Rave on with Lust Lust Lust

3:41pm Monday 19th November 2007

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THE RAVEONETTES 'LUST LUST LUST' (FIERCE PANDA):

IT'S always good to come across a new band, and arguably even better when they're just new to you and in reality have a wealth of back catalogue to investigate, as is the case with The Raveonettes.

For no good reason I'd never bothered checking them out, and when I was given 'Lust Lust Lust' I thought I'd do them the courtesy of a disinterested flick through - yet I was hooked from the first track, and it just got better and better.

Admittedly it's right up my alley, and that doesn't necessarily signal mainstream success (often the absolute opposite), but there's so much to love about this album that I can't see how you could be anything but overwhelmed by it.

One criticism you could level is that it's blatantly derivative - taking huge chunks from the late 80s, with Mary Chain-style walls of guitar noise and nods towards the indie-bubblegum-pop of The Darling Buds and the like - but the songs are so infectious and powerful that you won't care.

Some of the greatest pop songs of 2007 and an unexpected album of the year contender.

VARIOUS ARTISTS 'I HATE MUSIC - OUTPUT RECORDINGS 1996-2006' (OUTPUT)

Label retrospectives - to celebrate the history of the label, as opposed to label samplers to advertise - are the ultimate in self-indulgence, but when a label's been around for a decade and has such a deep back catalogue you can hardly deny them.

The lovechild of Trevor Jackson, aka The Underdog, Output closed its metaphorical doors last year, but this 2CD comp serves as a handy bitesize round-up of their legacy. It starts brilliantly, with angular instrumental rock from Fridge, spiky funky electro from 7 Hurtz and the centrepiece of the whole compilation in Fourtet's masterful epic 'Glasshead' - a record that sounds as fresh now as it did upon release.

However, the flipside is that in this environment, these early Output releases stand head and shoulders above pretty much anything that follows, with only a handful of the 31 tracks (Black Strobe's 808 State-copying 'Innerstrings', Colder's New Order-esque 'Crazy Love', The Rapture classic 'House Of Jealous Lovers', Icarus, 7 Hurtz again) coming close to that standard.

The remainder swings between average and irritatingly pretentious, and however admirable Jackson's agenda undoubtedly was, 'I Hate Music' simply serves as a stark document of how a once-great label gradually became guilty of style over content.

There's enough on there to make it a worthwhile purchase if it's all new to you though.

DAVE GAHAN 'HOURGLASS' (MUTE)

TALKING of self-indulgence, solo projects serve to simply massage the ego, however much they try to dress it up as 'a chance to express myself outside of the confines of the band' or other such twaddle.

They're also never as good as the parent group, without exception; if you can think of any let me know. Inevitably it's a watered down version of what they're famous for, or a wilfully wayward, experimental journey into the outer limits, man - but either way it's something for devotees and absolutely nobody else.

So to the album in hand, the second solo affort from the Depeche Mode frontman. Eschewing the guitars of his debut lone outing in favour of the more familiar synthesizer, this is certainly more worthy than many of the limp solo efforts from others, and indeed superior to a fair percentage of Depeche Mode's more recent work.

Occasionally it falls slightly flat but the majority of the songs - in particular the opening trio of 'Saw Something', killer lead single 'Kingdom' and 'Deeper and Deeper' - sound like the work of an artist with every confidence in his own ability, and with a clarity that's often been tellingly absent in the past.