Latest releases reviewed

CAT POWER Speaking For Trees Matador ***

Photographer and director Mark Borthwick loves filming people "being natural" in natural habitats. A notorious sort of person on stage and in interview, Chan "Cat Power" Marshall is at her most natural singing and playing her guitar. Speaking For Trees is Borthwick's two-hour film of Marshall singing and playing guitar, drifting in and out of focus in a sun drenched forest clearing in upstate New York as she performs several tunes from last year's critically acclaimed You Are Free session, and a few covers and medleys (notably the entertaining The Dream/Blue Moon/Try A Little Tenderness). With an unreleased 18-minute song saga (Willie Deadwilder) and three short "nature" films set to Marshall's music, Speaking For Trees is very long and very dreary - think Warhol among the trees but without a Chelsea girl. Only for hardcore fans. www.matadorrecords.com

Jocelyn Clarke

SEX PISTOLS Live at Longhorn Sanctuary Visual Entertainment ***

On their ill-fated 1978 tour of the US, someone had the bright but provocative idea (most probably, Malcolm McLaren) of setting the snarly UK punks down in the middle of the southern states to see what the locals would make of the filth and fury. This Dallas gig - the band's second ever last appearance - captures the mayhem that followed. Rotten is in suitably provocative mood, Steve Jones has blood smeared all over him and Sid Vicious really isn't at the races. The audience, for their part, give as good as they get. Put it this way - it's not Woodstock. This isn't the best quality Pistols DVD available but the songs include Anarchy in the UK, Holidays In The Sun and No Fun, and there is a palpable sense of the band giving it one last two-fingers before the fiasco that was the final San Francisco date. Also featured are two promos for Anarchy . . . and God Save The Queen. Interesting as a historical curio, but not essential.

Brian Boyd