There is a delicacy to The Miserable Rich which makes the head float and the heart sway. From the gentle plucking of the acoustic to the whispered tortured vocals on the lullaby ‘Boat Song’, it captures you for its entirety and holds you aloft and lets you reflect upon the fallacies of life.

If you were going to write a song about a railway journey, surely it would be about a dramatic trip across the top of the world chased by beautiful Mackintosh-wearing spies or perhaps a romantic one to enable you to be reunited with the love of your life on the lagoon-kissed steps of Venice? Alternatively, you could always pen an ode to the delights of a train journey between Newcastle Airport and Sunderland.

Hmm… electronic beats, vocal distortion and rock guitars: the jury is still out, for me anyway, on this breed of electro-rock which is trying to carve its own shelf in record stores. But there is a fine line between it being great music, and just an experimental ‘but at least it’s something different’ amalgamation a noise to fill an album. Head like a Kite’s second album does seem to set a good argument for the developing genre, but I’m not converted just yet.

There are a lot of laptop artists out there right now. The net is heaving with electronic musicians and mix masters and it seems like everyone is tinkering with sophisticated software and cutting edge recording applications. Many of these PC producers come out with studio quality sounds and top notch results from their humble bedrooms.

The New York scene has thrown up some great bands over the last few years, with a few stinky scenesters too. Thankfully Gutz fall into the first category with their hybrid mix of Bowie jamming with Cold War Kids laid back rock. Hailing from Connecticut, but plying their trade extensively in New York, Gutz introduce their debut album to the masses outside the city that never sleeps.

The Bowerbirds take their name from a species famous in ornithological circles not for looks but some extraordinary behaviour. To charm a mate, male Bowerbirds offset what they lack in the plumage department with deft seduction techniques. They’ll spend hours painstakingly building a bower, a sort of elaborate avian bachelor pad built with twigs, stones and anything else to hand. His success in this endeavour could spell solitude or a veritable harem of admirers.

Anticon’s regular habit of adorning the sleeves of releases from its roster of genius geeks, misfit maestros and all round weirdoes (Why?, Sole, Passage, Dose One etc.) with a sticker instructing shop proprietors to “File under rock”, continues with perhaps the most inappropriate album yet. Whether or not they’re hoping that unsuspecting Bon Jovi fans might slip on this mischievous musical banana skin and be converted to the way of the Ant is unclear, but it’s highly unlikely it’ll happen after hearing Marin Dosh’s fourth cocktail shaker of sound.

Ambrose Tompkins are one of those sickeningly talented bands who seem to have sprung fully-formed from the womb. They’ve actually been releasing singles and EPs for a while now, but this is their first album… and very nice it is too.

Soul legend Isaac Hayes has died of a heart attack at his home in Memphis.

The Left Outsides comprise Alison Cotton and Mark Nicholas, whose first single for Hi-Beat Records shares its ‘The Third Light’ title with their evenings of musical entertainment at ‘The Glad’ - The Gladstone Arms, Borough, Southwark, London SE1. Alison’s lingering viola phrasing provides just the right atmosphere in support of Mark’s lead vocals on this song.