Serena-Maneesh by Serena Maneesh

The sonic cathedral is looking a bit crowded these days, so hoarding FX pedals and attempting to sound like a hormonal whale doesn't seem as interestingly out-of-step as it would have three years ago. Aware of this, Norwegian five-piece Serena-Maneesh merely use the noisy bliss of My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth as a primary building block before layering their own wonderfully dark psychosis over the top. The mesmerizing 'Candlelighted' is an intense krautrock nightmare, while at the other end. the drumkit dynamics of ‘Selina's Melodie Fountain' and 'Beehiver II' pound the brain so relentlessly that you can virtually feel a seizure coming on. Shoegazing in origin, barn storming in condusioi.

Rather Ripped by Sonic Youth

Despite being as enduringly reliable as a broken metatarsal crisis before an international football tournament, it’s, unfortunately, difficult to get too excited about a Sonic Youth record anymore. Such is the overwhelming goodwill towards the US indie guitar legends, nearly every record they release is cited by many believers as being ’arguably their best yet’. No such extravagant claims here, though with the recent departure of Jim O’Rourke, the band seem to have thankfully rediscovered the ear for a tune, which all but deserted them after their brief early-’90s mainstream flirtation. So it’s a joy to hear the sweetly pretty, Kim Gordon-sung ‘The Neutral' and hubby Thurston Moore's tuneful treatise about suicide bombers, ’Incinerate', it is indeed a really good record - but not a patch on their 1988 masterpiece ’Daydream Nation’. No arguments.

White Bread Black Beer by Scritti Politti

They don't make pop stars like Green Gartside anymore. First notorious as a speed-snorting. Derrida-quoting academic on the intellectual bleeding edge of post-punk, the '80s saw him twitch off the chicken-wire guitars and re-emerge as honey-voiced soul singer sneaking subversion into the Top 10 in sugar-coated payloads. Released in conjunction with Gartside’s first gigs in 26 years as frontman of Double G And The Traitorous Three. 'White Bread. Black Beer' is as airbrushed as any of his '80s fare. But even the ticking percussion and trilling synths can't hide the sheer melodic oddness of Gartside's songs. Vulcan odes to love that simmer with weird possibilities.

Surprise by Paul Simon

Paul Simon- and bear with me on this is the only true genius working in American music today. For 50 years he’s taken worthy world music  from English folk to reggae, South African and Brazilian music  and added a sense of humour and videos starring Chevy Chase. For his tenth album, Paul's got avant garde boffin Brian Eno producing and co-writing. It might seem an odd pairing, but this is the bravest album of Simon’s career. Abandoning traditional song structures is one thing, but adding anti-war lyrics and cinematic arrangements to produce a set of songs that are funny and poignant is quite another. From the affecting ‘How Can You Live In The Northeast?' to the irate ‘Wartime Prayers’, this surprise is an entirely pleasant one.

The Corner of Miles & Gil by Shack

Great lost genii, the brothers Head, aren't they? Admittedly, it's the gaps, as they wrestle with cancelled record deals, heroin problems and sloppy side-projects that drives this judgment more than the records. ‘The Corner Of Miles And Gil’ confirms that Shack’s talents shine brightest in flashes rather than on full glare. The atmosphere of happily effortless idling is spot on; there is beauty, wit and shrewd, skewed observations (baskets of frogs and trips to Lichtenstein), but an unwillingness to cull overly self reverent showing off, like ‘Miles Away’, dilutes the mix too far. As with most genii, their obsessive charms start to look less fascinating after an hour or so.

Bells of 1 2 by Sol Seppy

Sol Seppy is the pseudonym of Sophie Michalitsianos, an English girl of Greek parentage who grew up in Australia, and whose prodigious musical talents reflect her diverse background. A classically trained pianist and cellist, she has previously played on Sparklehorse’s classic ‘Good Morning Spider’ and ‘It's A Wonderful Life’ albums (and will be appearing on their new one, due later this year). For this, her first solo outing and it is solo in the truest sense: Sophie writes, performs and produces everything, she has come up with 12 tracks that are at times reminiscent of Mazzy Star. the Cocteau Twins and Slowdive, but with plenty of her own personality thrown in. The title of the best song here, the languorous ‘Slo Fuzz’, says it all. Spooky, soporific and beautiful.

Yoyoyoyoyo by Spank Rock

There's less sonic and lyrical innovation around now than at any point in hip-hop's near 30 year history, with even old school stars like LL Cool J reduced to bouncing around with J.Lo. Spank Rock, a duo from Baltimore, are too weird and marginal to be the answer to this state of affairs, but at least they're providing an alternative. They specialise in a twisted take on the Baltimore booty bass sound music to strip to, but while on drugs. Weird sound effects come from all angles. arrangements incorporate everything from batacuda drums to acoustic guitars and there are great pop moments too, like the irresistible chorus of current single ‘Sweet Talk’. The lyrics don't stray too far from such hip-hop staples as ass, titties and cocaine. but compared to 50 Cent it's revolutionary.

Mountain Announces by Scatter

Now as far as I'm aware, there are no parts of Glasgow that, like some distant pygmy village in the heart of the Congo, have remained untouched by modernity for several hundred years. Consequently, we must hail Scatter's ‘The Mountain Announces’, as a magnificent work of the imagination. Seven tracks of shimmering drone folk spirited along on the whirlwind percussion of Alex Nielson, ‘She Moves Through The Fayre’ sounds like it's being played in a forest copse by a clan of chorusing fawns and satyrs. The Mountain Announces might be ignored now, but it'll be dusted down four decades later and hailed as a lost classic, Bang the drum for it now.

Fake Chemical State by Skin

Filling this week's Where Are They Now? slot we have Skin: the bald shouty singer from that '90s kinetic punk via Top Of The Pops band Skunk Anansie. You know, the group weren't quite angsty enough to get into Placebo. So where is Skin now? Sadly, she's in a meaningless cycle of playing venues with names like the Fuggle & Firkin and releasing chronically average solo albums like ‘Fake Chemical State‘, which at best sounds like a Republica album being played in the background of a Sunday night suburban dinner party. Mind you, it's a marginally better draw than SA’s drummer got, he now keeps time for Feeder.

Ten Silver Drops by Secret Machines

Prog is a four letter word. It's also the genre that started off with a bold adventurism but became mired in bass solos and music so long windedly dull that, in 1976, the punk explosion was a matter of life and death. Prog is what the Secret Machines get labelled. with big tunes and the sense that bountiful narcotics could enhance their gigs, the lineage is clear. However, while the Texan trio are progressive, they share nothing with the prog monkeys for whom music is little more than audio masturbation. Instead. their 2004 debut ‘Now Here ls Nowhere’ charmed its way into record collections as disparate as Noel Gallagher and David Bowie's. ‘Ten Silver Drops’ is likely to repeat the trick. as rather than wallow in indulgent proggy soundscapes. the wonderfully intense ‘Daddy's In The Doldrums' is commandingly suffocating, while the big skied, fresh pop moments of ‘Faded Lines’ and ‘Lightning Blue Eyes’ fill the record with heart-rushing, adrenalin-pumping joy. Lyrically. the record balances between inward contemplation and outward focus as meditations about “idle kids with idle hearts"jostie with street tales of drug deals gone wrong. while 'Ten Silver Drops’ lacks the power of its predecessor the pounding drums are muted in a radio friendly mix its vision is assuredly wide. Yes, the Secret Machines do prog, but vitally they do so much more. Come close, there is nothing to fear.