Albums Out This Week: W/C 2nd November 2009

Just think about it, you love your child/spouse/paramour/sibling/relative dearly and wish to purchase them a gift. The record companies invented the "Best Of" album for this exact reason.

An arbitrarily chosen set of songs stripped of artistic context and arranged in an order to appeal to the basest instinct of humankind. It's the ultimate form of shallow marketeering and you want to present this as a gift offering?

The Christmas holiday will always hold a mixture of happy and sad memories for Strange Glue. Happiness on a par with finding a £20 note when we discovered a present we'd forgotten to give the year before which could now be given to the young children of the family. Then sadness as they unwrapped it with eager faces and we remembered all-too-late that we'd bought a puppy.

Foo Fighters: Greatest Hits

Sixteen tracks culled from fourteen years and six albums of Dave Grohl's post-Nirvana reinvention as one of the most respected rock front-men of our generation. Think of a song you like by them and chances are, it's on here. That's unless you're inherently strange and have a taste for obscure album tracks.

Nirvana: Live At Reading (Deluxe Edition CD+DVD)

The second Dave Grohl-themed release of the week. Filmed at Reading Festival back in 1992 (eighteen months before Cobain's death), it captures the raw intensity and the retrospective poignancy of Nirvana's headline set. Released for the first time, it features a fully mastered and colour-corrected print of the legendary performance.

Julian Casablancas: Phrazes for the Young

As band members around him released one or two side-project albums - Nickel Eye, Albert Hammond Jnr, Little Joy - and others got married and had children, Julian Casablancas sat back and watched. Biding his time or idly watching it pass: who knows. But now, The Strokes front-man steps into the ring with his rather impressive solo début.

Skunk Anansie: Smashes And Trashes

Another greatest hits album, without the aid of a calendar, you can tell it's almost December. Featuring three brand new song (Because of You, Tear the Place Up and Squander) this release also features whatever hits it was that Skunk Anansie must've had. "Weak", that was it!

Luke Haines: 21st Century Man

Former member of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, Luke Haines brings forth his sixth album under his own name, despite reforming Black Box Recorder in February with a view to touring and working on new material. He knows how to organise and schedule, we presume.

Flight of the Conchords: I Told You I Was Freaky

The folk parody experts get a bit tangled with their second effort, the general consensus being that it lacks the independent charms to woo people who have not seen the episodes of the HBO comedy show from which the tracks are culled. Criticism was also levied at the seemingly low production values present. Poor boys.

Brett Anderson: Slow Attack

The name Brett Anderson always makes our heart leap on release schedules, then we realise it doesn't refer to the rather lovely front-woman of The Donnas, but to ex-Suede member and unstoppably prolific solo artist Mr. Brett Anderson. Oddly enough, both seem fond of leather though!

Hidden Cameras: Origin: Orphan

Fronted by singer-songwriter Joel Gibb, The Hidden Cameras are a Canadian indie pop band. The band comprises a varying roster of musicians who play what Gibb once described as "gay church folk music". Their live performances have been elaborate, high-energy shows, featuring go-go dancers in balaclavas, a choir, and a string section.

Local Natives: Gorilla Manor

Often compared to bands such as Broken Social Scene, known for their celebratory bombast. Then infused with the rich orchestration of bands the likes of Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes. Here is their début full-length album. If you like any of the band's mentioned priorly, then it'll likely be worth a perusal.

Har Mar Superstar: Dark Touches

Imagine Eminem in the chubby, disco-infused dance part of his career (it's coming, we assure you) and you have Har Mar Superstar. Surrounded by stars, drinking in the Hollywood lifestyle and busting out moves like there's only one tomorrow. To think, it started out as a parody of that exact lifestyle.

Electric Six: Kill

The six members of Electric Six return with album six. That's a combined number of 666 for those who were counting. More daft shenanigans, more hi-jinx permanently removed from reality and likely enough innuendo to make The Todd blush. Roll your drums and drop your pants, ladies and gentlemen: Electric Six.

Molina & Johnson: Molina & Johnson

Two singer/songwriters, in possession of poignant voices. Both have been making music since the mid-90s as prolific do-it-yourself-musicians. Jason Molina solo and with his band Magnolia Electric Co. Will Johnson with Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel, as well as some solo work.

I Am Kloot: B

The requisite b-side, rare recordings and unreleased material compilation album. Pulling material from a span of twenty years, including band recordings of front-man John Bramwell's solo material. Now you can re-chart the Manchester band's career with the aid of 28 songs which aren't quite as good as the ones you've already heard.

