ERIC CHENAUX - Sloppy Ground

Anyone who's ever witnessed Eric Chenaux's playing (whether jazz guitar in Drumheller, free improvisation in The Draperies, Guayaveras and countless other permutations, 'standards' old and modern in The Reveries, or his own singing songs) is aware of his ability to floor without fanfare, letting his music speak for itself with soul and dignity, fusing forms with a tender, studied ease. Chenaux's second set for Constellation finds the de facto Rat-drifting ambassador digging deeper into his Scots-style reels in particular, aided by, among many others, David Prentice's violin and Nick Fraser's tattoo rolls.

RYAN DRIVER - Feeler Of Pure Joy

Timed for release alongside Eric Chenaux's Sloppy Ground is frequent collaborator (in The Guayaveras, Draperies, and Reveries) Ryan Driver's first solo set, recorded last fall and produced with fellow Reverie Jean Martin. Touching on the kind of woozy country Driver sings with The silt, yet ranging out with falsetto yodellers "Time And Trouble" and "Spinning Towers" (both already live staples at this point), assists from Martin, Chenaux, Andrew Downing, Jennifer Castle and Martin Arnold flesh out another dreamy nethergenre missive from Planet Rat-drifting.

ERYKAH BADU - New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War

With Madlib supplying two of his best recent beats with "The Healer" and "My People", YNQ affiliate Karriem Riggins chopping up flutes and sub-bass for surefire single "Soldier", and Sa-Ra getting particularly behind the beat Dilla-style on "Master Teacher" and "That Hump" (the former tune gifted to the project by Georgia Anne Muldrow, jazzing it up on keys at mid-song turnaround), it's not only clear that Badu put in serious work for her newest, but also that those she selectively surrounded herself with knew they were a part of something big. Right up there with Voodoo in my books...

BILL COSBY - Badfoot Brown & The Bunions Bradford Funeral & Marching Band

Heady, jammy jazz-funk not unlike what Miles Davis concocted one year earlier with Bitches Brew (as much admitted by Cosby himself in the enjoyably digressive liners), the reverberating parade drum left to boom by itself at key passages of "Martin's Funeral" is the one instrument here evoking the players' alias (only Bill's named outright, but perhaps counting The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band among them?), augmented by timbales and trap kit. Guitars dryly scratch akin to what McLaughlin and Sharrock were dishing out at the time, as dual basslines weave around a four-chord electric piano vamp, sampled in '93 by A Tribe Called Quest for "We Can Get Down".

NICK LOWE - Jesus Of Cool

Trying on and sending up as many styles as depicted on the technicolour cover, Lowe's debut (released in North America as Pure Pop For Now People at the time) jumps from disco- and reggae-fied new-wavery to 10cc-like lite balladry, rockabilly sass and spirited pub-rock, already cynical as hell after years with Brinsley Schwarz and as go-to producer for Stiff. It's been a few months since its re-release, but better late than never for a mention on the site, especially considering the pretty-much-unanimous love for it among us staffers. I'd be shocked if it didn't end up being voted our reissue of the year!

VETIVER - Thing Of The Past

Aficionados of Andy Cabic's caravan may already be hip to many of these covers, having possibly heard the touring band assembled for To Find Me Gone playing from this very songbook during their past few visits to town. The laidback layered harmonies on Elyse Weinberg's "Houses" betray relations to Gary Louris' Vagabonds sessions (on which Cabic guested, and with whom the Vetiver live band has toured and backed up), while Vashti Bunyan sleepily tackles private-press little-known Dia Joyce. Includes Cabic and company's take on Loudon Wainwright III's eminently repeatable "The Swimming Song".

DUFFY - Rockferry

Domestically available after a two-month wait on this side of the pond, much has already been made in the British press of the collaboration between this brassy Welsh belter and producer Bernard Butler, garnering many comparisons to Mark Ronson's success with Amy Winehouse. Even though Duffy has yet to foist any equivalent personal drama on the public, don't hold that against her, as Rockferry's ways may be less in-your-face, but similarly borrowing from classic soul songstresses while putting a contemporary, accessible pop spin on it all.

