Robbie Williams' just-couldn't-be-bothered seventh studio effort contains no fewer than five cover versions, Amy Winehouse plays it straight and Pedro Luis Ferrer draws on the rich traditions of Cuba...

POP

Robbie Williams
Rudebox (EMI)
**
Say what you want about Robbie Williams, he isn't predictable. As the childish single and title track might suggest, his seventh studio effort salutes Eighties electro. Encapsulating the just-couldn't-be-bothered feel are no fewer than five cover versions including anaemic versions of The Human League's Louise and Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy's once-uplifting Kiss Me. The co-penned material ranges between unlistenable (Burslem Normals) and inane (She's Madonna, a career low for collaborators, Pet Shop Boys). Worse still, for a man who genuinely has nothing to be resentful about, Williams is astonishingly bitter: the track called The 80s finds him still banging on about Take That, while the unpleasant Dickhead could hardly be more appositely titled. Does nobody care enough to say "no" to him?

John Aizlewood

Amy Winehouse
Back to Black (Island)
****
Amy Winehouse's brilliant second album is like one of those birthday cards that defile sweet, innocent black-and-white photos with filthy, contemporary humour. Take the opener, Rehab. Borrowing the gospel-tinged idiom of early Sixties Motown records, with its attendant backing vocals and production, Winehouse plays it straight as she sings "Try to make me go to rehab, I say no, no no." The painfully bitter sentiments expressed in the Caribbean-tinged lounge sound of You Know I'm No Good are powerful and convincing, and her vocals on these 11 classic-sounding tracks are better trained and sexier than ever. To inject so much of her own mixed-up character into such hallowed musical formats was an extraordinary challenge. Luckily, Winehouse has the production, voice and strength of character to pull it off.

Chris Elwell-Sutton

My Chemical Romance
The Black Parade (Reprise)
***
The recipients of a Reading Festival bottling and a Daily Mail tutting for making the depressive rock music known as emo, New Jersey's My Chemical Romance are now bigger than any scene. This week they earned their first number one single, and now they release a third long player that is more likely to cause teenagers to bounce on their beds than do any self-harm. It's a concept album about a dead man, with song titles that include Cancer and House of Wolves, but it is also packed with uplifting singalong choruses, exhilarating, strident guitars and even, on the bizarre Balkan rock of Mama, a cameo from Liza Minnelli. The theatrical silliness doesn't always work, but your kids could be listening to music much worse than this.

David Smyth

WORLD

Pedro Luis Ferrer
Natural (Escondida, ESC 65272)
Ferrer has a 30-year track record back home in Cuba, but he's only recently caught the ears of the world with the rustic twang of his tres guitar and his sonorous voice. If you're interested in the raw roots sound of the place look no further - Ferrer draws on the country's rich traditions of Cuban son as well as Afro-Cuban rituals. The opening track Fiesta de mujeres (A Ladies' Party) has irrepressibly catchy rhythms and pretty explicit words (if you follow the translations), but the album is still very much a family affair with Ferrer's daughter, Lena, sharing many of the vocals. This is a timely reminder of the infectious warmth of old-time Cuban music at its best. Ferrer plays live at the Finchley Arts Depot tomorrow.

Simon Broughton

JAZZ

Gilad Atzmon
Artie Fishel & the Promised Band (WMD Records, 001968)
***
Saxophinist/author/polemicist and former Israeli soldier Gilad Atzmon's new suite is an extended Jewish joke, born of his growing disaffection with the US, both militarily and musically. He yanks the great what is jazz conundrum further with subversive two-beat lampoons of the Great American Songbook, George Bush, JazzFM and the music intellectuals of "BBC Radio Seven". Yet between the accordions, fiddles and klezmer group vocals, "Jee-had Axeman" delivers brilliant post-bop clarinet and alto-sax solos, full of dazzling technique, soulful emotion and devastatingly broad humour. Tracks such as The Way You Look Tonight and A Knight into Nietzsche are totally unique.

Jack Massarik