The first hint of this comes with Paranoid Android a six-minute multi-

The first hint of this comes with “Paranoid Android”, a six-minute, multi- sectioned monster that is possibly the most over-ambitious single since “MacArthur Park”.
The fulcrum upon which Yorke’s man/ machine unease pivots, however, is “Fitter Happier”, which comes right at the heart of the album, as if leaking from the space between the two sides. Lyrically a direct descendant of The Fall’s “Eat Y’self Fitter”, it features a computerised voice outlining rules for a healthy, stress-free life over a quietly abstract backdrop. Sharply ironic it may be, but once heard, it is always skipped thereafter. This offers a further irony, one which provides a possible answer to the album’s prevailing anxieties.But even when Yorke locates some kind of human essence in the extreme introspection of “Climbing up the Walls”, there is no easy respite “Either way you turn I’ll be there,” he sings “Open up your skull I’ll be there/ Crawling up the walls”. So despite the brief bursts of optimism in “No Surprises” and “Lucky”, OK Computer concludes with Yorke and the band still hurtling into the future.For all its ambition and determination to break new ground, OK Computer is not, finally, as impressive as The Bends, which covered much the same sort of emotional knots, but with better tunes.

It is easy to be impressed by, but ultimately hard to love, an album that luxuriates so readily in its own despondency.. Reprise 9362-46652-2

Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums are a bit like London buses: fairly frequent and virtually identical – if you miss one (and last year’s Broken Arrow was a good one to miss, frankly) don’t worry, there’ll be another one along shortly. This one’s a live double-album, the soundtrack to a concert film by Jim Jarmusch which the somniferous director helmed as a favour for Young’s negligible guitar-doodle score to his Dead Man film.
Like Weld, it’s mostly a major fix for guitar junkies, Neil and the band stretching out across elongated versions of former glories. As before, it’s in the internal contradictions of the group’s style – the tight but loose playing, the tough fragility of the sound – that the magic resides, and it’s the kind of magic which, on this showing, grows more mysterious and enthralling with age Score one for the fifty-somethings.. Straight in at No 1 with the insanely catchy, if ungrammatical, “MMMBop”; chart-toppers on both sides of the Atlantic; all that long blond hair, all those pearly-white teeth; worst of all, American teen upstarts Hanson can actually play their instruments. The instinctive temptation is to sneer, but Middle of Nowhere quickly wipes the smile off your face. Brothers Isaac (16, guitar), Taylor (14, keyboards) and Zachary (11, drums) were raised on a staple diet of Sixties classic pop, rock and soul, and it shows: their style is largely untainted by the stylistic compromises of the last decade or two, resting instead on a solid bed of funky R&B grooves and classic pop harmonies.

Small wonder, then, that “MMMBop” comes across like the Velvets’ “Sweet Jane” with bum- fluff on its chin and soul in its heart Catch them quick, before their voices break.. Jason Pierce’s Spiritualized are a group fascinated – some would say transfixed – by rock history. Their songs borrow classic rock titles but they’re less blatant in their stylistic thievery than, say, Noel Gallagher, occupying the spaces in between their influences rather than the influences themselves. But after three albums, it’s clear that those spaces don’t afford all that much room to move. Individual songs are static and repetitive, any development coming through variations in density rather than melodic or rhythmic progression Given such a restrictive aesthetic, Ladies and Gentlemen… is the group’s most successful release yet, thanks mostly to a handful of the later tracks: “No God, Only Religion”, in particular, takes their cumulative approach to its logical conclusion, slowly building up a tsunami of sound..

This is the story of the Chancellor’s New Clothes. Gordon Brown paraded his lounge suit at the Mansion House yesterday and delivered his Big Speech. “Look, he’s not wearing a penguin suit!” shouted the little boy. In this version of the story it was the little boy’s older brother, who works in the City, who added dismissively: “He’s got no clothes on at all.” From Flash Gordon to Flasher Gordon in one short month. The older brother and his City friends are not impressed by the new inflation target. To them it looks suspiciously like going naked into the fight against inflation. They are too worldly-wise to be taken in by the Chancellor’s courtiers, who prepare the way for his triumphant progress through the crowds by leaking details of his new clothing to the Financial Times.