This week our critics review new releases from Pink, Snow Patrol, The Cure and French accordionist Richard Galliano.

POP

PINK
Funhouse (LaFace/Zomba)
***

Alecia “Pink” Moore has never been afraid to put her personal soap opera to music. So, following her marriage split from some biker, Funhouse begins “I guess I just lost my husband” and devotes its 12 tracks to picking over the carcass of their relationship. At its best — the rip-roaring So What; the spine-tinglingly personal Please Don’t Leave Me; the acerbic Mean — its searing, cathartic honesty is genuinely inspiring. But the heartbreak has done nothing to enhance her ploddy songwriting or her tendency to shout where others would sing. Indeed, when she bellows her way through the gormless ballad Crystal Ball it’s easy to understand why her biker rode off.
John Aizlewood

Snow Patrol
A Hundred Million Suns (Fiction)
***

Thanks to hit ballads Run and Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol’s last two albums became so big that the Glasgow-based band now seem to be looking down on us from outer space. The title of this fifth album, plus songs called If There’s a Rocket Tie Me to It and The Planets Bend Between Us, are the only way the lyrics can match the stellar roar of the guitars in another epic production job. Boundaries are pushed, if slightly. If it fails, latest tearjerker Crack the Shutters will ensure they at least remain giants.
David Smyth

The Cure
4.13 Dream (Polydor)
****

I’m not entirely sure what size Robert Smith is at the moment but his band has slimmed down impressively. The group’s 13th album sees Smith joined by old retainers Simon Gallup (bass) and Jason Cooper (drums) plus Porl Thompson on additional guitar. The 13 songs are clean and lean, concern themselves with relationships with a dash of politics and religion and, save for some ghostly echo on the vocals, the overall feel is on the safe side of suicidal. This is a big guitar record: the six-string blizzard of It’s Over and the wah-wah squalls of Switch are particularly notable. Smith has also re-established contact with his melodic side on The Reasons Why and The Hungry Ghost. Time to get out the lipstick and black togs and party.
Pete Clark

JAZZ

Richard Galliano
Love Day (Milan Records)
****

French accordionist Richard Galliano is a charming improviser whose status is rising. His latest album was recorded in Los Angeles with a heavyweight international group, and whatever whimsy he offers is counterbalanced by the no-nonsense work of Cuban piano virtuoso Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Don’t miss this well-matched duo at next month’s London Jazz Festival. Bass icon Charlie Haden and ex-Weather Report percussionist Mino Cinelu join them in a graceful, leisurely, masterly set recommended to all except those who cannot hear an accordion without visualising ’Allo ’Allo or ancient Citroen 2CVs driven by baddies in berets.
Jack Massarik

WORLD

Bellowhead
Matachin (Navigator Records)
****

The folk big band Bellowhead made an extraordinary recording debut in 2006 with Burlesque and they’ve kept up the pace with that notoriously hard second album. Matachin, named after a masked mummers’ character, has that same energetic, larger-than-life quality as its predecessor and the inventive arrangements driven by the first-class musicianship of the 11 players. The band play Koko in Camden on 30 October.
Simon Broughton