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SIXTY WATT BAYONETS: "Pounding Hearts, Fighting Words" (Broken Tail Records)
RELEASED? 13th July.
SOUNDS LIKE? A throat-scalping, post-banshees, yelp-a-long-a-lyric-stream they probably know fuck all about, but that's "1933" for you, and the following "Brighton Town" as well is equally as stroppy, confident and endearing. Hopelessly dated, maniacally fixated, they'll all be bankrupting banks or filling shelves within ten years, but they're kicking pricks in the meantime and doing it with feeling.
IS IT ANY GOOD? It's life, get into it.
WHERE IS IT? www.myspace.com/brokentailrecords

NECRO DEATHMORT: "This Beat Is Necrotronic" (Distraction Records)
RELEASED? 31st August.

SOUNDS LIKE? A soundtrack for the post apocalypse years. Years whenTerminator style Madonna, Lily Allen and Coldplay drones are roaming shattered streets, they communicate via the Necrotronica, the code, come chord book for those hunting down the last of Simon Cowell's zombie army. No, really, this a beautiful record, a well crafted, subtle, shapeshifting thing that paints pictures in sound with a palette of numberless grey shades. This is the album that every death metal idiot was too clunky, too loud and too lumpen to make, this is the album that Nick Cave should play at home. "This Beat Is Necrotronic" is a sublime set, there's a tone, a feel, a thread, just don't use the word concept, running through, but every track is distinct and stands alone.
IS IT ANY GOOD? Yes.
WHERE IS IT? www.distractionrecords.com

TELLEY: "Now I'm The Big Sister" (Hitback)
RELEASED? 17th August.
SOUNDS LIKE? Yes, it's all classy pop, pop, pop music, but the original Xtc, M, Sparks and 10cc albums are still out there and still ahead of this homage come compilation.
IS IT ANY GOOD? Of course it is and I'm chuffed that young people at groovy media outlets can be bowled over by Telley, it's just miserable old gits like me and Telley who prefer the originals.
WHERE IS IT? www.telley.co.uk

ANDY WHITE: "Songwriter" (Floating World)
RELEASED? 28th September
SOUNDS LIKE? Crowded House trying to record late seventies Dylan.
IS IT ANY GOOD? You can usually get some advance warning of a record's quality before you hear a note, things like the band name, the artwork, the song titles can be telltales and when you pick up a slab with a raffishly grey denim man on the cover of a record with a simple and self deprecatingly sharp title you expect something, dunno what, but something. Certainly something more than the bland and the beautiful selection of rubber-toothed tunes here.
WHERE IS IT? www.fwrecords.co.uk

EXTRADITION ORDER: "Since The Bomb Dropped" (I Blame The Parents Records)
RELEASED? 1st September.
SOUNDS LIKE? We very much liked the earlier, three track taster thing and are even more pleased with the full album, mainly because we've found a bit of shit to slag, "The Wheel" being an indulgent, mess, apart from the central, down-tinkling piano riff.

So, yeah, what do Extradition Order sound like? Good question and the bad answer is largely an unpolished and punkish early Roxy Music trying to strangle 'Quadrophenia' issue Who, but they sound like themselves, everyone and everything inbetween, example, "Peterloo" is a lush, churning, doors-ish drone that's begging for a punk upgrade, a hippy-shit, keyboard decline, or just leaving alone, because it's excellent. This is an unusual album, it's listener-friendly for a whole whack of buyer-niches, it's smart, it's retro (we cite "Islington Creeper") it's accessible, but could easily become their 'lost' album because "Since The Bomb Dropped" is so disparate a collection of cool strands drawn, dragged and seduced into cohesion, that it can be too much to too many.
IS IT ANY GOOD? They've made sense of their parents record collection and that means 'yes'.
WHERE IS IT? www.iblametheparentsrecords.com

MONDO JET SET : "Girl Action" (Pink Hedgehog)
RELEASED? Out now.
SOUNDS LIKE? Well, it's a duo, so the obvious thing is to over-dress The Pet Shop Boys template, I know, I know, but there must a someplace, somewhen, in an infinite universe where Ms Tennant and the other one have a few Yes albums leaning awkwardly against 'Synth Master Overload Does Abba'. You can see why we like it. This is all swoosh and tweak, some quite subtle, some quite look away now, but every note, every breathlessly synth-drenched chord is sincere, loveable and you can, really can, feel the love, the care and the attention to detail that has gone into this gloriously leaky, but gorgeous submarine of an album.
IS IT ANY GOOD? Why not?
WHERE IS IT? www.mondojetset.co.uk

VARIOUS MIXED BY DJ MARCELLO: "Supperclub Naivety" (United Recordings)
RELEASED? 13th July.
SOUNDS LIKE? Super trendy people not only having a good time, but being seen to have a good time with and by their peers. It's a hellish evening in

prospect, but at least it has a classy soundtrack. Thirty years ago some Dutch people thought it'd be nifty to have a dinner-chum-nightclub, and as 'dinner' is a bit too blue collar, Supperclub was born. The rest of the back story is available online or in-bin which is where we file the press releases before we listen to the record. Ah, the record... There are two cds and thirty tracks here, all remixed by DJ Marcello for the purpose of "slowly getting you in the mood for dancing, gradually nudging listeners towards the dancefloor, building to a climax of foot shuffling and hip-shaking". And that's broadly true and each and every one of the thirty tracks is a mini-masterpiece in it's own right, but you know that you're being smoothed to death when it's left to Ennio Morricone to provide some grit with the dirtily counterbalanced shufflings of "La Cugina".
IS IT ANY GOOD? It'll be welcomed by dj's who'll spot the chance for a fee and a night off, then it'll be loved by club owners who'll spot the chance to remove the cost of a dj from their bottom line and it'll always be welcomed by the beautiful creatures it's pitched at.
WHERE IS IT? www.supperclub.com

VARIOUS VARIOUS: "Fruits De Mer Vol 4, 5, 6 & 7" (Bracken Records)
RELEASED? We don't have a fucking clue.
SOUNDS LIKE? Right, we have, apparently, an 'album sampler' that samples four acts over four albums that are released 'all summer' and July and August. So, better crack on; Cranium Pie are an outfit who prefer to break into Blackpool theatres and record sumptuous, but playfully ponderous versions of old Beatles stuff, in this case it's "Baby You're A Rich Man" and it's worryingly more-ish, but their "Madman Running Through The Fields" is simply worrying as it spanks a load of prog-rock cliches before parping out. It's the kuddly and relentlessly kraut-rocking Vibravoid next and they gamely leap onto a double speed soundtrack for ancient Frankenstein films, the singer has a lisp and the guitarist is quite good. Then it's a man called Mark Fry, we feel like we know him already, he is mates with the record label guy, has a lovely wife, is released on transparent purple vinyl and should be filed under 'acid-folk', but we had a lot of that recently and filed Mark under 'hippy-drift', pleasant by firelight if you're trying to get a jumper off some body. Last up are The Flaming Gnomes and they cover an old Zombies track, "Care Of Cell 44" in a fairly true to the original, late sixties swirly pop style, though there is some rogue Pulp in there for sure. Their cover of Caravan's "Love Song With Flute" is a cover of a Caravan song.
IS IT ANY GOOD? Yes, no. Some of it's great, some of it's pure indulgence, but they're in there and swinging, eh?
WHERE IS IT? www.brackenrecords.com