VA - Good God! Soul Messages From Dimona

The Numero Group's second installment in their Good God! series (ever-cryptically displaying such info on its sleeve in Hebrew only) finds Chicago's intrepid soul-seekers shedding light on South Side expats Charles "Hezekiah" Blackwell, Thomas "Yehudah" Whitfield and John "Shevat" Boyd, all converts to Judaism led by Garveyite Ben Ammi Carter to move first to Liberia in the late '60s, then to Dimona, Israel in the early '70s, tracking Old Testament gospel soul as The Soul Messengers along with backup women's choir The Spirit Of Israel and Shevat's son's "kid group" The Tonistics.

VA - Spiritual Jazz: Esoteric, Modal And Deep Jazz From The Underground 1968-77

Jazzman follows the successes of such series as Sister Funk and The World's Rarest Funk 45s with another considered compilation of the hard-to-find, this time focusing on their namesake genre. James Tatum's "Introduction" kicks it off with a cool, Oliver Nelson-style horn chart, but the Persian zither of Lloyd Miller's "Gol-E-Gandom" soon takes us into the out and exotic, with other unexpected flavours including the funked-up African choir on Mor Thiam's "Ayo Ayo Nene", the baritone narration recounting The Positive Force's tale of "The Afrikan In Winter", and Frank Derrick and Ronnie Boykin's forays in 7/8.

PHILIP JECK - Sand

Following a collaboration with Alter Ego on Gavin Bryars' re-recording of The Sinking Of The Titanic in late '07, an end-of-year classical/experimental highlight, Jeck returns to solo mode, recording live sets and editing the MiniDisc'ed results, adding a dash of post-production to these seemingly semi-improvised pieces. Having now contributed a number of albums to Touch, Sand continues to patiently mix droning ambience and clacking looped-skip rhythms, all built up from scratch with old LPs played on multiple Dansette turntables and manipulated with a Casio sampling keyboard and effects.

LYKKE LI - Little Bit EP

The third EP featured this week (!), this domestic debut (produced and co-written by Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John) packs the most pop punch of the lot, as Li uses its 15-minute format to best briefly state her case and make a memorable first impression. Bolstered by production with a spirit similar to Hanne Hukkelberg's kitchen-sink style or Gonzales and Mocky's work with Feist, "Little Bit"'s steel pan-like mandolin and the subtly whacked sax, trumpet and flute in the backgrounds of "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "Everybody But Me" prove creative enough to almost upstage their star.

THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS - The Age Of The Understatement

Off to a galloping start, Alex Turner and Miles Kane's collaboration is anything but understated, with enough 'cinematic' twang, hall reverb and string parts (conducted by Owen Pallett) to suggest that the boys could be itching to escape said age for its 35-minute duration. Admirers may well enjoy Turner indulging his inner Walker Brother, but considering this project's clear ambitions, the arrangements often hang like window dressing; most of these songs could easily be reconfigured as Arctic Monkeys numbers. Still, if there's room for both The Raconteurs and The White Stripes in this world... 

FOUR TET - Ringer

A 32-minute mini-album that sees Kieran Hebden stretch out and flex some tech-house muscle, our man Four Tet sets his jazzier inclinations to the side (for the most part--his trusty swinging cymbal work does crop up for a spell near the end of "Ringer" proper, while "Wing Body Wing" shakes off some drum rolls under the four-on-the-floor), possibly setting his sights on the revered likes of Carl Craig, and holding his own in that big-room arena admirably. File next to Autechre's Quaristice as more revitalizing '08 IDM on the artist's own terms. Break out your glowsticks, and catch that shuttle bus!

