A welcome treat from Goldfrapp, The Feeling up their game on new album Join With Us, and perfect pop from Nada Surf.

POP
Goldfrapp
Seventh Tree (Mute)
****
You only have to listen to the first track of Goldfrapp's fourth album, Seventh Tree for a hint of what's to come. Clowns is a dreamy, surreal, Kate Bush-esque meander through twinkling guitars, minimal strings and languorous, uber-soprano coo-cooing vocals that recall Katie Melua's Faraway Voice. Strict Machine this most definitely ain't.

But then, as their three earlier studio albums showed, the Frappers aren't a duo to preserve their musical mould. Every record sees them take a new hunk of clay, fire up a kiln and reshape themselves, defying expectations - often to the point of annoying fans.

Second to her trip-hoppy, electro, vocal-driven beats, Alison Goldfrapp is famed for her avant-garde fashion sense (horse's tail, anyone?), and thirdly for her spectacularly visual imagination.

She famously plucks inspiration from movies and the resulting tunes have inexorably cinematic qualities (the XY chromosomed half of Goldfrapp, Will Gregory, also composes film scores).

Apparently the title for the new album came in a dream Alison had, in which a humungous swaying tree whispered the words "seventh tree".

Goldfrapp ran with it, crafting a dreamlike album that ebbs and flows rather than spanking, whipping, straddling and fizzing.

Their last two albums, 2003's Black Cherry and 2005's Supernature, were seam-bursting with leather-tight sex appeal, all synth-spangly Twist and Ooh La La disco. Seventh Tree is a heavenly, somewhat folky, ethereal record.

Where Goldfrapp's chillout debut, Felt Mountain, was black coffee and a pipe, Black Cherry, a plump forbidden fruit and Supernature, chocolate bodypaint, Seventh Tree is a soft elderflower and blackcurrant herbal tea infusion with a sneaky hit of magic mushrooms.

Traces of hypnotic psychedelia float throughout, with hints of Kosheen, Orbital and Massive Attack. Little Birds is smooth electro goes bhangra, while Happiness is chirpy enough to appear in the children's TV show Charlie & Lola.

Single A&E is a simple, sumptuous platform that demonstrates those remarkable soprano vocals and recalls Kylie's recent softie No More Rain.

But with this record Goldfrapp have sidestepped preconceptions that glam electro-pop is what they're all about. Alison said that while recording in Somerset, she saw greenery and birds rather than bright studio lights.

She said they wanted a challenge, to create something light years apart from their earlier, spanglier stuff.

It's hippie rather than raver but it's still a welcome treat. MARTHA DE LACEY

Sheryl Crow
Detours (A&M)
****
It's been 14 years since Sheryl Crow made the break for stardom with All I Wanna Do, and a full 12 years since her last good song, Every Day Is A Winding Road. Well, remarkably, a career that had seemed to have fizzled out has been sparked back to life with the help of her old co-conspirator, Bill Bottrell.

Detours abandons the bland retro-blues of recent albums for an opinionated blast of slightly off-kilter blues pop. It's clear her recent brush with cancer has given her craft a much-needed urgency, as songs such as the sunny but acerbic Love Is Free and the angry anti-Bush country ballad God Bless This Mess attest. But she also still knows how to rock, as the Stones-esque Gasoline proves. It's good to have her back. PAUL CONNOLLY

The Feeling
Join With Us (Island)
****
Filler-free and as warm as popular music can be, The Feeling's debut, Twelve Stops & Home, deserved to sell every last one of its 800,000 copies. Following it up was always going to be a tricky affair but, perhaps to their own surprise, they've upped their game. The welcoming and impossibly catchy I Thought It Was Over sets the tone for an album brimming with ideas, from Without You (that rarest of creations: a non-naff on-the-road song) to the heroic, filmic closer, The Greatest Show on Earth, which suggests gravitas as well as comfort. Along the way, there's a shouty choir on I Did It For Everyone, what sounds like a full orchestra on This Time and the sense that the world is theirs for the taking. JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Tegan And Sara
The Con (WEA)
***
Signed by Neil Young, covered by the White Stripes, Canadian sisters Tegan and Sara Quin are well connected and have proved themselves accomplished songwriters over five albums, although no one has ever written about them without mentioning that the 27-year-olds are identical twin lesbians. Their similarity leads to some marvellously pure harmonies on new songs such as the piano-led Back in Your Head and the rockier title track. Well-crafted guitar pop dominates here, although occasional electronic diversions add interest, as with the dance beats of Are You Ten Years Ago. It's all fine stuff, but the obvious hit to lift the duo beyond cult status is still absent. DAVID SMYTH

