No strangers to the business of dance music, the Pet Shop Boys were doing remix LPs back when such things were still a vaguely exciting concept. Disco 3 follows in the footsteps of its predecessors by pulling together the best dancefloor mixes from a recent album and adding a few obscure gems. It's some surprise, then, to find the liveliest music the duo have made in years is culled from the relatively pipe-and-slippers affair that was Release. Polished to within an inch of their lives by sterling remixers such as the cap-doffing Felix Da Housecat and tribal-house pin-up Tom Stephan, the Pets' often dour tales of lost love and middle-aged reflection take on a new "happy-sad" quality here that works well against the tougher beats and electro stylings. Add to this a couple of old, newly finished songs from early 1980s sessions with proto-energy producer Bobby O, including the affectingly truthful "Try It (I'm in Love with a Married Man)", and the Pet Shop Boys have declared themselves back in business. -Paul Tierney.

You could trawl the rock & roll archives all the way back and never find an album quite like Red Rose Speedway. Which is not to say that it's great. Just that it's weird. Though it's a Wings album, it's entirely irradiated with Paul McCartney's personality-to the extent that virtually the entire band left him while attempting to rehearse for the supporting tour, claiming they couldn't operate in his huge, overbearing shadow. You can see where they were coming from. Red Rose Speedway, right down to the cover shot of Macca with a rose in his mouth, is about Paul McCartney, specifically his unique Seventies ability to pump up slight, pretty songs to the scale of "Hey Jude", seemingly unaware or unworried that that didn't necessarily make them as good as "Hey Jude". The high spot is the saccharine sauciness of "My Love", a lurching soft-focus ballad about his wife's sexual excellence. The rest of it-lazy, lushly produced rock, sometimes sweet, sometimes just cloying, but always unmistakably Macca-is worth hearing if just to ponder: "what the hell did he think he was doing?" -Taylor Parkes.

When REM's Michael Stipe wrote "That's me in the spotlight / Losing my religion", he could have been singing about Van Morrison, the man who lost his three times within a decade. In the end though, Van returned to God and found himself rewarded with his first Top 20 hit. With its sparse piano hook and Cliff Richard vocals, "Whenever God Shines His Light" is a misleading advert for an album awash in the kind of sentimental orchestration that might hurt one's teeth were it not for their perpetrator's almost childlike wonder. Cynics, then, needn't concern themselves with love songs like "Have I Told You Lately" and "Orangefield"-both of which suggest that, despite the renewal of faith, this artist's muse isn't purely metaphysical. Even better is the spoken word reverie of "Coney Island" in which a grown man can be heard extolling the virtues of potted herrings. Naturally, it's the best thing on here. -Peter Paphides.

In an attempt to ditch Collins's aural and visual image of doom and gloom, Dance Into The Light is his endeavour to move into lighter, more poppy territory, complete with colourful album cover. On a couple of the tracks, punchier musical styles are introduced, such as on the title track, with its African carnival-esque influences. There's even a pop cover of Bob Dylan's, "The Times They Are A-Changin", complete with synthesised bagpipes. However, expect no huge surprises as overall the album follows the musical approach of his previous solo albums, and more recent recordings with Genesis. If you enjoyed any of Collins's (or Genesis's) previous albums you'll want this one, but for anyone wanting an introduction to his music try his Hits collection or his solo debut Face Value. -John Galilee.

Most live albums are usually a pretty tawdry affair, blighted by the whoops and catcalls of a teeming mass of drunken humanity. But Mystery White boy, taken from Buckley's eight-month world tour of the same name, is not just any old live album. Such was the reverence granted to Buckley's electrifying confessionals that hardly a whimper issued from the audience in 78 minutes-not, at least, until each gargantuan heart-and-soul epic ended. Buckley was no small-time singer songwriter-he treated music like it was epic Shakespearean tragedy, and it's this grandiosity of performance that makes "Grace" and "Mojo Pin" at least the equal of their recorded counterparts. The gems, though, are the cover versions found here-especially the closing nine-minute rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" that lurches into a whispered chorus of the Smiths' "I Know It's Over" as it passes away. This is an utterly captivating live album. -Louis Pattison.

