Takers and Leavers - Dr. Dog
Release type, label: EP, Rough Trade
Release Date: October 2 2006
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The Strokes have a lot to answer for.

The 2001 releases of their Is This It album, along with the White Stripes’ White Blood Cells spawned a surge of retro acts, and many a band even strove to imitate the imitators themselves. We were landed with groups riding on the coat-tails of others: the laboured regression that was Audioslave, the childish musical and literal posturing of The Darkness, the impressively flat sound of the Raveonettes.

But, out from the mire, we enjoyed some genuine musical advances. The Strokes live on. The synth-heavy Killers produced more complex, layered music than their forebears. Dr. Dog, as the set of stars above has already told you, now joins the best of these bands. Their strength lies in the loving loyalty that they bring to their retrospection. The character of these songs is light and celebratory, with songs like stand-out ‘Goner’ approaching the quality of the finely balanced harmonies and piano-led ballads that the Beatles and Beach Boys brought to music in the '60s.

As with the White Stripes, but with a much more strictly retro sound, the lo-fi recording places vocals at the centre of the mix in a refreshingly simple way, a genuine treat in today's Coldplay- and Radiohead-led sad song climate. They improve on their predecessors not with anachronistic, trendy lyrics or heavy bass, but with gentle and moving, even Floydesque guitarwork. The past can try to be the future, and sometimes it may even succeed.

Ensemble - Ensemble
Release type, label: album, Fat Cat
Release date: Sep 25 2006
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Olivier Alary's work carried out in his Ensemble guise is an album of sensitively produced music, combining samples, synth and more conventional instruments in a clever way, making it sound like a natural union. So why doesn't it move you?

The problem is that Ensemble, by Ensemble – but really by Olivier Alary – with its neutrally-sung, meticulously choreographed vocals by various guesting indie heart-throbs, fails to be emotionally involving. Those numerous identities and that trendy instrumentation just don't gel into a convincing whole.

However there's still something there for an Alary fan - the previously released ‘Disown, Delete’, with Chad Marshall of Cat Power on vocals, strikes an ideal balance between music, lyrics and voice - but why not just buy the single? The other songs are neither lyrically strong nor vocally ‘cast’ very appropriately to fit the various identities demanded by the songs.

That's the big problem with collaborations. On paper they look like they're going to unify the creative powers of some major talents into an inspired whole and pull in the audiences of all the artists to sell big, but what usually happens is that the resulting works show us exactly why people are in small bands rather than sprawling collectives: not everyone was meant to work together.

In this case the sensitively pensive mood of the music is usually offset by an overly twee sound, for example of Mileece crooning melodramatically about failures on beautifully constructed opener ‘Summerstorm’ or singing about ‘glitter and sparkle’ on ‘All We Leave Behind’. So we are left with an album, frankly like most others out there today, that is a front runner both technologically and in terms of instrumentation, but which fails to consistently match the quality of its central song. This album might have been a very different story if Marshall had been the sole vocal contributor, so hopefully Alary will do more work with the rich-voiced feline in times to come.

This joins the ranks of countless other ensembles that need to understand one another better.

Working For A Nuclear Free City - Working For A Nuclear Free City
Release type, label: album, Melodic
Release date: Aug 21 2006
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With positive reviews from the regional press, Nuclear Free are rising stars in the Manchester Scene. They have an amusing name and their minimal cover art looks so trendy that it might do well at the Tate gift shop. They can play, and the range of subgenres their work embraces will be familiar to many. So why not make this the next CD you buy? Precisely because it is so familiar.

It covers the same ground already driven into itself by Kasabian and the various 90's indie bands that inspired that group. The vocals’ laid back, heavily accented style often reminds you of Ian Brown, complemented by more bass and percussion heavy dance numbers that indie bands of the ilk of Mansun, Space and even the Stone Roses used to break up what would otherwise have been overly poppy albums. We've heard this all before, and although it's not an embarassment by any means, it's a case of once more without feeling.

I can see this record used in the background at clubs to provide a general mood, but at home without pints to protect it, this album does not reward more attentive listening. Having said this, the songs ‘Innocence’ and ‘Over’, in which the music is allowed to develop, rather than remaining stuck in the repetitive pastiche of most of the others (‘Tape’ being a particularly dull case in point), are solid songs. So the band is not without promise of producing something more genuinely expressive in the future.

Nux Vomica - The Veils
Release type, label: album, Rough Trade

Release date: Sep 18 2006
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When the the first wails of Finn Andrews’ throaty voice rasp out from the speakers at the start of Vomica, you know that a different kind of recording is in store. Different from your average rock, yes, but also pleasingly an improvement on 2004’s Runaway Found, praise for which has adorned many a promotional web site for the last couple of years.

Just as Nux-v has been prescribed to induce sickness to purge the body, this music purges it’s author’s feelings and spits them out at us with vigour, and God do we enjoy every drop. It soars from folk to melodic pop, into metal and back downtempo to soothing piano ballad with each stride, often in the same song. If you liked ‘More Heat Than Light’ from that first LPer, this should be right up your oesophagus.

Losing the original three other band members and bringing two fresh New Zealand compatriots to sunny London for this year’s album has apparently worked wonders for Andrews. Where before live shows failed to be represented by the mostly restrained pop-punk composition found on disc, this time the music and even more expressive vocals have put him straight into the premier league with Messrs Cave and Buckley. Get your ass to a pokey little Rough Trade shop and congratulate the staff for their company’s wisdom in getting The Veils signed twice. Then go to a proper store and buy a copy at a reasonable price.