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CDs of the week

Room for improvement: Elbow's Mark Potter, left, and Guy Garvey

Hercules and Love Affair: Looking back to the glory days

MGMT: The future of white American music

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly: Agit-emo sounds from Sam Duckworth

Horace Silver: An evergreen live set

Quartett Escualo: A homage to Astor Piazzolla

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• Fans who will be forever Young

Elbow take things too seriously on their new album, Hercules and Love Affair offer some of the sounds of the year and frisky pop from Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

INDIE
Elbow
The Seldom Seen Kid (Fiction)
***
Elbow, forever burdened by one of rock's worst names, are one of those bands that critics love but whom the punters tend to shun. In fact, Elbow's commercial stock is at such a low that they are now on their squillionth label in less than 10 years.

Only last week one critic raved about this, their fourth, album insisting that it would be their breakthrough record. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the case. The Seldom Seen Kid is by no means bad, indeed in places it's very good indeed. However, one of its problems it is that it's almost too self-consciously serious.

It's the kind of record that hi-fi bores will proclaim to be "quality" music. You know, "real music" played on "real instruments". Yawn.

With a couple of very honourable exceptions there's nothing here that startles you, grabs you and demands to be heard. There's a lot of warm, sumptuous music played well and Guy Garvey is a very erudite and occasionally moving lyricist, but it's all just too well-upholstered and comfy.

It's a shame because The Seldom Seen Kid (a reference to their close friend Bryan Glancy, a Mancunian singer/songwriter who died in 2006) starts so very well.

Starlings is heralded by cacophony before settling down into fairly typical stately Elbow territory.

Then there's a hurricane of brass that blows in from nowhere, so unexpected that it's almost unwelcome, but which serves as a bracing punctuation mark in a song that slowly unfurls as a glum kind of showtune about self-respect. This is sung by Garvey in his velvet croon, reminiscent of Peter Gabriel.

It's a truly great song. There are three more peaks on the album, although the hammy duo with another critics' fave, Richard Hawley, is certainly not one of them, being a horrendous and never-to-be-repeated experiment.

The single, Grounds For Divorce, is anomalous but brilliant. Its bluesy rock buzz rubs up against Garvey's plaintive chorus and ignites it - Garvey's melancholy is much more effective when given a bit of a fright, rather than just moping around.

Weather To Fly is sinuous if a little circular in execution and One Day Like This is a proper stadium ballad that needs just an extra layer of melody to really take off. And this is the album's Achilles heel - too few memorable tunes.

Those it does have border on beautiful, but there are not enough. And hits will forever elude those who skimp on the tunes. PAUL CONNOLLY

POP
Hercules and Love Affair
Hercules and Love Affair (DFA/EMI)
****
Emerging on probably the world's most fashionable record label, DFA, the New York home of dance-punk, DJ and producer Andrew Butler looks back to the disco glory days of Studio 54 rather than keeping up with what's current.

As Hercules and Love Affair, his debut album has rubbery funk bass and swinging horns, and sounds unashamedly camp on upbeat tracks such as Raise Me Up and Hercules' Theme. However, there's a darkness at its core.

Guest vocalist Antony Hegarty (of Mercury winners Antony and the Johnsons) adds real depth of emotion on the brooding highlight, Time Will, while Kim Ann Foxman recreates the exhausted aftermath of the party on the gorgeous Iris.

Whether on the dancefloor or the sofa, it sounds like one of the albums of the year. DAVID SMYTH

MGMT
Oracular Spectacular (Columbia)
****
Pronounced "management", MGMT began as Connecticut university pranksters. Now the duo have signed to a major label and, pitching themselves somewhere between Muse and the Electric Light Orchestra, are feted as the future of white American music.

The choruses might now be stentorian and headswimming, but Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden are still just naughty boys at heart - hence the opening Time to Pretend, which cheerily castigates the supermodel-sampling, heroin-guzzling rockstar life.

Elsewhere, they're equal parts atmospheric and cheeky, but there's warmth to their raised eyebrows and if they weren't winking so hard, The Youth could almost break hearts. Glorious. JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
Searching for the Hows and Whys (Atlantic)
***
The would-be superman behind this cute appellation is Sam Duckworth, a somewhat precocious 21-year-old from Southend.

He makes frisky pop music on his computer and on his second LP has augmented these lightweight sounds with an orchestra, and brought in Nitin Sawhney to give the production some zip.

His sound has been described as agit-emo, which is about right as he gets emotional about such topics as religious fundamentalism (I Could Build You a Tower) and mindless consumerism (The Children Are [the Consumers of] the Future).

The problem is Sam's voice. When he pushes its limits, he goes instantly hoarse, as on the opening Let the Journey Begin, which has a touch of the Arctic Monkeys.

When he stops striving, as on the pretty Postcards from Catalunya, the result is more pleasing on the ear. Sam's a smart boy, he just needs to ease up. PETE CLARK

Young Knives
Superabundance (Transgressive)
****
"Superabundance: it's about how everyone always wants more and more," remarks Henry Dartnell, bespectacled frontman of Ashby de la Zouch's jerky-punk-pop trio. "Plus, any word with 'super' in it is great."

After a Mercury nomination for their Voices Of Animals And Men debut, the supergeeks adhere to their creed with a second album that pic'n'mixes musical genres with abandon.

Fit 4 U tips its cap to the ska timbres of The Specials, Counters is Blur-esque to the point of featuring dog-barking parklife, while Terra Firma has a shouty Sunshine Underground chug in its belly.

Lyrically deft, melodically infectious (violin-heavy Turn Tail is impossible not to adore), the boys have grouped influences of old to craft a sound that's wholesomely their own. MARTHA DE LACEY

JAZZ
Horace Silver
Live at Newport '58 (Blue Note)
****
"Horace Silver is a dichotomy," observes Michael Cuscuna, the producer of the reissue. "One of the most meticulous and organised musicians yet one of the funkiest." So true.

The sad news that he is now an Alzheimer's sufferer makes one appreciate even more the vitality of this evergreen live set. Savour its storming swing (Silver being one of the great "compers" behind other players, and Louis Hayes one of jazz's most propulsive drummers), the bright creativity of trumpeter Louis Smith and tenorist Junior Cook, Silver's uber-hip originals (Señor Blues, Cool Eyes) and the laconic wisdom of his piano solos.

The intro from Willis Conover, host of AFN's Voice of America Jazz Hour, is a nostalgic bonus. JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Quartett Escualo
Del Angel (WCJ)
***
Taking its title from tangos with titles like Milonga del Angel and La Muerte del Angel, this is an homage to Astor Piazzolla - surely one of the most popular and distinctive composers of the 20th century.

This Hungarian quartet, featuring violin/viola, accordion, guitar and double bass play their arrangements of 12 pieces with all the bite and attack they might bring to Bartók, reminding us that Piazzolla went to study in Paris with the great teacher Nadia Boulanger.

He transformed urban Argentinian tango into moving concert music - and it's Piazzolla's melancholy lyricism that wins through in the high violin line in Fuga y Misterio, the nostalgic accordion melody in Milonga del Angel and mischievous closing Libertango. SIMON BROUGHTON

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