CDs of the week

POP

Lady Sovereign
Public Warning (Def Jam)
***
After two years on the cusp of stardom, tiny London rapper Louise Harman has finally delivered her debut album. The delay is partly due to the fact that hip hop demi-god Jay-Z took a shine to her cheeky charms, so she preferred to try her luck in America first, but this brash collection is still as British as they come. Sov spins tales about Safeway, the Vicar of Dibley, hoodies, the Antiques Roadshow and "the ginge from Girls Aloud", all delivered with back-of-the-bus bravado over bouncy electropop. She's so hyperactive she can irritate - the incessant title track in particular is virtually unlistenable - but catchy highlights such as My England and Love Me or Hate Me should provide those long-awaited hits. David Smyth

Mika
Life in Cartoon Motion (Casablanca)
****
Occupying the top spot in the singles chart with the gloriously camp romp that is Grace Kelly, Mika has so far justified his presence in all those "ones to watch out for in 2007" lists. But an album is the real test of an artist's viability - and it's one the Lebanon-born singer has passed with ease, delivering consistently well-crafted pop tunes that buzz with energy.
Combining the richness of Robbie Williams's low notes with a falsetto, Mika's vocal range is best shown on the upbeat, retro-flavoured Love Today, one of many potential hits. By the time he gets to Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), a bouncy tribute to fuller-figured women, it's clear that in the face of Mika's irrepressible sense of fun, resistance is futile. Chris Elwell-Sutton

Bloc Party
A Weekend in the City )(Wichita)
***
In 2005 Bloc Party gatecrashed the Top Three with Silent Alarm, an album so unsatisfactory they were forced to release a wholly remixed version within months. Much rests on the follow-up. Surprisingly perhaps, they've jettisoned the bumbling half-baked slogans in favour of something more substantial. A Weekend in the City is a sort of concept album.
Along the way, singer Kele Okereke enjoys casual sex, a trip to Brighton, an excess of stimulants, loneliness and paranoia. Mercifully, his musings are supplemented by a swathe of melody - The Prayer is their most mesmerising manifesto yet - and some innovative instrumentation - Uniform is so luminous it almost glows in the dark. They're not frauds after all. John Aizlewood

WORLD

Tinariwen
Aman Iman: Water is Life (Independiente)
*****
Just listen to how the electric guitars kick in over the agile bass riff: you know from the outset that this is quality stuff. With their blue turbans, flowing robes and blistering electric guitars, the Touareg band Tinariwen already have celebrity fans including Robert Plant and a wide cult following. This is their third album, but the first on indie label Independiente (Travis, Embrace) and it's designed to win them an audience among rock and blues lovers. Many songs have Tinariwen's trademark camel-lope rhythm which seems to open endless vistas, while others, like Soixante Trois, which refers to the Touareg rebellion in Mali which broke out in 1963, are more reflective. Contemporary desert cool. Simon Broughton

JAZZ

Soren Norbo Trio and Django Bates
Debates (SNR Records SN0601)
****
Django Bates is a formidable pianist, composer and brass player whose whimsical humour can irritate over an entire evening. On this live album, though, he meets a Danish piano trio made of sterner stuff. They indulge his fondness for unbridled free-improv and generally milder larks, but also manage to draw longer stretches of meaty, straight-ahead improvisation from him than we've heard for years. It helps that Soren Norbo monopolises the keyboard while Bates smoothly handles the peckhorn - a small-bore member of the tuba family that's as difficult as the French horn. This unusually compatible quartet play the Vortex on Sunday and Monday. Jack Massarik