State River Widening, State River Widening (Rocket Girl)

State River Widening are evidently a pleasantly unbuttoned trio of deft strummers and pluckers who blend sundry guitars, marimbas, vintage organs, and ancient synths into charming patterns of flux. With uninsistent brio, SRW loosely weave optimistic and relaxed soundscapes that - pardon my apparent attempt at an entry for Pseud's Corner here - evoke the tingle of expectation you hopefully used to feel when you were a kid in the days preceding your summer hols. So let this bunch widen your river pronto.

The Anthology,

A Tribe Called Quest (Jive)

During the Tribe's

10-year lifespan, the hip- hop trinity of Messrs

Q-Tip, Phife, and Ali-Shaheed Muhammad covered the waterfront from playfully wacky adolescence (Bonita Applebaum, Can I Kick It?) to resignedly laconic maturity (Description of a Fool, Find a Way). En route, they disproved the fallacy that hip-hop doesn't lend itself to the creation of albums, and assembled a slew of jazz-informed tracks that engage hearts and minds as surely as they inspire feet. Get this 19-track overview soon and you'll snaffle a dandy bonus CD.

Pandemonia,

The Bathers

(Wrasse)

Continuing his noble crusade to transmute the love-lorn life of the sentient Euro-chap-about-town into quality music for grown-ups, Chris Thomson enlists the help of sundry sentient and noble musos-about-Glasgow. Despite the presence of various jazzers and two Belle and Sebastianeers, though, it's Chris's valiant and stately vision of doomed romance which continues to dominate. And when it comes to striving to make sense of doom-mongering femmes - irresistible chicks like the one who gave the album its title, for example - then no-one does it quite like Chris. Well, to be accurate, David Bowie in his Aladdin Sane era used to do it like Chris, but he unwisely stopped. Bathe in Pandemonia's depths soon.