The latest releases reviewed

ELBOW
Seldom Seen Kid Fiction ****

Paradoxically, Elbow have pulled off a bleakly uplifting album on their fourth full-length release.

It's a more luscious and varied affair than its predecessors, and you won't hear a better song than the opener, Starlings, which comes across like a turbo-charged Mercury Rev. Elsewhere, the quality control doesn't waver for a single beat, with the riff-heavy Grounds for Divorce being just one of many highlights. The beguilingly woozy Audience with the Pope and the beautifully brooding ballad that is Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver speak of a band who are hitting a new creative stride and flexing previously dormant muscles. Richard Hawley drops in for the skewed cabaret of Fix, and the sombre closer Friend of Ours is almost neo-classical in its intricate arrangement. A stunning collection which doubles as a master class in how to execute evocative music. BRIAN BOYD

Download tracks: Starlings, Audience with the Pope, Friend of Ours

THE RUBY SUNS
Sealion Memphis Industries ****

A song praising your home country's oldest tree is, let's face it, unusual, especially when it's in Maori. But Tane Mahuta crams in big brass, tribal beats and flamenco guitars. The result will have you thinking of hip-jiggling grass-skirts. This is just one offbeat cog in an album that resists categorisation. The New Zealand trio have amassed record collections and geographical experiences that filter into an album of sound experiments: a dollop of crowd noise here, a pinch of amplifier someone forgot to turn off there. From Beach Boys vocal slants and shoe-gazing drones to Polynesian folk and African rhythms, it's by turns hypnotic and catchy. Oh, Mojave is all foot stamps and dervish rhythms, while Ole Rinka fires up prog-synths with twinkling glockenspiels. World music if it had been used on a 1950s film soundtrack (South Pacific maybe?) www.memphis-industries.com  SINÉAD GLEESON

Download tracks: Blue Penguin, Tane Mahuta, Oh Mojave

ENRICO CONIGLIO & ELISA MARZORATI
dyanMU Psychonavigation ****

Italian electro-ambient composer Enrico Coniglio's second release on the fine Dublin Psychonavigation label sees him team up with Swiss-Italian piano virtuosa Elisa Marzorati. It was Marzorati's 2006 recording of Debussy's 24 Preludes for Solo Piano that inspired dyanMU's experimental mingling

of impressionistic (and sometimes sassily jazz-inflected) piano figures with minimalist loops, samples and drones. Coniglio is clearly more than at home on Planet Plugin, but he doesn't distract overmuch with ostentatious noodling. And his tact is not lost on Marzorati, who offers rich, whole-tone atmospherics rather than acrobatic busyness. There are even entire tracks where the two musicians, as if in mutual homage, stay out of each other's way altogether. A low-key beaut, well worth your euros. www.enrico coniglio.com/www.elisamarzorati.com DARAGH Ó'DÚBHÁIN

Download tracks: Mothlight, Cableway

VARIOUS
Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story 1980-1986 Strut ****

It was one of Chris Blackwell's many good ideas. The geezer who set up Island Records and helped turn Bob Marley into a global superstar established the Compass Point recording studios in the Bahamas in 1977. Many bands recorded there, including U2, AC/DC and The Rolling Stones, but this compilation concentrates on the dubby, spacey grooves from its post-punk, new- wave and reggae clients, many of whose recordings feature rhythm twins Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. What's remarkable about the cuts from Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads, Grace Jones and Will Powers (photographer Lynn Goldsmith's one-off recording project) is how darn current they still sound, with Tom Tom Club's Genius of Love in particular displaying much low-slung, funky magnificence. www.strut-records.com  JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Tom Tom Club, Genius of Love; Talking Heads, Born Under Punches; Will Powers, Adventures in Success

THE B-52S
Funplex Astralwerks ***

Sixteen years after their last album, The B-52s still enjoy pushing kitsch as far as aurally possible - Love Shack style. Funplex is a fluorescent cocktail of electro-pop and punk with surfer harmonies, a hedonistic ode to shopping, dancing and sex: "I am a fully eroticised being!" Deviant Ingredient shouts. Having dubbed themselves "the world's greatest party band", they haven't aged a note. Pump's opening raunchy beats make toe-tapping compulsory, and, with just two (comparatively) down-tempo tracks to nine dance-floor fillers, Funplex's manic whirligig effect can induce motion sickness. But what its whizzing electronics drive home is the fact that the likes of New Young Pony Club and Hot Chip stand on the shoulders of giants - camp, synth-hugging giants who party hard. www.myspace.com/theB52s   DEANNA ORTIZ

Download Tracks: Funplex, Deviant Ingredient, Juliet of the Spirits