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David Gilmour’s 2006 tour-closing show formed part of the 26th anniversary celebrations of Polish trade union federation Solidarity – an organisation whose actions did much to encourage the spread of democracy across Eastern Europe – and this epic live set (available in 2CD, 2CD/1DVD, 2CD/2DVD, 3CD/2DVD and vinyl versions) is more than worthy of the historic occasion. The Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra enhances ‘A Pocketful of Stones’, ‘High Hopes’ and several other Floyd/solo classics to glorious effect, but it’s the 25-minute take on ‘Echoes’ that proves the standout, even surpassing the original studio recording.
David Davies

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As the major label end of the record industry continues to self-destruct in front of our very eyes bands continue to look for other ways to get their music out there and Genuine Sun must surely be the first band ever to be promoted alongside penetrants and lubricants (and no, Blaster Chemicals are nothing to do with sex aids), but if that means more people might get to hear the grown up rock of Return then that’s no bad thing. AOR gets a pretty bad press in the UK’s ‘cool’ obsessed music media but done well it’s capable of shifting tons of units and Genuine Sun’s Foreigner-esque melodic rock is certainly done well.
Ray Harper

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There has been much huffing and bluster in the press of late concerning Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory’s ‘new’ direction, like everything recorded before Supernature wasn’t a dramatic departure from what had gone before or that chart success was the sole arbiter of quality, which is bollocks. One of Goldfrapp’s finest moments was the, far less successful sales-wise, Felt Mountain and this feels like the album fans were expecting to follow that before the glam stomping arrival of Black Cherry. Those looking for a genre to shoehorn this into can try retro psych/folk, just don’t expect more of the same next time around.
Drew Bass

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A ten disc SACD/DVD set which has pretty much everything any self respecting post Gabriel/Hackett Genesis fan could ever desire including the Genesis, Invisible Touch, We Can’t Dance and Calling All Stations albums – available separately if your wage packet won’t stretch (or if you just don’t want the largely rubbish post Collins Calling All Stations effort) – mixed in 5.1 and expanded to include extra DVD’s packed with all manner of eye-candy including videos, rehearsal and live footage, interviews, tour doc’s and all topped off with a case bound 48 page booklet. The perfect Christmas gift for your Genesis loving partner.


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Recorded live with Benjamin Rippert, Bugge Wesseltoft and Philippe Nadaud over a six month period in 2006 – being created in fact whilst last years career spanning Retrospective compilation was being released – this set should finally lay to rest the lazy, and wrongheaded, assertions that Garnier is just a DJ, introducing radical reworkings of older material alongside some brand new jams Public Outburst is part squiggly electronica, part hip hop, part drum and bass and a wholly jazz-mungous, walloping great monster of an album which, after lulling you into a false sense of security on opener ‘63’, grabs you by the wobbly bits and refuses to let go.


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For those of you that have been living in a large soundproofed hole for the last six months this is the ‘foul-mouthed, noisy and hairy’ side project of Bad Seeds' Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos – who, as a recent press release quite rightly pointed out, are ‘damn well old enough to know better’. Recalling Cave's notorious old outfit the Birthday Party, guitars are overloaded and drenched in grunged up effects, drums are pummelled and Cave is in fine testifying form, as they run the gamut from fast and fierce to slightly slower and, umm, fierce. Makes you feel delightfully grubby just listening to it.


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You just know that an African-American left handed rock guitarist is going to get ‘those’ comparisons – it’s a journalist thing, we can’t help it – but in truth Eric Gales has far more in common with the muscular blues-rock of Stevie Ray Vaughan (who was himself compared favourably to Hendrix back in the day), and yes, he does have the chops to stand alongside both of the above marrying bluesy licks, lightning runs and grungy pyrotechnics, he can sing a bit too. Older readers will hear everything from Robin Trower to Albert King here but Gales is definitely his own man and a prodigious talent to boot.


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Those of you that recall the great Oasis vs. Blur wars fought a decade past will doubtless recall Oasis were widely held to have emerged victorious, but longevity will always out where talent is in question and whilst Liam Gallagher is now officially the least talented member of a band who have spent much of the interim time struggling, his opposite number has continued to balance experimentation and chart success, flitting between world music, R&B, hip hop, rock, pop and reggae and this is no exception - part Parklife, part Clash style London dub, part Gorillaz lope, part melodic pop, apocalyptically gloomy and 100% British.


