to deconstruct (loops and samples aplenty), to chew on, lovingly. It's a nice place to go and well worth the journey, although you might not want to come out the other side.

Kasabian - Empire

The good looking lads from Leicester follow-up to an eponymous debut that carved out a trademark sound of resonating bass lines lashed to a driving beat.
If anything, rather than demonstrating that they're about to build an empire, Empire shows Kasabian's limitations. There's nothing really wrong with this offering but neither does it advance the cause. Indeed, this could all be a regressive move. There are still tunes that make you want to dance (Shoot The Runner, which is unmistakably Spirit in the Sky for a new generation), there's still a hint of Primal Scream, Ian Brown and overdriven Oasis on several tunes, there's still a lot of promise. Yet the tunes are even more derivative than the last batch - every song has a hint of something else about it (Sunrise is Tomorrow Never Knows, Doberman is, rather disappointingly, All You Good Good People mashed with Back Off Boogaloo). Meanwhile, the ballad British Legion, which at least is an attempt at changing pace rather dramatically, sounds like a demo recorded in a dustbin. Decent, then, but far from great.

Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope

Singing Lady, Regina Spektor sounds every inch (or centimetre, if you prefer the metric) as pained, fragile and damaged as Lady Day, Billie Holiday. That voice does creep into several of the other tracks on Begin To Hope, moving CD closer Summer in the City included, and the sparser the song, the more anti-folk than producer-polished, the better the voice. But Spektor's let down by a dearth of quality tracks. Indeed, there's a lot of gurgling, dribbly light weight nonsense and general all round daft noises on here, skidding ungraciously into something that wouldn't be amiss on a Lily Allen effort. This is Spektor's third - and weakest - album. On The Radio is amusing pop but it could well be Nelly Furtado, such is the depth of the track; ditto opener Fidelity. There is enough quality here to warrant a purchase. It's just a shade disappointing, that's all.

Muse - Black Holes And Revelations

In which the trio of Muses scarper away from their ambition of being a second class Radiohead and finally, with a bit of added funk, come into their own.
Black Holes... is an incredibly listenable album. The angst, the Yorke-esque warblings, have been reduced to a minimum. Supermassive Black Hole, the first single to be lifted from this CD, is a fantastic collision of Bootsy Collins-style bass and ridiculous falsetto vocals. And the rest? Well, for Muse, this is all pretty upbeat stuff, while the outstanding Soldier's Poem is, for a song one suspects was intended as a novelty item, just a heavenly track. That tune nicely segues into the theremin infused Invincible, which will find itself on repeat on many a CD player. Yes, Muse have lightened up and the stadiums they will fill as a result will be much happier places for it.

James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western

I always wondered who was behind those ridiculously lengthy Manics song titles. At last, the truth can be told - guitarist Bradders has a song on his solo debut christened On Saturday Morning We Will Rule The World. Hmmf. Case closed.
The Great Western is a nice change from the chore that the Street Preachers have become. Post-Everything Must Go, and, one suspects, with the 'genius' of Richey Edwards hanging over their every move adding a hefty amount of pressure, the band entered a steady decline. Save for the odd song, the Manics have disappointed. With a drummer as idiotically dumb as the finest and Nicky Wire's dreadful sixth form poetry, Bradfield always stood out as the true talent. Anyone that can play guitar that well whilst spinning 360 degrees and crow barring 25 words into spaces designed for ten has got it going on.
Naturally, there's a Manics vibe throughout The Great Western, although it's a stripped down version of the bombastic, anthemic sound we've grown to barely tolerate, with more acoustic work and, here and there, hand claps. Vocally, Bradfield's better than he's ever been, lyrically these words seem much more honest and emotive than anything Wire has ever produced (although curiously Wire does deliver on this album with the words for Bad Boys and Painkillers) and, instrumentally, Bradfield's attacking his fretboard like a man attempting to prove a point, revealing a confidence that many thought had slipped away several albums ago.

Paolo Nutini - These Streets

What the fuck was Paolo Nutini doing at a David Sneddon concert? Which is where he was 'discovered' - given the opportunity to clamber on stage and fill some time in front of a baying crowd of Fame Academy fans while Sneddon, rock God-like, was trying to find his way to the venue (come to think of it, what was anyone doing there?). Or maybe that's an urban myth I'm helping to perpetuate via the interweb. Anyway, These Streets. It shows a lot of promise, could well be Marvin Gaye having rough sex with Terence Trent D'arby (indeed, Loving You is Let's Get It On) and much is in the silky smooth singer songwritery style of the hit Last Request: a combination of gravelly soul, shuffling rhythm and haunting lyrics. It avoids - just, I should hastily add - heading into James Blunt territory, bordering this side of the best bits (ie, not the kiddies film soundtrack) of Jack Johnson. Nutini has the voice of a 50-year-old, which jars a tad with his indie haircut and youthful good looks, but, aesthetics aside, he is certainly an adept songwriter. So, in the interests of credibility, let's hope he doesn't stray anywhere near David Sneddon territory in the future. Which, if I were giving Paolo notes, would certainly mean no more songs about new shoes, please. As they say on the adverts, if you like the similarly-sounding modern day classic that is Ray LaMontagne's Trouble, you'll simply lurv Paolo Nutini.

