London,

CDs of the week

Showman: The Feeling's Dan Gillespie Sells on stage

Laura Marling: A musical maturity

Mary J Blige: Not a quick listen

One Night Only: Nothing you haven't heard before

Sonny Stitt Quartet: Dazzling solos

Folk Awards 2008: A perfect catch-up on the nu-folk scene

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• British folk is cool

Sappy lyrics from The Feeling, Laura Marling shows musical maturity and Mary J Blige's Growing Pains all feature in this week's top CDs.

POP
The Feeling
Join With Us (Universal)
**
Can I just be honest with you? The whole Guilty Pleasures nonsense, courtesy of DJ Sean Rowley, has done my head in. Never mind if a band is considered cheesy, or not cool; who cares if they sound fantastic?

Why on earth should you have to explain, or defend, why you like a particular piece of music (obviously all bets are off if you're discussing Westlife. But then we all know that, right? Nobody who actually likes music and is likely to be reading this will even think twice about the horror that is Westlife)?

When I was growing up it was deemed impossible to like The Smiths and Electric Light Orchestra. Seriously. You were not allowed to like This Charming Man and Mr Blue Sky. That was kind of OK because we were young. If you argue about coolness when you're 15 it doesn't really matter.

But, as I get older, I realise that many of us don't leave that attitude behind us. Indeed we become more entrenched.

So, last month, I invited an old mate over for dinner. We are really good friends but, for various reasons, we've not had a conversation about music for about a decade.

At about 11pm I put on The Feeling's Twelve Stops And Home, and he looked at me as if I'd tried it on with his wife.

He just didn't understand. "How can you like this insufferable MOR rubbish?" were his very words.

I gaped. "Because the tunes are amazing."

His comeback? "What a girl." I put on some obscure Northern Soul and he was happy, his masculinity reasserted.

Now, we all know that Twelve Stops And Home was a great record but if I'd had to put my name on the line with their second album I'd be less confident.

Twelve Stops And Home benefited from being slightly unsure of itself.

Would people really like something so redolent of the Seventies?

They did, and The Feeling have lost all their diffidence as a result. Join With Us stands, with its hands on hips, giving us the "come on".

Where the first album was delicately beautiful, Join With Us is just too forthright. Won't Go Away even features a sax solo (not acceptable since 1983) while Connor is overwrought and tuneless (never acceptable).

The lovely thing about the first album was the fact that the band almost seemed apologetic. They don't seem so bothered about humility now. I Thought It Was Over (half Blur, half Duran Duran) does kick things off with a swing, Without You develops the first album's gentle beauty, while Spare Me is a rare island of uncertainty in a sea of hubris. But there are too many sappy lyrics and ill-fed tunes to make Join With Us an easy and appropriate companion to the wonderful Twelve Stops And Home.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. PAUL CONNOLLY

Laura Marling
Alas, I Cannot Swim (Virgin)
****
A current surplus of teenage, female singer-songwriters that includes Kate Nash and Adele may mean that 18-year-old Reading lass Laura Marling gets lost in the crowd, which would be a pity. She has neither a showy voice nor a quirky style on her debut album, but Marling possesses a musical maturity that should see her outlast her peers. The bleak folk of Night Terror and Tap at My Window, built on basic acoustic strumming and yearning violins, has more in common with PJ Harvey's dark moments than anyone her own age. Of extra appeal is her protest against the download industry: the album comes in a £20 wooden box that contains a memento representing each song and a gig ticket. All told, a real treasure. DAVID SMYTH

Mary J Blige
Growing Pains (Matriarch/Geffen)
***
At 77 minutes, Mary J Blige's eighth album is not a quick listen, but for the most part, contemporary R&B's finest singer is on committed form, be it finger-clicking her way through the supertaut Just Fine, gliding above the Neptunes-produced Till The Morning or duetting with Usher on Shake Down. After selling 40 million albums, she's not taking chances and her usual musical palette is enhanced by her trademark womanly contemplation, most navel-gazingly on Hurt Again and What Love Is. Tracks that should have been jetisoned were the feeble Mark Ronson collaboration Hello It's Me, the dull plod of Stay Down and the dreary If You Love Me? Otherwise, as ever, she is Mary J Blige and a law unto herself. JOHN AIZLEWOOD

