The latest CD releases reviewed

BILLY BRAGG
Mr Love & Justice Cooking Vinyl **

Long regarded as something of a national treasure by the UK music media (as well as an influential reference point for the likes of Jamie T, Jack Penate and Remi Nicole), Billy Bragg continues his decline into middle-age with an album - his first studio recording in six years - that does little to maintain his standing. Declamatory singing and an acute ear for melody were always Bragg's calling cards, but here there are few reasons to be cheerful. Songs such as I Almost Killed You, Sing Their Souls Back Home, You Make Me Brave and Farm Boy have their collective arms sloping along the ground, scratching it until the fingernails tear. The title track, If You Ever Leave, I Keep Faith (with Robert Wyatt guesting) and O Freedom salvage the record somewhat, but overall there's a strong notion of the one-man Clash having somehow transformed into an eight-legged Brotherhood of Man. TONY CLAYTON-LEA

Downoad track: I Keep Faith

BLACK FRANCIS
Svn Fngrs Cooking Vinyl ***

When he staged his recent "guerrilla busk" outside St Stephen's Green, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV was hustled away by gardaí. What name he gave I don't know, but the Pixies frontman has lately reverted to his old stage name of Black Francis, and loyal fans should delight in the stripped-down immediacy of this mini-album, a seven-song thingy recorded, mixed and artworked in just seven days. Last year's Bluefinger saw Francis exploring his obsession with Dutch alt.rock legend Herman Brood, but this record is a more generalised celebration of life and death, love and sex. The bewitching lurch of The Seus reminds you of his old band's classic track, Bone Machine, while I Sent Away compresses Francis's signature manic rock'n'roll energy into a neat little package. The closer, When They Come to Murder Me, sees Black Francis leaving the devil trailing in his dust. www.blackfrancis.net    KEVIN COURTNEY

Download tracks: The Seus, Seven Fingers, Wnen They Come to Murder Me

MGMT
Oracular Spectacular Columbia ****

Flashback time again. On their debut album, MGMT duo Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser tip jauntily angled hats to rock's most oddball and proggy practitioners. Yet they're also acutely aware of just where pop harmonies should come into the equation. Producer David Fridmann previously worked with The Flaming Lips and, yes, there are lines to be drawn between those Okie City dreamers and this New York pair, particularly in how they spike their melodies. But the real beauty of Oracular Spectacular lies in its lavish layers of technicoloured sounds, smartly structured pop nuances (you won't hear a better alt.pop tune all year than the space-rock majesty of Time to Pretend) and the duo's general determination to remake the sound of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World by way of Sparks and Queen. www.whoismgmt.com  JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Time to Pretend, Weekend Wars

READER'S WIVES
Reader's Wives No label ***

It's quit e unfair to compare an unsigned artist so early in his career to existing greats. Fortunately for Reader's Wives, this diverting and polished album (written, performed and produced by Niall James Holohan) is hard to pigeonhole. With musical styles that swing from Specials-style ska to ballads to New Orleans blues, Reader's Wives appears to be something of a sample offering, but an accomplished one for all that. The strength of Holohan's lyrics is steady throughout, from the irony-laden Sexually Attracted to Myself to the anti-love song Have You Seen the Moon Tonight? Are You Coming For a Drink After Work, Princess? a jokey ballad of 9-to-5 love affairs, might hang in the shadow of Badly Drawn Boy, but carves out its own identity thanks to the clear, hard vocals and a slick backing band. Anyone who smuggles a Sesame Street counting song into a track, as in the infectious One Two, deserves marks for bravery. www.myspace.com/readerswives CLAIRE LOOBY

THEE SILVER MT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA BAND
13 Blues for Thirteen Moons Constellation ****

Don't let the verbose moniker put you off: TSMZMO&TLLB is the latest incarnation of the Montreal seven-piece more humbly known as A Silver Mt Zion. The material on this fifth album for the wonderful Constellation label benefits considerably from the band's fine-tuning through live shows over the past two years. A palpable intensity acts as the glue to bind songs that peak amid crashing drums, scraping violins and walls of guitar noise. 1,000,000 Died to Make This Sound, the epic opener, pulsates on a riff Jimmy Page would give his eye teeth for. Efrim Menuck's manic vocal delivery occasionally comes

across as a tad didactic, but musically each track has more ideas than the entire Oasis back catalogue combined. The band continue to make quality rock music for those who don't suffer from short attention spans. www.tra-la-la-band.com    BRIAN KEANE

Download tracks: Advertising Heroin, I Don't Need to Be Seduced