CDs of the week

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Breakthrough: Animal Collective

Perky: Lady GaGa

Uplifting: White Lies

Delightful: The 3 Tenors

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POP
Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
****
The year is barely out of the oven and a must-have record is here already. This New York-based trio have taken nine albums to reach the cusp of a breakthrough, but in the process have forged a distinct sound, a futuristic psychedelia that is all their own. Merriweather Post Pavilion shimmer and twinkle, celestial harmonies coasting over woozy, echoing synths and soft beats. Now they incorporate pop moments, notably on the joyous chorus of My Girls, though as on Brother Sport a dizzying freakout is never far away. A playful, beautiful delight, it will not be forgotten when the album of the year lists are compiled once again in another 12 months.
DAVID SMYTH

Lady GaGa
The Fame (Interscope)
***
A more interesting Gwen Stefani, a more hungry Madonna and a protégée of Akon — not for nothing has the former Stefani Germanotta been widely heralded as the future of shiny American pop. The private-school educated New Yorker's mostly self-written debut is knowing perkiness personified, from Love Game's announcement that “I want to take a ride on your disco stick” to the all-out electronica of Starstruck. Elsewhere, the piano-dominated, Mika-esque Paper Gangsta and the fun fun fun Boys Boys Boys suggest new musical vistas, while Brown Eyes shows that her far-from-expressive vocals can just about manage a ballad without anybody getting hurt.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

White Lies
To Lose My Life (Fiction)
***
This young west London three-piece –— occasionally four-piece — appears to have sprung, fully formed, from nowhere. They make amazingly-assured big pop music with pretensions to grandeur that never fall into mere pretension. Looking at some of the titles — Death, To Lose My Life — one might assume they are a morbid lot, but it's uplifting music and singer Harry McVeigh carries a tune with swagger, not unlike a young Julian Cope. In fact, all the musical reference points for this debut LP are located in the past, from Tears For Fears at their least winsome to New Gold Dream-era Simple Minds, with a bit of Echo & the Bunnymen for good measure. Promising.
PETE CLARK

JAZZ
The 3 Tenors
Live at the Appleby Jazz Festival
(Trio Records)
****
Courtney Pine, with a CBE to follow his earlier OBE, was the only jazz winner in a New Year's Honours list which overlooked several world-class Brits, not least these three tenormen. Post-bop steamers with distinctively different styles, Mornington Lockett, Art Themen and Don Weller have been delighting audiences for years, the latter two since before Courtney was born. Check their powers on this live double album (if distribution is difficult, visit www.triorecords.co.uk). With Mark Edwards, Andy Cleyndert and Spike Wells in the engine room there's never a dull moment.
JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Cesaria Evora
Radio Mindelo (Lusafrica)
***
Cesaria Evora is the smoky-voiced singer from Cape Verde who swiftly became an international star in the early 1990s when she took her sultry morna songs to Paris. Aged over 50, she has single-handedly put the lyrical, yearning music of Cape Verde on the map. This is a fascinating collection of early recordings made for Radio Barlavento in Mindelo in the 1960s when she was in her twenties. The tapes were made with a single mono microphone, so there isn't the sonorous depth and delicacy of her later recordings. But there is a naive charm revealed for the first time. You can't help but feel, though, that Cesaria is best heard in her mature, world-weary voice.
SIMON BROUGHTON

 

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