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE - Water Curses

Another slim, murky-green, 4-song stopgap EP like Prospect Hummer from AC's FatCat years, Avey Tare's vocals dominate even more than on last year's Strawberry Jam, singing lead on every tune. The title track zips past in hyperactive waltz time, its sampled cutups and crammed melody the closest thing here to Jam, while the rest of the sequence loosens up and cools down with rhythmic guitar delays on "Street Flash", the quasi-Indo "Cobwebs" luring the listener "out in the night", and ambient gurgles with piano that plays out like one of Tare and Kria Brekkan's side-project cuts for finale "Seal Eyeing".

PORTISHEAD - Third

Presumably named after that yawning 10-year gap between albums, "Silence" commands with rolling toms and a confounding 15-beat figure. Adding hues richer than remembered to tunes otherwise fitting into their sound of old ("Hunter" and "Plastic"'s distorted interruptions; "Small"'s Deep Purple organ wheeze), the band also delves into out-and-out new territory, getting their feet wet with the to-a-tee Silver Apples homage "We Carry On" before back-to-back 180s on uke ballad "Deep Water" and industrial drumpad pattern "Machine Gun", an act at their stark and versatile best on both.

THE ROOTS - Rising Down

With ?uestlove reportedly forcing Kamal to lay off his trusty Fender Rhodes and stick to his synthesizers, Rising Down is at very least one sinister-sounding collection. Fela's "Mr. Grammarticologylisationalism" gets flipped for "I Will Not Apologize", making the high guitar sound like downhome picking and G-funking up the organ solos. Maybe more compelling than the actual songs might be the messy incidental bits left for us snoops to scrutinize, namely the screaming or confiding (but always frustrated) phone banter bookending things, as well as forty-second backwards-masked "Becoming Unwritten", its snare dragging across the beat like a junkyard chain.

ROBYN - S/T

Hearing the blog-ballyhooed Swede acting hard and taking on R&B "realness" on most of these tracks is ridiculous no matter how you slice it, unfortunate since when this woman ditches the Don King skits and Prince pottymouth and goes straight for the pop jugular as on Kleerup collab "With Every Heartbeat", she's bubblegum diva supreme. (Speaking of "Heartbeats", it's all too sadly expectedly cookie-cutter of The Knife to have their turn at producing Robyn, "Who's That Girl", sound just like an imitation of their aforementioned. Since most of this came out in '05 on import, though, this is all old news to fans.) 

PONY DA LOOK - Shattered Dimensions

Local synthpop oddballs Pony Da Look (named after an ex-roommate of theirs and ex-employee of ours, if you're so curious) resurface to find themselves now signed (along with Will Currie & The Country French) to longtime friends and supporters Sloan's revived Murderecords imprint. Number-one-fan Chris Murphy goes so far as to call the ladies' songs "witch music", and he's not far off, with the rest of the coven often chiming in to chant along with or against Amy Bowles' high-camp, bug-eyed brogue.

EL PERRO DEL MAR - From The Valley To The Stars

Whereas her self-titled '06 debut long-player came off like a demure girl-group of one, there's a presence lording over Sarah Assbring for her El Perro Del Mar persona's second CD, making the music even airier as the skies widen to bring in the Gothenburg Symphonic Choir and church organ as recurring components; even some massed recorders refresh the congregation on more than one occasion. With all these new vestments sanctifying the sparseness, Assbring's intonements seem both sadder and more hopeful, a sentiment succinctly put in "Into The Sunshine"'s wishes to "go back into the sun."

ELBOW - The Seldom Seen Kid

As unshakeable as Coldplay comparisons continue to be when it comes to Guy Garvey's default croon, Elbow's keen ears in the studio keep them a cut above, toying with touches like opener "Starlings"' startling orchestral hits that jump out of a burbling bed of arpeggiated triplets, or "Grounds For Divorce"'s gospel-blues tinge. Although it hasn't yet been singled out for UK chart action, the group'd be wise to let "Weather To Fly" out in the open, a song light and catchy enough to hang chorusless for as long as it pleases.