Rock (All)

Review: The Fall's tenth album, like pretty much all the others, was met with a mixed critical response, but as well as containing one of the band's only two Top 40 UK singles - their cover of 'Victoria' by The Kinks, executed with a sideways swipe at the Victorian values of the Thatcher-led Tory government of the time - it's also got a stack of tracks that have grown to be Fall fan favourites. 'Carry Bag Man', autobiographical in a pretty loose sense, is compulsive and hilarious. The tight and taut glam stomp meet Krautrock drive of 'Bremen Nacht', complete with scraping violins and honking saxes, is about as good as the band gets in this particularly purple patch of their lengthy career. 'Athlete Cured' , as well as containing the priceless line "an odour resembling hot dogs / permeated his whole room", is all rockabilly aggression re-routed through synth drums and Moog washes, is essential Fall too.
As if that weren't enough, this re-issue package comes with a whole host of additional delights, including their biggest hit 'Ghost In My House', the electro hybrid anthem 'Hit The North', four radio session tracks, and their cover of The Beatles' 'Day In The Life', previously only available on an NME charity album. Far from being a Fall completist's dream - they will probably have everything on here anyway - this is actually a brilliant place to start discovering one of the most important and delight-inducing bands of the past half decade.

Review: Cherry Red offshoot Righteous continues to trawl through the record collection of the Cramps' Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, which as any fan will tell you is notoriously full of obscure, exotic, eccentric and downright bizarre 45s. Fast Jivin' Class Cutters High on Booze is a particularly quirky and bizarre affair, with the included '50s and '60s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, surf rock, rockabilly and beat music songs tending towards the camp, tongue-in-cheek and downright bizarre. It's a hugely entertaining collection all told, and for every excitable workout by no-hit-wonder you'll find genuine buried treasure, such as Aussie Frank Davidson's tribute to the Flintstones, 'Yabba Dabba Doo', Eddie Cochran and Ernie Freeman's 'Fast Jivin' and 'Kan-Gu-Wa' by the Scholars, whose members included a young Kenny Rogers.