Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1996, Drive-By Truckers have spent the last 14 years introducing the ramshackle, distorted aesthetic of 90s grunge to a vintage Southern rock template. Like a cross between Pearl Jam and Creedence, the band have consistently avoided sinking into the anonymous jam-band swamp with tight songcraft and appealingly lurid storytelling, passionately delivered by principal songwriters Patterson Hood, Shonna Tucker and Mike Cooley.

The Truckers’ main challenge has always been to avoid spreading themselves too thinly, to make a focused impact rather than diluting their prodigious talent pool with endless digression. At their finest, as they were on 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, the band create a majestic wall of muscular riffs and emotionally direct lyricism exploring the Jekyll and Hyde duality of the Southern spirit.

The first four tracks of new album The Big To-Do are a solid continuation of the Truckers’ recent winning streak. Opener Daddy Learned to Fly kicks the album off with a thick riff and a sparkling, Springsteen-worthy chorus. Birthday Boy, an unglamorous glimpse at the daily grind of a cash-strapped exotic dancer, shows a Petty-esque flair for emotive, galloping songwriting that showcases the cinematic scope of the Drive-By Truckers when firing on all cylinders.

But just as it seems clear we’ve got another rough-edged diamond on our hands, the album begins to wander at its mid-point. The Wig He Made Her Wear sees the rest of the Truckers reduced to unassuming backing band to Cooley’s dark story of spousal abuse and murder, the noir guitar lines seeming to bear little relation to his prose-like vocals. Meanwhile, the mid-tempo plod of Santa Fe and crooner You Got Another just don’t have the nuance or mystery to hold attentions after the album’s scorching opening numbers.

Things begin to pick up with After the Scene Dies, a power-charged eulogy to the South’s dying bar music circuit, and the fragile grace of The Flying Wallendas, but The Big To-Do doesn’t maintain the expert balance that made Brighter Than Creation’s Dark such an essential release. That said, the standout tracks here are as definitive a statement of the Truckers’ virtues as you’ll find anywhere, cementing the band’s reputation as one of the hardest-rocking acts operating south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

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In this musical world where everything seems to be re-appraised with alarming regularity, Lou Bond’s sole album from 1974 is a genuine unearthed curio. The mysterious Bond came from Memphis. Captured on the cover in full soul troubadour mode walking down suburban streets, he had made a couple of singles in the 60s, and then nothing until these six tracks. The album was released on Tom Nixon’s Stax subsidiary, We Produce, and disappeared almost immediately.

Influenced undoubtedly by Isaac Hayes (producer Nixon had worked extensively with him), folk music and David Van DePitte’s orchestrations for Marvin Gaye, Bond set about creating his own magnum opus. To do so, he worked with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and the South Memphis Horns, as well as some sundry Bar-Kays. It is an album that could only have been made in the 1970s.

Bond is a caring, socially aware love man. His version of Jimmy Webb’s Lucky Me, although a little tentative on the high notes, sets the tone: swooning melodies and symphonic settings. Everything is given time to develop: he takes Bill Withers’ Let Me Into Your Life and triples the length of the two-minute original. The core of the album is protest. Why Must Our Eyes Always Be Turned Backwards looks to solve world conflicts, mentioning Northern Ireland in the same song as North and South Vietnam. Powerful and emotional, Bond ironically sings America the Beautiful, before addressing domestic issues in the US.

Although OutKast sampled it back in the last century, the album’s undoubted highlight, To the Establishment, has been known only to the cognoscenti. It explores family politics over 12 unhurried minutes of expansive soul. It is one of the best songs you’ve never heard. For something so ambitious to have remained so hidden is astonishing. Lou Bond is Sunday morning, it is sensuality. It’s Terry Callier blended with Nick Drake. People have called it a masterpiece, but as you can see by the wealth of its reference points, it is a little too derivative really to be at that level. But it is a delightful, esoteric find, and an album you need in your life.

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After a debut as great as 2006’s Black Water almost anything would disappoint. But while Mark the Hard Earth doesn’t quite reach the heights of that record, it is still impressive, and has a strong, slow-growing charm.

Drever has assembled much the same team of players, with Roy Dodds (drums) Ewen Vernal (bass), Donald Shaw (keyboards) and guitarist Ian Carr serving him well, as does fiddler and producer John McCusker. Irish American multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien is the most distinctive new collaborator, adding the sonic equivalent of subtle marker pen highlights to many songs with his mandolin, banjo, ukulele and harmony vocals. Irish singer Heidi Talbot is the other novice, duetting with Drever on The Banks of the Nile, the most familiar piece on a selection which, as before, mixes old and new writing.

