Home and Away with gunshots and swearing. It's fairly average, a great, essentially true story but ruined by too many "only on TV moments." Way too many gratituous sex scenes, I'm as big a perve as anyone but if they don't move the story along they don't belong. A man having sex with his rival's girlfriend should stay, but a cop having sex with his live-in girlfriend should not. It doesn't affect anything. They should have jettisoned all of the soap opera elements. The basic true story is brilliant, as far as I know unprecedented in either fact or fiction. The "arc" is this, "Village idiot becomes kingpin" and they should have followed that more closely. Carl Williams was like a superhero whose special power was a cloke of sheer stupidity. No-one took him seriously and it cost many people their lives. As one of his ex-classmates said when he finally got arrested, "He always had the stupid grin on his face" "

I'd been meaning to buy Intriguer for quite a while now and on Saturday I saw it lurking on a shelf in HMV for £3. I normally try and avoid the Scarborough branch, as akin to public toilets, it's not pleasant, but at that price.... I also picked up Clint Eastwood's "Bird" DVD for £3, but it felt okay to do this. As I rode home on the coffin dodgers bus (3.30 oldies special) my thoughts turned to guilt,I have sinned Father Finn.As a fan, I really should have bought your album when it was first released, for the full asking price.I did go and see The Crowdies live a few months ago,so that's eradicated some of my guilt I guess! I've lived with the album for a few days now and it's a decent enough listen, but the songs haven't quite yet hit the mark,apart from "Twice If You're Lucky"; it's soaring feel good melody could sit comfortably alongside anything on Woodface Or Together Alone,but I will confess Father Finn, I'm glad I didn't pay the full asking price.

Well, it sounds like Cathal Coughlan. His fifth solo record (although this album is credited as Cathal Coughlan and the Grand Necropolitan Quartet) and the former Microdisney and Fatima Mansions man confidently presents another collection of the twisted narratives that we happy few know and love. Opener 'Shipman Memorial' is an upbeat, poppy number that recalls the later Microdisney. Catchy and slick but that acid wit is never far away. Language is Coughlan's medium, and his lyrics reward attention. He has a way with English that is elegant and precise, squalid and dark and humorous. The musical settings show off these black pearls to advantage, with theatrical themes and echoes of cabaret, jazz and odd touches of the electronic experimentation that were a feature of Fatima Mansions. Several tracks jump out with just a few listens: Best Say We're Not Serious; The Frond-Seller; Mr Bib's Saorstát Star Time; and the spoken-word, eerie Terylene Ghosts In The Sunshine.

Known for her weird voice from X Factor a couple of years ago, Vickers has released an album that, like many of her X Factor peers, is likely to be the only one. Unlike them, this record bears repeated listens. Her voice retains the pixie inflections that were called a weakness on the show, but combined with the songwriting here, it makes a lot more sense. "Once" the first single, is the most obvious song, but still contains enough weird twinkling keyboards to retain a unique pop charm. Elsewhere on the album, with songs written by talents such as Nerina Pallot and Lightspeed Champion, this is a diverse album that should lead to a decent career, but probably won't unfortunately. Recalling Massive Attack (Four Leaf Clover), Goldfrapp covering Mario theme (You'll Never Get To Heaven) and a Sugarcubes cover (Hit), this is a diverse album that, while similar to other wispy-vocalled releases this year, retains a certain level of individuality and playfulness.

Ms Teng has been a staple in my music collection for quite a few years, a wonderful exercise in piano-focused jazz/easy listening. On first listen, Inland Territory was markedly different from Warm Strangers, her previous album, and the gap becomes wider the further back in her discography one goes. The Vienna of old can still be heard in songs like "No Gringo", but there are enough twists in the rest of the album to keep it exciting, from glass bottles on "Radio" to the wind instruments in the back of "In Another Life". Of all the tracks, "Augustine" stands out the most, a strong piano and bell-filled song that's begging to be sung at the top of your voice.

Ever Challenging, ever artistically intriguing and ever- fervent and brilliant musician ship, the former Oxford uni boys are applying their great intelligence to the music once again, it would seem. It's a much more mature, much more conformed albm than their debut, but still throughout you get that sense that, just as Foals look like they might have decided on a destination, they pull out for a trickier route. And all the better for it. Whilst the playful pop bounce of " Miami" and the cinematic chorus "This Orient" Cling closely to the youthful exuberance of their debut, Foals drop most of that for a more haunting and mind- cloying experience. From Haunting opener "Blue Blood" to first single from the album and the surging "Spanish sahara," this is an album of daunting prowess, gloomy atmosphere and lush melodic-ism. Shying away has never sounded so good.

Meaty, beaty, big and boucy to steal a phrase. And there are some cracking tracks: Mind Games, with an introduction that sounds like Yellow Magic Orchestra; What We do, a big booming finger to anyone who says that their sound hasn't changed much (we know, and we don't care); Please Baby Please, which reminds me of Adam and the Ants with the synths turned up to 11. And nothing really awful at all, actually. I do have a copy of Hot Potatoes but don't listen to it much. This though, has been on my iPod pretty much constantly for a month.