Nada Surf
Lucky (City Slang)
****
Every now and then, a perfectly formed pop record turns up just when it seems that all musical life had gone down the plughole. Nada Surf come from somewhere like Brooklyn, which makes their name entirely appropriate in the sense that there is not much surfing to be done in the area. There is a wonderful vocal relish in evidence here, coupled with a loving grasp of melody. Beautiful Beat, the third track, is the best song to have appeared this year and, if the world had any taste, would be at the top of the charts cocking a snook at the rest. Lucky is a perfect collection of songs with symphonic overtones. PETE CLARK

INDIE
Envelopes
Here Comes The Wind (Brille)
****
There's a welcome trend this year for boygirl pop bands. As well as the imminent return of the band responsible for the original blueprint, The B-52s, albums are also due from Los Campesinos!, Alphabeat and The Ting Tings. But they'll have to go some way to beat the second LP from Scando-French indie types Envelopes. They offer a less sugary take on the genre, preferring to dip their toes in darker waters - Boat is about a mother's fear of death - and they're influenced as much by the biting pop of The Pixies as they are by B-52s. Yet, they never forget that tunes and fun are where it's at. Party nods to Bonnie Tyler and boasts a stonking - if slightly crazed - melody laid across banks of buzzing guitars and twitching keyboards. A real breeze. PAUL CONNOLLY

Pete & The Pirates
Little Death (Stolen)
***
It would be really easy to hate Pete And The Pirates. For a start they look like they were remaindered at the great British indie band sale - all silly glasses and schmindie clothes. And at first listen they sound almost ridiculously generic - galloping, clattering drums, spindly guitars and massed white boy voices.

Yet there's more to them than skinny jeans and a Wedding Present fixation. She Doesn't Belong To Me not only features singer Tom Sanders' appealingly clear tenor but also a rollicking tune, while Dry Wings has an uplifting and bracing dynamism that is anything but pipe-and-slippers indie rock. For anyone familiar with mid-Eighties alternative music there's little new to Pete And The Pirates but their fresh-faced enthusiasm is really quite charming nonetheless. PAUL CONNOLLY

JAZZ
The Blessing
All is Yes (Cake)
***
When not trip-hopping with alternative rockers Portishead, bassist Jim Barr and drummer Clive Deamer join free-ranging jazz trumpeter Pete Judge and eloquent tenorist Jake McMurchie in The Blessing, a maverick outfit influenced by everybody from the Kings of Leon to Albert Ayler. That could be messy, but this amusing and energetic quartet has a lightness of touch. Guest vocalist Tammy Payne, violinist Gina Griffin and guitarist Adrian Utley spice up the ensembles of tuneful originals (Suki's Suzuki, Another Brother's Mother, Can't Believe in Faith) as witty as their titles. JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Rough Guide to the Music of Hungarian Gypsies
World Music Network
****
As the Gypsy music of the Balkans is flavour of the moment, this is a timely reminder that the Hungarians have their own Roma traditions. A century ago fiendishly virtuoso Hungarian Gypsy fiddlers impressed the likes of Brahms and Liszt, and Bela Lakatos, who closes this CD, is directly part of that tradition. The cream of the Budapest Roma groups are here, including Kalyi Jag, Romano Drom, Ando Drom and the wonderfully earthy Parno Graszt with fizzing guitars and throaty vocals. There's a taste of contemporary Roma rap and the sheer artistry of cimbalom player Kalman Balogh, the instrument's most masterful exponent. SIMON BROUGHTON