Lenny Kravitz is still obsessed with the 1970s, and for good reason: he's found endless inspiration in the work of Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, and a decade's worth of soul men. Kravitz hasn't lost the funk on 5, but the sound here drifts dangerously close to the Me decade's shallowest end, when disco seemed to rob R&B of its soul. So the passion Kravitz has shown on early albums is strangely diluted (aside from the album-closing epic "Can We Find a Reason?"). 5 is the singer's first foray into digital technology, but despite a few modern effects at the edges, he's doing essentially the same as before-only colder. -Steve Appleford.

In 1977, Elvis burst out of the gate with a series of poison pen letters set to music. It was wordy, angry, and as catchy as a cold. And the man was prolific; he kept writing and recording like a man possessed, bringing forth a stream of great songs that showed not only an encyclopedic knowledge of music, but also a passion for it. From "Alison" to "Everyday I Write the Book" it was almost impossible to fault what he was doing, and even harder to select a few songs as better than the others. This best-of, which cuts off in 1986 with the Blood and Chocolate album, attempts that impossibility, and does a very good job of it. As good an introduction as there'll ever be. -Chris Nickson.

Whenever Paul McCartney's storied life has hit personal or professional hard times, he's wisely returned-figuratively and literally-to his musical foundations. In the Beatles' final, troubled days, it was Get Back, the aborted return-to-roots project salvaged as Let It Be, and during his late-80s solo doldrums it was the 1950s rave-up CHOBA B CCCP (a. k. a. the "Russian Album"). In the wake of Linda's passing, McCartney "gets back" to a motley dozen 50s hits, B-sides and obscurities and pens three surprising originals that neatly fit their mould. Using a band of seasoned British vets (including Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour and Mick Green from Johnny Kidd & the Pirates on guitars, and Deep Purple's Ian Paice on drums) whose own unbridled affection for this music radiates from every track, McCartney tackles the familiar (Gene Vincent's "Blue Jean Bop," Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up") and unfamiliar (the Vipers' skiffle hit "No Other Baby," Carl Perkins's "Movie Magg") alike with enthusiasm, if not slavish devotion (as witnessed by his nifty zydeco revamp of Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man"). The Mac originals "Try Not to Cry" and "What It Is" (and the choice of Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town") seem to deal not-so-obliquely with his love and loss, yet are delivered with an upbeat confidence that seem to belie his mourning. In the end, Run Devil Run may be as much personal exorcism as it is loving musical recapitulation, and McCartney is in peak vocal form throughout. -Jerry McCulley.

If it ain't broke then why fix it? Fittingly, Couldn't Have Said It Better-Meat Loaf's first studio album since 1995's Welcome to the Neighbourhood-is squarely in the lung-belting rock-operatic mould of dynamic former classics such as Bat Out of Hell-that's to say none of it is a million miles away from Vegas-era Elvis, The Rocky Horror Show and what German composer Richard Wagner might have sounded like if he rode around on a large motorbike courting ladies in his favourite frilly shirt. Yes, in Meat Loaf's wide-of-girth pop world all songs are super-animated epics in which lusty choirs soar, hearts are thumped and hankies are wrung, where grand pianos are assaulted in a manner which would make Jerry Lee Lewis flinch and where the production work makes Phil Spector's Wall of Sound look like a garden fence. But that's what folks like about the big fella-Meat Loaf doesn't do "understatement". At one end of the scale, the mighty soft-metal title track-one of a number of songs copenned by James Michael and Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx-is so overbearingly beefy it can only be likened to being seduced on the sofa by someone from World Wrestling Entertainment while the rollicking, testosterone-dripping over-exuberance of "Tear Me Down"-replete with a loopy, spoken-word Texan history segment-is essentially Robbie Williams' "Let Me Entertain You" in a hairy chest wig. At the other end of the spectrum, even soppy ballads such as "Did I Say That" are about as subtle as an avalanche. Couldn't Have Said It Better is noisy polished fun all round. It is audibly apparent that Mr Loaf still possesses meat in abundance. -Kevin Maidment.