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped

The official line is that Rather Ripped is "a straight-up Sonic Youth field on fire, with a compact potency of rock n roll enlightenment. Rather ripped, hell yeh." Hell yeh indeed. Although we prefer 'hell yeah'. Must say, though, that Rather Ripped is rather good. Hmm, a rather British reaction to a funny American bunch, eh? Good old fashioned rock 'n' roll in part, this is the Sonics at their upbeat best and is more tuneful than a lot of their work. Which, of course, means that the majority of Youthy fans will hate it, as they don't much go for melody and all that, preferring white noise and, latterly, an O-Rourke bass line (he's missing from this effort, the band's 794th album) to, well, those things that some of us refer to as 'songs'. T'ain't bad at all though for us neutral music gobblers. If a five star rating applied, which it doesn't, Rather Ripped would garner **** and, possibly, another half a *. Hell yeh.

Razorlight - Razorlight

The new album from Supertramp...sorry, Sad Cafe...sorry, Huey Lewis & The News...sorry, Razorlight - with an eponymous second album, no less (not much thought there, you lazy bastards). No difficult second album worries for Borrell and the boys with the follow-up to Up All Night. Nah, they've gone headlong into churning out some wierd 1970s-style nonsense. In The Morning, which we've all heard on the radio by now, is the standout track. The rest, a mushy mess bordering on the kind of sound that you'd expect if, say, U2 collaborated with Cliff Richard or Cher. America, what's that about? Well, I'll give you a clue: it's about America. Los Angeles Waltz? You've got it. As for calling a track Pop Song 2006, don't get me started. Strangely listenable, though, this CD. Probably due to it coming in at a 1970s-style 40 minutes long.

Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways

The sound of a lonely man; a man close to the end; a man with a lifetime of experience and not enough time in which to share it. And nobody, for that matter, to share it with. Except us.
Completed posthumously by producer Rick Rubin, Cash's last gasp is an object of beauty. It can be a painful listen, an emotional experience. But isn't the best music that? If You Could Read My Mind is the first track to induce tears and, after that, you're left, via I Came To Believe and A Legend In My Time, to reach for the hankies at every opportunity. Cash circa his prison gigs was an acquired taste but, in his latter years, his work sang out to everyone. A Hundred Highways is a fitting, if bittersweet, gorgeous finale.

The Sleepy Jackson - Personality

If the music industry were a playground and you had to bully one of those stood in it, chances are you'd roll your sleeves up and target, say, Belle & Sebastian, The Flaming Lips or some other lover of twee rather than that scary mother in the trench coat. These people are the lightweight end of rock. All very adept at twirling a tune, appropriating sounds from the past and over-producing their poppy toons. But you wouldn't expect them to hit you back after you'd landed punch number one. So, enter another member to the club that would be bullied: Perth's The Sleepy Jackson - who, fronted by Brian Wilson wannabe Luke Steele, have shaken up the lineup since debuting many moons ago with Lovers. It's all very nice, it passes by an hour but, ultimately, Personality never really transcends the background it's destined to fill. Still, we can always nick their dinner money.

Jarvis Cocker - Running The World

Protest songs can be a little irksome, can they not? And, thus, the good old days of the 1960s, riddled with the bloody things, ended on a sour note as nobody could ever find what the answer actually was that was supposedly blowing in the wind. Yet, every now and then...
Which brings us to Jarvis Cocker - never afraid to tell it like it is or, when he's bored, shake his ass in the direction of a deserving subject. When Live8 was taking place last year, he took the opportunity to pen a song about those that control the purse strings that, if pulled open in the right direction, could solve many of the world's ills. Jarvo, not bothering about garnering any airplay, doesn't pull any punches. "Cunts are still running the world," he merrily shouts. And he's right, of course. There are some highly amusing, high-impact turns of phrase. "Did you hear there's a natural order, that the deserving will end up with the most, The cream can't help rising to the top, Well I say...shit floats." Strange, I never imagined that the revolution would be led by a gangly bloke in glasses.
http://myspace.com/jarvspace

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint - The River in Reverse

Those of us that admired the younger, shoutier, angrier Elvis Costello have been left dismayed in recent years. We'd rather Alison, Pump It Up and Oliver's Army any day over The Brodsky Quartet nonsense and doodlings with the hilariously christened Anne-Sophie Von Otter. The man's got so strung up on being taken seriously as a muso that he's forgotten how to have fun. Which is where The River in Reverse appears to differ from Costello's work of late - it sounds like he had the complete ride of a lifetime in the company of New Orleans producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint. I can't remember the last time I tapped my feet to a latterday Costello tune but every one of the tracks on this effort gets me moving in one way or the other. That said, Costello has only self-penned one of the tunes here: the bulk of the tracks are Toussaint compositions, while the pair have knocked heads on five of the songs. Still, a return to happier times and a couple of ballads to die for. Just don't expect the Attractions - it's all heavenly blues 'n' boogie-blessed piano.