Stirring, literate, socially aware music of the alt-country & northern (England) variety. 2007's Thirst for Romance was impressive, but this album ramps up the gloomy atmospherics, flawed characters, and gritty romance considerably. When you reach the comparatively upbeat 12th track "Black Fang" it really does feel like a shaft of light after a dark, dark journey. But it's beautiful, bruised stuff all the way.

At the risk of putting everyone off, this is a concept album that follows a narrator caring for an emotionally abusive partner who is dying from cancer. The lyrics are stunning, blending ‘reportage’ and imagery, dreams and wakefulness, capturing perfectly the sense of unreality that a life spent in and around a hospital brings and incisively documenting the twists and self-deception involved in an abusive relationship. This incredibly grim subject matter is given a range of beautiful, stirring musical settings. Brass sections uplift gentle acoustic ballads, electric guitars chime and sing; at least two songs have the kind of melodies that make you think “Surely I’ve heard that before – it can’t have taken however many hundreds of years of the western twelve note scale for someone to come up with a tune as moving as that”. Peter Silberman sings all of this in a voice that moves from Sufjan-style delicacy to a quavering emotionalism reminiscent of Buckley, J.

Growing up in the 70s with a passion for all things Prog, and with a long wait until the new Yes triple album came out, I found myself investigating some of the lesser known Prog bands. Bands like PFM, Greenslade and Pavlov's Dog played the Bolton Wanderers role to Yes's Manchester United. One of these 'stop-gaps' was Druid, who I first saw on a visit to Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry. Druid were a cross between early Yes and early Genesis, which, in my eyes, was no bad thing. After 30 years, I revisited their first album, Toward The Sun, on Spotify and was surprised at two things. Firstly, that they had managed to avoid being sued by either Yes or Genesis and secondly, at how much I enjoyed it.

Curiosity got the better of me. I had to purchase this cd to witness the bold tackling of a sacred cow. Many amongst us are not excited about cover versions. Me i love them if done properly. Ie. bring something new to the table. The Flaming lips do this and then some. From the opening it is clear this isnt going to be a note perfect facsimile. Many of the songs are unrecognisable until the words kick in but this is no bad thing. Opener Speak to me/Breathe grooves like a motherfucker and sets the scene for the rest of the album. Not intended as an official release I am glad Warner Brothers saw sense and put it out there.

If you've ever listened to We Are Scientists before, you may be aware that the consensus seems to be that 'Brain Thrust Mastery' wasn't classed as their best album. While I love practically every song they make from their acoustic sets, b-sides, and remixes this disappointingly short but marvellously crafted, musically gripping, lyrically astounding 10-tracker is perfection from start to finish. 'Rules Don't Stop,' the first song and first single is catchy, funky, and immense right down to 'Central AC' which, to be blunt, is next to epic. Now with drummer Andy Burrows on board as a permanent scientist, this album is hard, loud, smooth, punchy, tense, powerful and fast. We Are Scientists are back to the rock and indie hits of their first label album 'With Love and Squalor' with their popular favourites 'Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt' and 'The Great Escape'. If you've never listened to them before, start off with Barbara and prepare to be dazzled for the next 31 1/2 minutes.

The soundtrack to the most amazing Film Noir never made, this album is all about good girls gone bad and the men that made them that way. Picture a seedy bar, where the drinks are stiff and the customers keep themselves to themselves. At the piano in the corner a sultry siren sways softly as she sings you tales of heartbreak and revenge. Sabrina unpacks her troubles in a new location with each song, moving effortlessly from the burlesque theatre of “Never Been A Bad Girl” to the backstreet cafe of “Ze Paris Song” passing through a variety of speakeasies, blues joints, jazz bars and spit-and-sawdust saloons along the way. There is plenty of dark humour to be found in the lyrics, which match the genre shifts perfectly without being too clever and bring in a few modern touches amongst the old-fashioned musicality.

After a lull in production, criminally underrated band Delays are back with 'Star Tiger, Star Ariel'. As a fan of the band since their first album, I've found this album a fabulous mixture of more mellow songs, more spiky songs and a few that are in between the two extremes. Absolutely in love with the dreamy, serene lead song 'Unsung', which has some beautiful falsetto and guitar textures.

The Scissor Sisters know that there are few more spectacular sights in nature than that of splayed fingers pressing into a pair of tightly clad buttocks. Night Work is the soundtrack to that potent image and all of its latent promise. Less prone than its predecessors to play around with genres, the album gets straight down to the business of mining this single idea, with a title track that simulates being airdropped into the middle of a sweaty nightclub. You have to go a long way to find a song as brazenly slutty as ‘Any Which Way;’ its quest for “a man who smells like cocoa butter and cash,” and list of suggested sexual backdrops: “In front of the fireplace, in front of your yacht, in front of my parents...” The album is at its most inspired on ‘Invisible Light:’ A song waiting for an orgy to happen, whose spoken word interlude by Ian McKellen pitches it as a cross between ‘Thriller’ and a low fat version of ‘Welcome to the Pleasure Dome.’