Of the latter, Drever has again chosen two songs by Edinburgh songwriter Sandy Wright. Both are sentimental waltzes, although neither is as distinctive as his contributions to Black Water. Boo Hewerdine’s country-gospel flavoured Sweet Honey in the Rock is, though, up to his usual high standard. Best of all is The Crown of London, by Drever’s brother Duncan, a pulsing number with a melody that simply bores into your brain and stays there, along with some great lyrics: “The devil’s made plans for the wealthy man / he’ll never get to me”.

The self-penned title-track is a stark, enigmatic waltz that’s the slowest grower of all, introducing a wintry theme that resurfaces several times. Of the more instantly accessible material, there’s the sprightly, countrified This Old Song, with its tricky tempo changes, and a lovely version of The Call and the Answer, which fans of The Dubliners may know.

Of the traditional pieces, the ballad O’ A’ the Airts has especially fine backing vocals by Talbot, and the closing Freedom Come A’ye matches words by the great Scottish poet Hamish Henderson with the tune of Bloody Fields of Flanders, to strikingly solemn effect. It’s all quite understated and beautifully played, and any shortcomings in the material are more than made up for by Drever’s peerless singing. This is a very good – as opposed to great – record.

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The prevalence of numerous laptop improvisers appearing at your local music venue might just be down to these three. It’s easy to forget that, back in 1999, when the trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke and Peter Rehberg issued their debut album, The Magic Sound of Fenn O’Berg, the grossly unappetizing spectre of stern visages illuminated by the glare of computer screens seemed just a figment of some unthinkable, distant future.

Culled entirely from live performance excerpts, both The Magic… and The Return of Fenn O’Berg, the trio’s 2002 follow-up, were defined by their episodic approach, their spasmodic ability to traverse moods and modes – from madcap slapstick to sombre sobriety – at the mere press of a space key. Critical digits wagged in the direction of O’Rourke, fingering him as the chief culprit of the collaged cut-ups, his reputation for mischief-making preceding him.

Now, after a hiatus of almost nine years, the triumvirate are back with a work constituting a significant shift in both method and sound. In Stereo is their first studio record, which helps explain the meticulously crafted nature of its component parts. Even amid the chaotic axis of the digital storm – which sees Fenn O’Berg casting wildly oscillating electrons down the throat of an alien aqueduct in subatomic defiance of Coulomb’s law – there remains the feeling that tones and timbres are being deftly deployed in accordance with some grand scheme. Fantastical visions are raised; bizarrely engineered Hayao Miyazaki-esque machines whirring at the heart of amorphous purple clouds spring readily to mind, as do the extraterrestrial atmospheres of David Lindsay’s surreal science-fiction novel, A Voyage to Arcturus.

In Stereo also sees the prime trickster take a backseat, partially framing its vistas as sonic struggles between the remaining protagonists. The huge swathes of vaporous nimbus that punctuate this album can be perceived as the resultant detritus of a cosmic struggle; a tussle between Rehberg’s penchant for hostile white squalls of noise and Fennesz’s more melodious inclinations. Of course, O’Rourke’s presence is not entirely concealed: the piano and drum coda of Part I (which appears halfway through this set), recalls his previous work with David Grubbs in Gastr Del Sol, betraying the jester’s hand.

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As BBC4’s recent Heavy Metal Britannia suggested, mainstream culture as a whole is moving wholesale towards an acceptance – if not a fundamental understanding – of all things beefy and loud.

Metal has always been big business and seen a certain level of critical acceptance, and it’s the likes of Baroness and Oakland’s High on Fire who are fighting this new front: journeymen bands who have existed and flourished for years but who are now finding themselves under a new spotlight. Matt Pike, High on Fire’s frontman, served time in the legendary stoner trio Sleep. But with Snakes for the Divine he’s making his strongest case yet for why people who aren’t into metal should at the very least appreciate music this… nasty.

The most impressive aspect of what is a boundlessly impressive album is Snakes for the Divine’s deft summation of various different metallic styles. Frost Hammer’s irresistible head-bang rhythm complements the opening title-track’s spiralling, galloping riffery, while the likes of Holy Flames of the Fire Spitter’s theatricality and Ghost Neck’s bass-heavy assault provide outlets for Pike’s seemingly endless creativity. And the biggest change of pace and most Sleep-like track here, Bastard Samurai – blessed as it is with a fabulous name that is as evocative as it is ridiculous – is a masterpiece of sludge metal brutality, slowly but inexorably rolling forward like a landslide.

