The latest rock and pop CDs reviewed

ADRIAN CROWLEY

Season of the Sparks TinAngel Records ★★★★

Like many musicians of his ilk, Adrian Crowley's introspective folk musings can take some getting used to. His earthy baritone often proves a sticking point, but if the Galway man's slow-moving, detailed songs are something of an acquired taste, they're no less rewarding for it. On his fifth album, Crowley utilises his lyrical talent to conjure up the most gorgeous imagery this side of the Shannon. Love songs are entwined with the natural world (The Beekeeper's Wife is exquisite), while his musical realm also expands to embrace a new self-assurance. Hazy, lilting acoustic songs such as Liberty Stream are fused with cinematic folk tunes (The Three Sisters, The Wishing Seat) and more besides, resulting in Crowley's most consistently beautiful album yet. www.adriancrowley.com

Download tracks: The Wishing Seat, Liberty Stream

LAUREN MURPHY

BEAUTIFUL UNIT

European Son Trust Me I'm a Thief ★★★

Irish guitarist Brian Mooney has fashioned a debut album that avoids easy comparisons, but which manages to sound very much like something that would sit comfortably between Lemon Jelly and Henry Cow. Divided up between songs and instrumentals, it’s to Mooney’s credit that any potential disparity between the formats is diminished by a sonic technique that oozes character and distinction – here be music salvaged from eight-track cassette recordings from 1996 (Dublin band The Idiots playing at the now- demolished White Horse Inn), rhythms thumped out on toy drum sets, strums on a borrowed banjo, and music that thrums to, in the words of Mooney himself, “the pulse of the static from the jack-to-jack”. Our advice? Don’t let this one pass you by. www.trustmeimathief.com

Download tracks : Only the Mediocre Survive, Waitress, Banjo and Leaf

TONY CLAYTON-LEA

RICHARD SWIFT

Atlantic Ocean Secretly Canadian★★★★

When one befriends Wilco and records in their loft after touring with them and the Cold War Kids, it's safe to say one's street cred is decent. But when Ryan Adams, Sean Lennon, Mark Ronson, members of The Walkmen and Sufjan Stevens's band pop up on your new album, cred becomes clout. Swift crafts eccentric, fluent tunes in a pleasantly off-kilter manner. He is the creaking blue voice of the sad clown in busted top hat, his swooning minor chords comfortable alongside jaunty pop. Atlantic Ocean's unusual beauty is in its initially overwhelming Tardis-like sound: from funky title track to deliciously Motown closer Lady Luck, you're left puzzling (just before pressing replayt) over how so much fits into 40 minutes. www.myspace.com/richardswift

Download Tracks: Atlantic Ocean, Lady Luck, The First Time

DEANNA ORTIZ

MARGARET HEALY

Girls, Boys & Clockwork Toys Medical★★★

Margaret Healy's second album offers 10 songs of innocence and experience – or rather, 10 songs about the kind of hard-won second innocence that comes on the far side of experience. Healy has a knack for playing nursery-rhyme melodies off wry and rueful lyrics. Thus the cheeky feminist protest of Adam Eve: "What did I learn at school today?/Not much that makes me feel okay/I learnt regardless of my brain they don't want me flying planes/Why I don't know, they must be flown by genitalia." Ouch. And it was all going so Hermione Granger up to that point. Other highlights? The melancholy Chocolate Lake,which should be snapped up by whoever makes the sequel to Magnolia, and Kevin Murphy's string arrangements, which are only brill. www.myspace.com/ margarethealy

Download tracks : The Only Soldier, The Chocolate Lake

DARAGH DOWNES

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS

Dark Days/Light Years Rough Trade★★

Over the course of their 16-year career, Super Furry Animals' musical odyssey has taken in experimental pop, dance, indie, electronica and most genres in between. It is taken for granted that Gruff Rhys and co err on the side of eccentricity, and it's usually a tactic employed with panache and charm. Their ninth studio album isn't such a triumph, though. Dark Days/Light Years is a collection of half-baked songs, and has no focal point, cohesion or any bona-fide standouts. Splitting vocal duties is one blunder, indulging in frustrating elongated jams ( Cardiff in the Sun) is another; the outcome is a record that sounds more like a collection of B-sides than one with any real purpose. For a band of Super Furry Animals's calibre, it's a big disappointment. www.superfurry. com

