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CDs of the week

KT Tunstall: The second album is a worthy follow-up

KT Tunstall releases the follow-up to her debut world-conquering album, and a keyboard-inspired hip hop offering from Kanye West feature among the CDs of the week.

POP
KT Tunstall
Drastic Fantastic (Relentless)
****
Here's a fine lesson in how to return after a world-conquering album. KT Tunstall's debut, Eye to the Telescope, sold 1.5 million here and another million in the US, putting plenty of pressure on a singer who was an unknown in Scotland until her thirties. But she's done everything right with this comeback, attempting nothing daring while producing more infectious choruses (If Only, Little Favours), toughening up her sound to match the energy of her live shows (Hold On, I Don't Want You Now) and not forgetting the intimate acoustic ballads that remind the listener she's a real person and not a record-selling machine (Someday Soon, Paper Aeroplane). Daytime radio will love it, as will the millions who fell for her the first time. DAVID SMYTH

Kanye West
Graduation (Roc-A-Fella)
****
Kanye West's global success owes nothing to being more sweary than the rest (he's not) or more street (he's a good, middle-class boy) or, more leery, despite Drunk and Hot Girls. Instead, as Graduation confirms, he's thoughtful ("Everything I'm not, made me everything I am," he explains on Everything I Am) and has a voice like honey and a breathtakingly broad musical palette: he even called in the whitest man in the world, Coldplay's Chris Martin, to co-write and contribute backing vocals to Homecoming. Elsewhere, there's deft sampling of anyone who serves the cause, from Steely Dan and Elton John to reggae lion U-Roy and Daft Punk, and a new found maturity that ensures the swaggering but warm Graduation is that rarest of things: a keyboards-led hip hop album. It's tip top. JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Deborah Harry
Necessary Evil (ElevenSeven)
***
We should be eternally grateful for Debbie Harry. She was the lead singer for Blondie, after ABBA probably the best singles band in pop history. But that was 25 years ago and since then neither she nor her reformed band have produced anything that measures up to their New Wave heyday. So it's a huge surprise that Two Times Blue, the first track on her fifth solo album, is fantastic, a melodic burst of pop sunshine that is the best thing Harry's been involved in since Atomic. Nothing else on Necessary Evil matches it, but there's more thriller than filler - If I Had You could teach Avril Lavigne a trick or two - and for that we should be grateful. PAUL CONNOLLY

The Go! Team
Proof Of Youth (Memphis Industries)
****
It may seem like a ridiculously long time since the Brighton punks released their debut album in 2004 but these sample-tastic pop nuggets probably take an age to sculpt - let alone the time it takes their legal team to clear the multitude of samples they use. Regardless, Proof Of Youth is catchier and more fun than Thunder, Lightning Strike. The Sixties punk pop of Doing It Right is so bloody wonderful that I would have waited another couple of years to hear it, while the wordless acoustic pastoralism of My World suggests gentler times might be ahead. Until it bleeds into the riotous acid funk of Titanic Vandalism and (dis) order is restored. PAUL CONNOLLY

The Rumble Strips
Girls And Weather (Island)
****
I wandered lonely as a cloud through gigs of anaemic indie-pop twitterings until, at last, I found a band who sounded ready to rip the glo-sticks from nu-ravers and replace expectant, empty hands with trumpets. We've heard Devon inspire Muse to unearthly greatness and now the county has played a part in the feelgood pop of four brass-loving lads. Once you've bypassed bits of lyrical repetition and Charlie Waller's occasionally excessive shouting it's tough to pick a favourite Strips track on their long-awaited debut; it might be the exciting topsy-turviness of No Soul, about a man whose drinking puts his girlfriend through hell, or the jaunty bounce of Girls And Boys In Love or Building A Boat's elephantesque cacophony of trumpets and saxophones. Hurrah! MARTHA DE LACEY

Stephen Fretwell
Man on the Roof (Fiction)
****
It's been three years since Scunthorpe-born singer/songwriter Stephen Fretwell released his debut album, Magpie. Recorded in New York under a host of new influences, the follow-up fulfils that promise and then some. Refreshingly gimmick-free, Fretwell's production is simple, his light voice not unlike that of John Lennon as he sings over a cheeky, country-flavoured offbeat rhythm on Scar. The Ground Beneath Your Feet, a folky tale about the redemptive power of love, carries real poetic weight. Veering between folk, blues, rock and indie, what's consistent about Fretwell's sound is that it feels raw and from the heart; thoughtful lyrics are the icing on the cake of what could be an instant classic. CHRIS ELWELL-SUTTON

JAZZ
Maria Schneider Orchestra
Sky Blue (ArtistShare)
****
Composer Maria Schneider has created a beautiful suite here, but its underlying business strategy makes it particularly noteworthy. Like her previous effort, the Grammy-winning Concert in the Garden, she wrote the pieces as commissions for college performances, but this compilation was funded by fans subscribing to ArtistShare and is available only from her website, www.MariaSchneider.com. Fan-power like this could be the future of niche marketing in the recording industry. Of course, it helps to have a quality product, and this is another feast of sensitive scoring for hand-picked soloists including tenorist Rich Perry, clarinettist Scott Robinson and the excellent Canadian trumpeter Ingrid Jensen. Schneider's mellow orchestral voicings, originally inspired by Gil Evans, now have an increasingly personal stamp. JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
The Very Best of Ethiopiques (Relentless)
****
Even if you aren't planning to celebrate the Ethiopian millennium on Tuesday, here's a feast of music from "Swinging Addis" representing the golden age of Ethiopian pop from the 1960s until the Mengistu dictatorship clampdown in the mid-1970s. Think Duke Ellington, James Brown plus soulful saxophones and big bands. Veteran stars of Ethiopian music such as Mahmoud Ahmed and Tlahoun Gèssèssè are here, but it's easier to get your head around the music than the names. The tracks are drawn from a series of 20 CDs that have become legendary among fans of Ethiopian music,who include Elvis Costello and Robert Plant. This two-CD taster reveals the music is as distinctive as the calendar. SIMON BROUGHTON

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