Low-key sequel to a modern classic

This album from Detroit electro-garage band, Electric Six, invites the listener to consider two obvious reference points. One being Dynasty, the abysmal 1979 disco album by stadium rock clowns Kiss, the other being the inside cover of Daft Punk's 1997 debut Homework (a collage of grubby teen paraphernalia—comics, rock stickers, Chic seven inches). Electric Six nail a kitschy hybrid of '70s rock and disco—AC/DC & The Sunshine Band, if you will—but repeated plays reveal little charm and less real humour.

Country-rock was superseded as a description long ago by new, alt. and insurgent country, not to mention the catch-all 'Americana'. But the old '70s terminology should surely be revived to describe Austin five-piece Reckless Kelly, who sound more like Pure Prairie League than Uncle Tupelo. Led by the brothers Willy and Cody Braun, the band's third album stomps rowdily on tracks like "Let's Just Fall" and "Nobody's Girl".

The Pastels always seem to find their wheelbarrow positively overflowing with acclaim, though some of us have struggled for over a decade to remember what they actually sound like. Here they wibble along, inoffensively enough, through a 25-minute accompaniment to the recent Brit road movie directed by David Mackenzie. It climaxes, if that's not too bold a word (it is), with a Jarvis Cocker collaboration, "I Picked A Flower", a parody of a pop hit which demonstrates that Cocker used up all his parody power a while ago.

Way before Emmylou Harris or even Patsy Cline, women were singing country songs to make your heart crack. Among these 25 examples from pre-WW2, only the Carter Family and Patsy Montana will be familiar to most. But just as thrilling are the Coon Creek Girls, a kind of 1930s version of the Be Good Tanyas, and Gertrude Gossett, who sounds like an early Gillian Welch. Every track is a discovery, and you wonder how the Louisiana Lou, The Girls Of The Golden West and Moonshine Kate ever lapsed into obscurity. Sleevenotes are courtesy of The Handsome Family's Rennie Sparks.

More wonder and thunder from down under. Mick Harvey's extensive track record (Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, Crime & The City Solution) more than qualifies him to score a coming-of-age issue movie set in "a small coastal town in Australia". Interestingly, the debuting director, Paul Goldman, shot the videos for Boys Next Door's "Shiver" and The Birthday Party's "Nick The Stripper", so he and Harvey have been communing aesthetically for a while. Harvey's been getting award nominations already for this, and it seems there's little he can't turn his hand to these days.

Lisa Gerrard, spiritually intense wailer and ex-Dead Can Dance member is, we'll wager, no close relation to Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool midfielder. But you never know. She's gone all Maori on us here for a New Zealand indie film, and aren't they the fellas who do those scary war-dance routines before playing thug-ball, or rugby, or whatever it's called? Lisa, after working on Gladiator, Ali and others, is now a big Hollywood soundtracks player, which is comically absurd but blissfully reassuring.

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