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Those of you keen on your techno but who prefer not re-mortgaging your house for limited edition 12” white labels will be overjoyed to see this rarity peppered collection of masterful, sometimes minimal, sometimes jazzy, occasionally acidic and often wry techno gems from legendary French DJ Laurent Garnier – an ace face in the late-'80s Madchester scene who later helped found F Communications. Dance music may be in the doldrums right now but tracks like ‘Acid Eiffel’, ‘Man With The Red Face’ and of course techno lodestone ‘Crispy Bacon’ still sound as groundbreaking as they did back when black boxes were far sexier than guitars.


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Often, wrongly, lumped in with the whole acoustic nu-folk scene, although what she does certainly qualifies as British folk music, occasionally mentioned, also wrongly, in the same breath as angry young women like Alanis (she’s far more literate), Thea Gilmore is a managers nightmare, positively overloaded with talent but totally unclassifiable, which in our neat little world of genre boxes is a major problem. So, for the record, Gilmore is possibly the finest lyricist to emerge from the UK in a decade, is as prolific as fuck (this is album seven and she has at least three more ready to go), and the fact she is not a huge star is a bloody travesty.


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Only a daft sod would consider purchasing an album because the word ‘supergroup’ was bandied around reviews (certainly nobody here is given to wearing their pants outside their trousers), but in truth if people of the calibre of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy, Big Star's Jody Stephens and the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, Marc Perlman and Kraig Johnson are involved you can’t go far wrong can you? Actually no, you can't, and whilst fans of the above bands will generally be able to tell who has written which song - even if they don't sing it - this still has a very pleasing overall coherence.


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Whilst the NME dubbed shoegazing movement had more than it’s fair share of mundane floppy fringed chancers it was not without it’s inspirational moments, many of them supplied by this man and his then pals The Cocteau Twins and, as you might imagine, on the first run through Continental’s ten instrumental tracks you do find yourself awaiting a bout of Elizabeth Fraser’s ululations. However on second and third listens you find yourself sucked deeper and deeper into the bewitching crepuscular sound-scapes, standout track ‘The Day Star’ building into a positive hailstorm of layered guitar howling.


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Giving old friend Kate Bush a run for her money on the reticence stakes, On An Island is David Gilmour’s first new music of any kind since 1994 Floyd release The Division Bell. But it has been worth the wait, as On An Island is bewitchingly beautiful – and never more so than on the title track, which combines heavenly Crosby/Nash harmonies and an extraordinary extended solo. More subtle and diverse than recent Floyd product, there is room for poised instrumentals (‘Then I Close My Eyes’, featuring Robert Wyatt) and string-touched rockers (‘Take A Breath’). Gilmour’s sublime guitar is the constant.


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Celebrating the former Deep Purple front-mans fortieth year in the business, Gillan’s Inn is a quirky beast, being a DualDisc (CD one side DVD on the flip), on which he has chosen to reinterpret tracks cherry picked from his long career. So we’re not exactly breaking new ground here – and die-hard fans may baulk at some of the reinventions – but guest stars like Tony Iommi, John Lord, Ian Paice, and Roger Glover and the DVD footage (including your choice of Joe Satriani, Jeff Healy or Steve Morse guitar solo’s on 'Smoke On The Water', live and studio footage and Gillan's commentary on every track), ensure fans will find much to love.


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OK, so it’s easy to sneer at sixty odd thousand people cheering maniacally just because Billie Joe yells ‘England’ (which he does, a lot), the earnest DVD interview links raise more than a few unintentional laughs and Tré Fool (sorry Cool, yeesh) is officially the dopiest human being on the planet bar none but Green Day only know one way to play live and that’s to run around like nutters, cranking out punk derived full metal clatter and whilst us old buggers will moan that we’ve seen it all before the Milton Keynes audience clearly had an absolute blast. If you loved American Idiot you will adore Bullet In A Bible.

