Peshay: Miles From Home (Island Blue)
This album deserves praise for a variety of reasons, but mostly because Peshay has delivered in spades on what he has promised. A giddy rub of drum'n'bass with all kinds of jazz, hip-hop, funk and even disco seeping from the cracks, Peshay's debut is not so much one blueprint for what comes next as a complete series. From groovy breaks where you think of Chick Corea or Art Blakey (especially on the title track) to moments of great soulful insight (the breathy swings and roundabouts of Summer In The City), this is a collection which rarely falters in the heat. As for the artist's finely tuned drum'n'bass instincts, head to Switch or his head to head with Photek on P Vs P for reassurance on that score.
Jim Carroll
Elvis Costello: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (Universal Music TV)
Twenty-two years after My Aim Is True, Costello has wobbled in and out of vogue, sometimes overreaching himself, as on The Juliet Letters, his collaboration with The Brodsky Quartet; sometimes underachieving, as on 1984's Goodbye Cruel World, but more often hitting the mark with a sharp lyric and a curled sneer. This two-CD set covers all the Costello bases, from the New Wave assault of Armed Forces to the retro beat of Get Happy! right up to his recent collaboration with Burt Bacharach and his version of Charles Aznavour's She. Fireworks are inevitable as Costelloisseurs argue over the inclusion of Veronica or the omission of Mystery Dance: my only argument concerns the sheer volume of material here, 42 songs in total. We know he's a genius - there's no need to rub it in.
Kevin Courtney
Madder Rose: Goodbye June Fool (Cooking Vinyl)
This New York combo has been skulking along the back-streets of indie music for most of the 1990s, and their drizzly, moody sound fits nicely into the darker recesses of mainstream pop. Every now and then, however, the light catches Billy Cote's glistening guitar phrases and Mary Lorson's opalescent vocals, and this is when Madder Rose blossoms into more than just another bunch of arty New York grungeheads. The mix of scraping guitar, sauntering rhythms and gently swaying strings gives an urban folk flavour to songs such as Feels Like Summer, Fade and Should Have Known, but the frayed elegance of Overflow, Hotel and Train shows that Madder Rose are moving beyond the well-trodden neighbourhoods of American alterno-rock.
Kevin Courtney