One Night Only
Started a Fire (Mercury)
**
There comes a moment in one's life of reviewing CDs when one runs the risk of coming across as jaded. This is that moment. One Night Only - which is, it may as well be admitted, a truly unmemorable name - is a pop group from Yorkshire comprising five very young people. They started playing at school when they were even younger. Having had lots of practice, they sound rather good. The problem is that One Night Only are attempting to fill a gap where no gap exists. They do verses, choruses and swelling guitars, but there is absolutely nothing on this record that you haven't heard before. A wise man once opined that eventually pop will eat itself. You could happily graze here and be sure of losing weight. PETE CLARK

Cass McCombs
Dropping The Writ (Domino)
****
California-born McCombs is one of those artists who has managed thus far to elude my attention and this, his third album, makes it clear the loss is all mine. His blend of folk, Sixties pop and country is nothing new, but he infuses it with wonder and charm.

Deseret, for example, is almost a pastiche of Sixties psych pop, but its heart is in the right place and the tune soars against refracted guitars. He does guitar pop too, as on sparkling That's That, which bounces along on a bubbling bass with a tale of a lavatory attendant in a Baltimore nightclub.

It's representative of much of the album - McCombs drops you into someone's life, ravishes you with melody, and is off again to the next story. Lovely. PAUL CONNOLLY

INDIE
The Mae Shi
HLLLYH (Moshi Moshi)
****
If you think the record's name is a mite perplexing, catch an earful of this sensationally daft UK debut (their fourth overall) from LA's primary-coloured noise terrorists.

This is one mighty beach-storm. You can all but hear sand buckling under tambourines, screechy apocalyptic chants and hefty dollops of crashes, bangs and wallops.

Imagine the illegitimate love child of Les Savy Fav and Architecture In Helsinki; Young Marks' clattering pop chug; Book Of Numbers, the mischievous indie nephew of LCD's Get Innocuous.

And the thrilling 12-minute opus, Kingdom Come, a squidgily bonkers Daft Punk-do-Klaxons mash-up that sounds like the scamps are sucking on helium balloons while frolicking in a vacuum on space hoppers. Welcome to England, boys - cup of tea? MARTHA DE LACEY

JAZZ
Sonny Stitt Quartet
Don't Call Me Bird (Fresh Sound Records)
*****
Sonny Stitt was a wandering guest star who jammed his way contentedly through life with local talent. This rare recording captures him with Hollywood heavyweights Lou Levy, Leroy Vinnegar and Mel Lewis on piano, bass and drums. It was 1959 and Sonny was at his very peak as an alto-sax virtuoso. Only once does he play the tenor sax he had adopted to avoid comparisons with alto genius Charlie "Yardbird" Parker - hence the album title. His dazzling solos on I Cover the Waterfront, The Gipsy, Just Friends and other standards bring a meticulous precision to bebop's most fabulous flights. JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Folk Awards 2008
Proper
****
There's a real buzz about the British folk scene right now and this collection of nominees for the BBC Folk Awards shows why. All the artists have been winning rave reviews - and eight picked up awards on Monday. But all the musicians here could have been worthy winners, attested by notable tracks from newish names such as Geordie singer Rachel Unthank, English supergroup Bellowhead, The Imagined Village and, representing the Gaelic scene in Scotland, Julie Fowlis and the trio Lau. More established names, including Richard Thompson, Show of Hands and Martin Simpson are here, too. This double album (plus a bonus CD of Radio 2 Folk Award Finalists) is the perfect catch-up on the nu-folk scene. SIMON BROUGHTON

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