Mama's Gun
Erykah Badu

Any artist who takes nearly four years to record the follow up to their gazillion-selling debut, getting distracted by stardom and movie roles in the meantime, would seem destined to screw it up big-time and begin the slow descent into obscurity, a drug habit, and a VH-1 "Where Are They Now?" documentary. Ms. Badu is obviously made of sterner stuff and has avoided the dreaded Second Album Blues in stunning style. "Mama's Gun" comes out firing from the brash funk-rock opening track "Penitentiary Philosophy" all the way to the epic and beautiful closer "Green Eyes." Badu sings with a soulful and fiery confidence about life, love, and her sagging boobs while adding more colours to the primitive musical palette of her debut – the grooves are more slinky and sexy and the ballads have a jazzy beauty that will make the hairs on the back of your teeth tingle with delight. Let's hope she has a lot more like this tucked away in her big turban.

This Is...
Beaumont

Beaumont sound like your typical shy English boys who got bullied at school and channeled their frustrations into music and dreams of pop stardom. Despite the sophistication of their breezy acoustic pop music they come across as awkward teenagers who aren't very good at football sitting in their bedrooms conjuring up a vision of life and school as they would like it to be – having a girlfriend who looks like Astrud Gilberto, wearing trendy clothes, listening to Burt Bacharach records and generally being terribly suave and cosmopolitan. The crisp guitars, bright tunes and fey boy-girl vocals sound so English you can almost taste the tea and crumpets, and a large part of the albums considerable appeal comes from the feeling of wistful introverts putting on cravats and living their own personal version of La Dolce Vita for half an hour. Available from [Darla]
Lazy Dog
Various Artists (mixed by
Ben Watt and Jay Hannan)

Lazy Dog is the name of the intimate and seriously groovy London club started by Everything But The Girl geezer Ben Watt as an outlet for all the soulful Deep House records he loved that weren't getting played in any clubs (tell me about it Ben). On disc one Watt splices together a set of smooth and jazzy House that glides along on a flowing wave of 4/4 beats, occasionally throwing in the vocals of his main squeeze Tracey Thorn just so we don't forget what his day job is. On disc two Hannan turns up the temperature and the Disco-meter a few notches with a pumping, Latin-flavoured set spiced up with some wailing diva vocals that should have everyone dancing around their handbags. Between them they keep the rhythm purring like a well-fed kitten from start to finish, a dancefloor festival of the different flavours of Deep House that will make you boogie till you just can't boogie no more.

The Handy Wah! Whole
The Mighty Wah!

Driven by the huge personality of Pete Wylie, the career of Wah! spans twenty years, several different labels, various name changes, and a broken back that nearly ended Wylie's life. This double whammy retrospective set covers the two decades of triumphs and disasters, bursting at the seams with the punk intensity, glam flash and Spectorish grandeur that were the hallmarks of Wah!'s big and brash sound. Big mouth Wylie was a new wave Springsteen from Liverpool who wore his heart on his leather-jacketed sleeve, singing like some scruffy poet standing on a street corner screaming at passersby about the revolution. He's one of the few performers who could sing a corny line like "don't you ever lose your dreams" without making me laugh hysterically at such daft bollocks, why the man isn't a legend in his own lunchtime I'll never know.

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