Elton John - Elton 60 Live At Madison Square Garden

Elton John's creative renaissance in the last six or seven years has been remarkable, and while the commercial rewards have hardly been what they were back in his 70s heyday, the songwriting has finally returned to the kind of quality that marked that era. For too long he coasted on his talent, flamboyance and showbiz mates. The last phase of that dark era arguably came in 2000 with the release of Greatest Hits One Night Only, a live DVD recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York, with Elton running through most of his greatest hits with some 'special guests'. Unfortunately they were the likes of Mary J Blige, Bryan Adams, Anastacia and Ronan Keating, none of them fit to adjust his wig, let alone share a stage with him. The tracklisting was ok, but no better than that, and the whole thing was a disappointment. Perhaps it was to him too, because a year later he released Songs From West Coast, his best album since the late 70s and a return to simple songwriting genius. It was followed in similar style by Peachtree Road and The Captain And The Kid, with Elton and Bernie Taupin admitting that they had realised that instead of trying to write hits, they should just write good music. Appropriately, for his 60th birthday, he returned to Madison Square Garden earlier this year, and it is a long way removed from Greatest Hits One Night Only. For a start, it kicks off with Sixty Years On, a song quite obvious in the context, but taken from his second album, hardly one you would normally expect to hear. And the great old songs just keep on coming, with Madman Across The Water, Where To Now St Peter?, Hercules, Ballad Of A Well Known Gun (awesome, just awesome), Take Me To The Pilot, Holiday Inn, Burn Down The Mission and Levon. It's like Elton decided that his 60th birthday was the time to remind everyone just was an amazing songwriter he was in the first decade of his career, and it works. More hits emerge on disc two, but even then it is still mostly 70s focused, with just two songs older than the 80s, and only the best couple of tracks from that decade. It gets even better with the bonuses that come with the DVD, including 18 live, rare and unseen live performances on disc one and Elton's New York Stories on disc two, bringing classic songs like Border Song and Someone Saved My Life Tonight to the mix with performances from the 70s. This collection won't please everyone, because some of his 'pop-oriented' fans might bemoan the lack of Nikita, Sacrfice and Can You Feel The Love Tonight, but for those of us who know that Tumbleweed Connection is one of the best albums that anyone anywhere has ever released, Elton 60 is the perfect DVD.

Manu Chao - La Radiolina

Manu Chao is one of the most singular artists around. From the first 15 seconds of opening track 13 Días, it couldn't possibly be anyone else but him, with his lolloping rhythms, quirky hooks and squeaky little voice. Technically, his music fits into the 'world beat' genre, but he's never cared too much for genres in his career so far, having mashed together all kinds of styles with the awesome Mano Negra in the 80s. Today, he exists in his own genre, spending almost as much time working other artists into that as producing his own music, with his most recent contribution to the music scene being the reinvention of Malian duo Amadou and Mariam, producing and guesting on their Dimanche a Bamoko album and getting them the acclaim and sales that they had long deserved. Aside from a French-language-only album in 2004, he's been quiet since 2001's Próxima Estación: Esperanza, with breakthrough album Clandestino having come out nine years ago. A fast worker he is not, but his third album proper is joyous explosion of great music that grabs hold of your brain and never lets go. As usual, leftist politics are the heart of all those songs that you can understand (he sings in pretty much every major European language across this album, occasionally even within a song). If you wanted to listen to just one song to get Chao's sound summed up, single Rainin' In Paradise would have to be it, as it has everything you could want from him, even including the police sirens he loves to throw into the mix whenever possible, as well as the language-swapping that puts most English rock stars to shame as they can hardly speak their own language, let alone anyone else's. The only criticism you can have of La Radiolina is that there is no real sign of Chao having adapted his sound at all in the last nine years, as all of these sounsd would have fitted quite comfortably on Clandestino, but that is hardly much of a criticism, because his style is so inventive, unique and infectious that it's almost churlish to complain about it, particularly s he takes five or six years off between each release. One main difference is that La Radiolina does seem to have a much faster pace overall than its predecessors, with Chao rarely taking his foot off the pedal, making for an album that flies past in a delirous whirlwind of fun and completely obliterates any unfortunate memories of Robbie Williams and THAT cover of Bongo Bong...