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David Gray
Life In Slow Motion (Atlantic/iht)

His seventh album (yup, you read right, hands up who thought it was just White Ladder and maybe one or two more?), and for those of us who have followed with interest the mans career either side of his ‘eight times platinum in the UK’ smash this is yet another in a long list of proper grown up pop music, indeed possibly his best since White Elephant, erm Ladder. Working for the first time with a producer (Madonna’s buddy Marius De Vries), Life In Slow Motion is beautiful varied collection of lyrically thoughtful, sonically muscular songs, which prove beyond doubt, if proof were needed, that Gray is one of our finest singer songwriters

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Goldfrapp
Supernature (Mute)

The return of the divine Ms G and the cuddly Mr G (that’s Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory respectively), with an album pitched more or less equidistantly between the glacial beauty of their first album and the rude disco squelch of their second, sort of like Kraftwerk in a head on glam pile up with Kate Bush and Siouxie Sioux – although the comparison does neither Alison’s vocal range or Will’s arrangement skills justice. But a word of warning, dip into this sexy, exotic, pulsating stew at your peril, as you’re likely to come over all of a dither and need a sit down with a nice cup of tea

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Gorillaz
Demon Days (EMI)

There’s something about presenting your music in cartoon format that gets some music fans (and critics), in a bit of of a tizzy, perhaps because many people confuse cartoon images with comedy – perhaps they haven’t seen graphic novels like Alan Moore’s From Hell? Whatever, and neatly sidestepping the fact that the Gorillaz website is chock full of laffs, Demon Days is seriously dark stuff, beautifully realised, effortlessly executed and overflowing with bucket loads of great ideas. Once again Damon Albarn proves to be the very best kind of a musical sponge, hoovering up influences and leaving a trail of quality recordings in his wake.


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Garbage
Bleed Like Me (WEA)

Four albums into a massively successful career - their eponymous debut sold four million, the follow up Version 2.0 barely less - and Garbage roll out another collection built around their unique mixture of 'ultra modern production and traditional songwriting' and, in the main at least, it’s back to the initial blueprint - after third album beautifulgarbage's dalliance with Spector-esque production and '60s bubblegum pastiche. Riffs crunch, drums thunder and pop hooks abound. In fact quite why Garbage aren't up there with U2 and REM is a constant source of confusion to many, as there's no better rock outfit making pop music today.


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Go-Betweens
Oceans Apart (Lo-Max)

Refloating the good ship Go-Between in 2000 - after the intervening solo years found both men struggling to rediscover their muse - Robert Forster and Grant McLennan then promptly struggled to rediscover what it was that made their previous outfit such a class act, and whilst both The Friends Of Rachel Worth and Bright Yellow Bright Orange had flashes of the old magic the overall results were mixed. Five years on and we now have Oceans Apart and praise be if both men aren’t back firing on all cylinders updating their youthful muse into delightful, thoughtful, intelligent proper grown up pop songs


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Laurent Garnier
The Cloud Making Machine (F Communications)

The latest offering from the leading Gallic exponent of thudding dance-floor mayhem is in fact not a dance album at all, but that dance-floor scoundrels refuge ‘the soundtrack to an imaginary film’, wherein the glorified DJ bins the decks and get’s all arty on our collective asses. Only when you’re as full of ideas as Mr G - see also his previous excellent, and sadly overlooked, album Unreasonable Behaviour - then you probably have films roaming around in your head on a regular basis (which must be a bit disconcerting). so the act of sound-tracking one is in fact eminently reasonable, and the end results, whilst tailing off slightly at the end, are once again effortlessly fine.


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Alex Gold
Back From A Break (Xtravaganza)

It’s been pointed out before and doubtless will be pointed out again that dance music is currently dead (rock is still the current ‘new black’, but beware, it’s on the wane), naturally real music fans don’t buy into genre wars in quite the same way ‘style makers’ do, something is either good or it ain’t and, on the whole, this is. No big surprises mind you from this progressive trance DJ much lauded in Ibizan circles – the title refers to his recovery from a serious paragliding accident which left him with a broken back – but his first artist album is none the worse for all that, and hits all the buttons you would both expect and hope for


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