Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Matador
Review: Claire Allfree
****
Yo La Tengo tread an even more eclectic path than usual on their 13th album, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, a 15-track opus with the strength of a satisfying meal. Launching with the cosmic mash of Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind, the Hoboken trio cook up contrasting styles, from the jaunty, cock-eyed pop of Beanbag Chair and the disco funk of Mr Tough to the lulling bossa nova Song For Mahila. There are moments of exquisitely crafted calm amid the frenetic rush of ideas - be it the yearning, pianorolled Black Flowers or the haunting Daphnia. With other bands, such diversity would risk sounding messy but with Yo La Tengo it doesn't, since their music springs from rare songcraft and human feeling.

Justin Timberlake: Future Sex/Love Sounds
RCA
Review: Arwa Haider
****
Justin Timberlake might be having an identity crisis - those boyband years can do that to a guy - but Future Sex/Love Sounds breaks it down in style. Mostly, it's on target - JT acting the compliant stud ("I'll let you whip me if I misbehave," he offers on chart-topper SexyBack) against a stealthy electro backdrop; he's less convincing as a crack addict on Losing My Way. His chat-up lines don't always impress - (Another Song) All Over Again would only lure this listener to bed for a snooze. Luckily, the album's interludes are seamless musical mutations, laced with beatbox rhythms and falsetto serenades. Deliberately dirtier than his 2002 debut, there's shimmering electronic soul treasure here - it's a 21st-century disco ball.

Kelis: Kelis Was Here
Virgin
Review: Arwa Haider
***
We know that Kelis is fabulous - but does she know that too well? On Kelis Was Here, she huskily salutes her own legacy - before bestowing us with 17 uneven numbers. It's certainly varied, from Blindfold Me (another lusty, electro-tinged duet with hubby Nas) to the vulnerable side of Appreciate Me and Little Star. Unfortunately, it tends to drag - Kelis regulars The Neptunes don't feature here - though myriad other producers (Scott Storch, Max Martin, Will.i.am) over-egg the gateaux. It does wind up with brilliant censorship skit F**k Them Bitches (Clean) - just a shame it's not as Tasty as its 2003 predecessor.

The Fratellis: Costello Music
Island
Review: Arwa Haider
***
The Fratellis are hotly tipped young bucks whose debut album, Costello Music, coasts on ol'-fashioned geezer charm. They're currently swaggering up the charts with Chelsea Dagger, lending a good idea of their exuberant, hook-studded wares, delivered with shots of rockabilly, ska and rabble-rousing choruses (Creepin' Up The Backstairs, Got Ma Nuts From A Hippy). Whether The Fratellis stay fresh remains to be proved but are these fine, good-time anthems? 'Course, bruv.

The Rogers Sisters: The Invisible Deck
Too Pure
Review: Arwa Haider
****
Another self-styled 'family', The Rogers Sisters play a cool hand on their full-length album, The Invisible Deck, channelling the garage energy that charged their 2005 Three Fingers, and honing it into a richer mix of guitars and funky beats. Nearly every number's a winner, from the urgent opener Why Won't You? to the consumer rant of Money Matters. Highlights are unusually murky, languorous numbers Your Littlest World and Sooner Or Later. Still, there are plenty more shouty melodies, more frenetic fun - more please!

CD EXTRA

Diana Krall: From This Moment On
Verve
Review: Nina Caplan
**
"I was doing all right," sings the world's favourite Canadian jazz singer, "but I'm doing much better now." Not on this evidence, sadly. Perhaps it's fame, perhaps it's marital bliss with Elvis Costello, but Krall ain't what she used to be. From This Moment On, produced by Krall and Tommy LiPuma, is her first standards collection since 2001's The Look Of Love and it can't hold a candle to that sweetly emotive bunch of ballads. Krall seems to be half-asleep, dragging her still-lovely voice over a turgid set of mainly bigband arrangements on songs by Cole Porter, George Gershwin et al. Contrarily, she only perks up when things get tragic: Little Girl Blue is genuinely moving, while Jobim's How Insensitive is a gorgeous lilt - suggesting that Krall would make lovely work of a bossa nova album. Meanwhile, she's stuck covering this old ground. Little Girl Blue, indeed.

The Mars Volta: Amputechture
Universal
Review: Nadine McBay
****
Alt-rock renegades The Mars Volta's last two albums weren't just ruminations on the suicides of two contemporaries (their mentor Julio Venegas and ex-member Jeremy Ward), they were unassailable behemoths wielding mallets of funk-prog, Latino-metal and ambient jazz. One track on their last album took an excruciating eternity of 33 minutes. Instead of one narrative, composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and man-on-the-brink vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala pack Amputechture with a series of guitar-blitzkrieging brass-swirling reminiscences from their El Paso youth. And that's overwhelmingly for the good. Although Bixler-Zavala's lyrical allusions to brains, insects and substance abuse remain as cryptic as ever, this is their tightest record to date; its 75 minutes spin by deceptively quickly, and the bilingual funk of Viscera Eyes and Vermicide are even obvious candidates for singles. It's hardly an instant listen, but perseverance is rewarded with a blood-rushing ride that's less proggy-pomp wizardy, more Sergio Leone-meets-Miami Vice.

Las Malas Amistades: Jardin Interior
Honest Jon's
Review: Arwa Haider
****
Originally a student collective formed 12 years ago in the Colombian capital of Bogot·, Las Malas Amistades (meaning "the bad friends") bond over folky "cuatro" guitar and Casiotone synth. Jardin Interior, only their second album, is a lo-fi stew of jaunty Latin melodies and weirdly compelling electronica, tracks like Necdesidad (Electro) suggesting a sparky companion to New York punkfunk (this album was originally released on the US indie label Psych-o-Path). Not every track lives up to the exotic promise of its title - Hay Zombies En La Playa turns out to be a disappointingly brief instrumental - but overall, Jardin Interior is great fun to explore. And occasionally (on tracks like Anochecer, or the sonorous haze of Gripa Tropical), it's startlingly poignant stuff.

Boris Berezovsky: Hindemith, Ludus tonalis and Suite '1922'
Warner Classics
Review: Warwick Thompson
****
After the hypervirtuosic showmanship he displayed on his recent disc of transcriptions by Godowsky, pianist Boris Berezovsky turns here to the more cerebral world of Hindemith. Ludus tonalis is a collection of twelve complex fugues, eleven interludes, and a prelude and postlude - the latter of which is an upside-down mirror-image of the former. If that sounds more like a dry piece of toast than music, then prepare to be surprised: Hindemith creates a continually surprising, continually entertaining aural web that belies the rigorous nature of the formal underlying patterns, and Berezovsky responds to it with wonderful warmth and spirit. Surprisingly, he's less good on the disc's accompanying Suite '1922' which, with its titles like Shimmy, Boston and Ragtime, seems to call for more brashness and up-front vulgarity than he can muster. Otherwise, a star buy.