Nicola Benedetti - Vaughan Williams-Taverner

Now 20 years old, Nicola Benedetti is no longer a teen violin prodigy, but the young Scot is still an artist learning to flourish and spread her wings after a rapid ascent in the last four years or so, and while she has the looks to quite easily be marketed as a hot young sexy classical music star, Benedetti is resolutely ploughing her own furrow and genuinely seems to be more interested in the music than the acclaim or fame: "I started doing this not for record contracts or for pictures in the paper or anything like that," she said in an interview last year. "I want to be playing better and doing more interesting things musically in 20 years' time than I am now. So whatever huge ups and downs I have today, I'm just trying to see that as part of a much, much longer line. That's why nothing that’s instant — like a story in the paper or a record contract — nothing that's instant like that will either make me as happy or unhappy as how I feel I'm doing with my music. Because that really is where my priorities lie." With her third album, she continues to follow the trend of combining some more famous pieces of classical music with more adventurous and modern fare. The blend of Ralph Vaughan-Williams' The Lark Ascending and Sir John Taverner's Lalishri suite could hardly be more suited for Benedetti, giving her the chance to shine on the piece voted as Britain's favourite classical work by Classic FM listeners, as well as stretch herself on the Indian flavours of two pieces written specially for her by Taverner. The various sections of Lalishri are where she really does flourish, particularly the spiralling drama of Cycle 3, and her playing really is becoming ever more adventurous and mature with each new recording.

Fair To Midland - Fables From A Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True

Not many American rock bands have a sound as interesting as Fair To Midland, nor song-titles as bizarre as Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes, A Wolf Descends Upon The Spanish Sahara or April Fools And Eggmen. Nor a frontman with a name that sounds as much like a Norwegian death metal group called Darroh Suddereth. But all of this is what helps make Fables From A Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True one of the most unusual and impressive rock albums of the year so far. Fair To Midland combine prog-rock with metal with the occasional glimpse of emo (or is that just the fruity language in the song titles?) as well as stadium rock flourishes like U2 and a general desire to just be Rush in almost every way. And this is an excellent thing and on tracks like Dance Of The Manatee and April Fools And Eggmen, it works a treat, with OTT bombastics mingling with excellent instrumentation like Spanish guitars, pianos, and funky rhythms. They don't tend to go in for 'subtle' very often, but are all the better for it, because their big noise, big choruses and unabashed great music makes for an album that is a lot of fun to listen to, even if the formula does wear slightly thin at times. But even when this is the case, there's still plenty of keep it interesting and that is what sets Fair To Midland aside from so many of their contemporaries.

Jenny Owen Youngs - Batten The Hatches

You can quite often tell whether you are going to like an artist from which other singers/bands they thank in their album liner notes. Jenny Owen Youngs thanks Regina Spektor and Erin McKeown, and that gives a big hint about what kind of music she makes, with Batten The Hatches a fiery debut of idiosyncratically folky music. Hailing from New Jersey, she follows a well-trodden path, but has enough about her to make this album still a worthwhile listen for fans of Spektor or McKeown, even though it gets off to a slightly underwhelming start with a couple of fairly average tracks, Porchrail and From Here, both of which are ok without really making much of an impact. Things only really kick off with what is becoming her signature tune, Fuck Was I, which brought her plenty of attention when it was used in US TV show Weeds. As you can probably guess from the title, the language in the song is hardly radio-friendly, but it sums up her sense of humour and very frank style of songwriting ("maybe I'll be the lucky one that doesn't get burned, what the fuck was I thinking?"). Relationships and break-ups seem to play a large role in Batten The Hatches, with From Here and Voice On Tape amongst the tracks focusing on that topic, but the likes of the jaunty Drinking Song stop the mood from getting too overbearing. Indeed, on a bonus track she even covers Nelly's Hot In Herre, so she's clearly not precious about what she does and the album is all the better for it. She may not be original, but Owen Youngs is a talented singer and songwriter, and Batten The Hatches is very good indeed.