Download tracks: Moped Eyes, Helium Hearts

LAUREN MURPHY

CYMBALS EAT GUITARS

Why There Are Mountains Cymbals Eat Guitars★★★★

Do not underestimate the power of classifieds. Cymbals Eat Guitars assembled via a Craigslist ad in early 2008 and took their name from a snarky Lou Reed quote. A little over a year later, they have found their feet with a ravishing debut. What's most remarkable about Why There Are Mountains is how, without denying their influences, CEG have found another way of joining the indie-rock dots between those who have ventured into the leftfield before them. Joseph D'Agostino's vocals are one clearly defined pearl, while songs such as And The Hazy Seaand Cold Springdeliver clear, knockout punches. And just when you think you've sussed where they're going, they add something unexpected and move the show to another stage. Music to become obsessive about. www.myspace.com/cymbalseat guitars

Download tracks: And The Hazy Sea

JIM CARROLL

THE ETTES

Look At Life Again Soon Take Root★★★★

A trio from LA now living high on the hog in Nashville, The Ettes make garage punk-rock which purrs, snarls and knocks you over with its raw energy. Live, much of this can be attributed to the powerhouse playing of the three, especially drummer Maria Silver and Lindsay "Coco" Hames, whose voice can switch in the click of a finger from cooing like an angel to slapping you around the ears. On their second album, it's their songcraft that has an extra shine. The songs remain raw and supple, but there is greater depth to the harmonies than before and more consideration given to how space can work just as well as another stompathon. You'll find yourself humming I Get Mine, Crown of Age and Pay Upin the strangest of places at the oddest of times. www.theettes.com

Download tracks: I Get Mine, Crown of Age

JIM CARROLL

LITTLE PALACE

Invitation Time RMG ★★★

Reference points for Little Palace are as disparate as their lyrical preoccupations, which run the gamut from beekeeping to TV. Songwriter Martin Brunnock revels in Californian-tinged odes such as Puppet Show(albeit with some nifty string arrangements) that wouldn't sound out of place on an Eagles set list. The more guitar-driven Beekeeper hints at a more fully formed identity until bludgeoned by its own mallet-headed lyricism: "I wish I had a hammer/I'd stick it in your brain/To control is to be controlled/Here we go again." Ann-Louise Mulvany's vocals are shafts of light amid Little Palace's all too derivative formula, and her unflinching delivery nudges the forbidding Lately Now towards the special stakes. Intermittent, fleeting moments of inspiration lurk deep within. www.littlepalace.ie

Download tracks: Circus, Gift

SIOBHAN LONG

JERRY FISH & THE MUDBUG CLUB

The Beautiful Untrue The Mudbug Club Records★★★★

On MySpace, Jerry Fish, aka Gerard Whelan, lists his influences as "Beat poetry, dog, bone and sailor stories, Tom Waits, Dean Martin, Dr John, Jacques Brel, Ray Charles, One Mint Julep, Mingus, Ellington", and his sound as "indie lounge lizard schmooze, mariachi swampadelica". He ticks all those eclectic boxes. What he doesn't say is that The Beautiful Untruebuilds imaginatively on his debut, and that his Mudbug world of comic-cut theatre feels more attractive with each track. From the gorgeous artwork to the measured playing of Conor Brady and the singing of Whelan and guests Imelda May and Carol Keogh, this is guaranteed to put a smile on troubled faces. Indeed, The Hole in the Boatmakes some kind of beautiful out of bleak. www.jerry-fish.com

Download tracks: The Hole in the Boat, Summer of Love

JOE BREEN