Cold Cave: Love Comes Close

Founded by Wesley Eisold, former vocalist of hardcore-rock group Some Girls, and also the founder of publisher Heartworm Press. The group represents his first venture into instrumentation. Cold Cave also includes: Caralee McElroy (ex-Xiu Xiu), Dominick Fernow (Prurient), and Sarah Lipstate (Noveller, ex-Parts and Labor).

Weezer: Raditude

A picture of a flying dog on the cover, an album title constructed from a portmanteau of 'radical' and 'attitude' and a song featuring a guest appearance from Li'l Wayne. Co-writers include Butch Walker (Avril Lavigne, Pink, Lindsay Lohan, Katy Perry, The Automatic) and Jacknife Lee (Snow Patrol, Hadouken!). How can it possibly go right?

Mando Diao: Give Me Fire

Scoring a featured song on the video game FIFA 2006 certainly bolstered this Swedish garage-rock band's profile. Coming to the U.K eight months behind its Swedish unveiling, let's hope that the Twin Peaks influence the band cities refers to offbeat style, not confusing, mostly filler and unsatisfying (unless you like whodunnitinwhosebodys).

Rx Bandits: Mandala

A U.K release is in store for the pleasingly excellent progressive-rock band with heavy emphasis on accessible pop melodies. At some point early in the album's development, trombone player Chris Sheets left the band for undisclosed reasons. We'd wager that it's because he realise how sad it was to be playing brass in a rock band at his age.

Deer Tick: Born on Flag Day

Deer Tick is an American indie folk band from Providence, Rhode Island led by guitarist and singer-songwriter John McCauley. The band began as McCauley's solo project in December 2004. Within a few years he had acquired four other band members and the semblance of a fanbase.

Violet Violet: The City Is Full of Beasts

Tasty, barbed musical morsels snatched from the fingers, mouths and hearts of PJ Harvey, Sleater-Kinney and Huggy Bear, heavily seasoned with Violet Violet’s own arty brand of vibrant wit and wisdom. This is gossip rock, only with significantly more attractive women than Beth Ditto.

LAKE: Let's Build A Roof

Statistically speaking, only 1 in 4 albums which L.A.K.E record, ever get a proper release. That's roughly equivalent to the odds of Marlon King getting a penalty, even then it likely involves soap-on-a-rope. The sounds they craft are straight from the playbook of the good parts of Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, and Turkish psychedelic music.

Various Artists: Rough Trade Shops - Indiepop 2009

Features Tullycraft, The Faintest Ideas, Love is All, Girls, Vivian Girls, The Girls at Dawn, Veronica Falls, Cause Co-Motion, Betty and the Werewolves, Pocketbooks, Los Campesinos!, Shrag, The Boy Least Likely To, The School, Play People, Celestial, Moscow Olympics, Liechtenstein, Minisnap, Sad Day for Puppets, Dum Dum Girls, The Legends, The Manhattan Love Suicides, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and The Bobby McGees.

Bellini: Precious Prize Of Gravity

Indie rock/math rock band composed of members from Girls Against Boys, Soulside, Don Caballero and Uzeda. Previous albums include the likes of Snowing Sun (2001), Small Stones (2005) and The Buffalo Song/Never Again 7 (2005).

Deleted Waveform Gatherings: Ghost, She Said

"Equal parts chiming power pop, heavy electric rock and ’60s-rooted psychedelia, Deleted Waveform Gatherings – the new project of Øyvind Holm, leader of Norway’s Dipsomaniacs – effortlessly meld their influences." We're not entirely inclined to ask for the last comment to be stricken from the record.

Memory Tapes: Seek Magic

Memory Tapes is a recording alias of New Jersey-based Dayve Hawk, formerly of Hail Social. Seek Magic is Memory Tapes' first LP, released in the U.S back in September of '09 through the label Sincerely Yours, Something in Construction will handle the U.K release.

Cages: Folding Space

"There is nothing fun or pedestrian about dreams that are uncompromising to the point of reality.The shaking notes that make up “Folding Space” were recorded by two people holed up in their whole respective imaginations of visions of loops, layers and pleading lyrics." - their words: "nothing fun".

A Hope For Home: The Everlasting Man

Based in Portland, Oregon, The Everlasting Man - out on Strike First Records - is a concept based on G.K. Chesterton’s novel of the same name. The novel tells the story of mankind’s fall and awaiting redemption. Sounds kind of born-again-Christiany to us, we have been known to be wrong before though.