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POP
U2
No Line On The Horizon (Mercury)
***
After years spent becoming the most popular band on the planet, No Line On The Horizon should mark the end of U2's years of consolidation. It's more engaging than its predecessors All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb — the gorgeous Moment of Surrender and the haunting Cedars of Lebanon are up there with their best work. The bad news is that there are clunkers — such as Get On Your Boots, an inferior relative of Elvis Costello's Pump It Up — and that they parted company with producer Rick Rubin.It's a perfectly competent U2 album, but they really need to shake things up next time.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

The Brighton Port Authority
I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
(Southern Fried)
***
Norman Cook flopped five years ago with his last album as Fatboy Slim. Now he's sneaking back into society under a new moniker: The Brighton Port Authority. Not much else has changed — his cartoonish pop and rubbery basslines are familiar on Toe Jam, and He's Frank is a ringer for The Rockafeller Skank — though the samples have been replaced by guest singers including David Byrne and Iggy Pop. But Cook's become more subtle in his old age. Emmy The Great wafts delightfully over understated groove Seattle but other tracks can irritate, a sure sign that it's our Norm.
DAVID SMYTH

The Answer
Everyday Demons
(Albert Productions)
***
There is something reassuring about Northern Ireland's heavy rock outfit The Answer. They fit so snugly into the genre that this record could have been made any time during the past 30 years. Cormac Neeson shrieks like a man threatened with a cattle prod, while guitarist Paul Mahon makes his axe howl. The rhythm section is a runaway train. They are currently supporting AC/DC on a world tour and that is as it should be. To be fair, The Answer are not content simply to assault the cerebral cortex, having the ability to take it down a notch or two on songs such as Cry Out and Why'd You Change Your Mind?
PETE CLARK

JAZZ
Courtney Pine
Transition in Tradition
(Destin-E)
****
Approaching his prime, Courtney Pine looks back beyond Coltrane, bebop and swing to Sidney Bechet, a New Orleans icon from the dawn of saxophone history. Clarinettist Bechet discovered a soprano sax on a visit to London in 1919 and a new sound was born. London's multi-reed maestro also plays a lot of soprano sax and bass clarinet these days, clearly relating to the power and pride in Bechet's music. Tributes to Jamaican alto-sax star Joe Harriott and Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture also figure in a landmark album premiered at Ronnie Scott's tomorrow night.
JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Chango Spasiuk
Pynandi
(World Village)
****
An accordionist from Argentina, Chango Spasiuk has inherited a traditional peasant style called chamamé but made something cool and contemporary out of it, rather as Astor Piazzolla did with tango. Tierra Colorada is a tribute to the red land of north-east Brazil. It is dance music with an edgy dissonance and wonderful accordion playing from Spasiuk and violin from Victor Renaudeau. There's lyrical melancholy in Tristeza, playfulness in Infancia. This is a superb disc from a musician of international stature but deeply rooted in his music. He's playing at the Union Chapel tomorrow.
SIMON BROUGHTON