Drummer Des Kensel and bassist Jeff Matz deserve credit for not only keeping up with Pike but ensuring he teeters at the top of his game via their own evident ability. The richness and depth of sound on the frenetic Fire, Flood and the Plague burns with the excitement and hunger of a band half their age and, like the rest of the album, liberally drips with ideas. It’s tight, concise and thrillingly sharp – what makes High on Fire’s fifth album such a success is its intricacy and balance that allows it to appeal to more than your friendly neighbourhood metalhead. Those in the know will nod in approval; everyone else hitherto untouched by the gnarled clutch of Californian metal can consider themselves very much invited to get involved.

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Pavement were always a brilliantly awkward bunch and apparently remain so, having picked a very peculiar selection of tracks for this compilation, released to tie in with their imminent reformation tour, but overdue nonetheless.

Stephen Malkmus and co were simply too good a band for Quarantine the Past to actively flounder, but its early stages really are surprisingly hard work. Or maybe not that surprising, given that after propulsive opener Gold Soundz (the title track of sorts, featuring as it does the line “you can never quarantine the past”) the album lurches straight into abrasive non-album rarities Frontwards and Mellow Jazz Docent. They’re decent enough tracks, but they’re hardly the band’s finest hour, and the wryly anthemic blast of Stereo sounds a tad beleaguered when it comes round at track four, not nearly so effective as occupying pole position on 1997’s Brighten the Corners.

Even more bizarre, though, is the fact that at the seventh song – Cut Your Hair, Malkmus’s peerlessly snide ode to the MTV generation – Quarantine the Past suddenly decides to do what Best Ofs are supposed to do: present a varied, enjoyable and commercially minded selection of tracks communicating the artist’s greatness. In short order we get the sighingly pretty Shady Lane/Jay vs. S, the gorgeous shoegaze chug of Summer Babe (Winter Version) and the elegiac Range Life, aka the best country rock song about supporting grunge bands on tour, ever. Interspersed are a handful of album tracks that thoroughly vindicate Pavement’s towering reputation: the sorrowful Here, proto-Strokes roar of Unfair, heat-haze blur of Grounded, and guitarist Scott Kannburg’s rousing Date w/IKEA. Hit single Carrot Rope is an undeniably baffling omission, but you can forgive that when the final rarity is fan favourite The Unseen Power of the Picket Fence, Malkmus’s brilliantly mad ode to the early works of REM.

All-in-all, it’s a bizarre track sequencing, reading more like a gig setlist than an introduction to Pavement – but it scarcely seems credible that they’re going to play all these same songs every night on a six-month world tour. Still, it all clicks into gear by the end, and it perhaps bodes well that they appear to have worked out how to finish things on a high.

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Before hitting play on The Optimist, there's a fear that it's going to be a less timely rehearsal of New Young Pony Club's 2007 debut. And while the fever of that LP came from its direct rip of the early 80s, its aloof riot-starting propensities and conscious eclecticism became listless by the third playback. Thankfully, the band have returned with a triumphant LP which ceremoniously leaves the posturing behind, delivering a freer sound built on an exciting mix of crescendo, space and charm rather than quips clothed in layers of smut. Frontwoman Tahita Bulmer's vocals envelope the sound unafraid, cut loose from their quasi-spoken cage of pretence.

It's astonishing to hear the difference between the NYPC of new and old, yet so apparent even from The Optimist's first track, Lost a Girl. It's a glistening pop song full of stops, starts, lurching hooks and slightly dissonant vocals that defiantly possess anything but the faux-nonchalance of the debut. “I’m making you smile, why am I doing that?” she sings, brutally picking apart a relationship dead in the water, with more openness in the one line than at any time in Fantastic Playroom.

The range on this album is colossal, even though its influences are still more or less paraded; take the title-track's whirling, steam-engine keyboard parts, transplanted straight from The Horrors' reinvention of My Bloody Valentine, and the PJ Harvey-recalling sadness on the album's ballad, Stone. But there's far more than mimicry on offer here; colossal key-changes and an audible sense of excitement become the album's revelation.

The Optimist suffers from a slight top-loading, but the expertly self-produced twists and turns within its songs more than compensate. sure-hit-single We Want To's exhilarating harmonies and so-far-away-from-artful chorus are expertly structured, polarising with the way Before the Light pitches a frustrated, drone-like lead vocal against the sugar of Sarah Jones and Lou Hayter's backing. The contrasts are ecstatic, setting in stone just how remarkable a comeback New Young Pony Club have pulled off. The Optimist is a super-smart pop album at the top of its game.

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This is the year that a lot of female artists, from Laura Marling to Duffy and Adele, will be facing the eternal pop dilemma of what to do on that difficult second album. Few will have it as hard as Scottish singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald, whose 2007 debut This Is the Life sold over three million copies and went to number one in five countries. A Curious Thing, recorded at Paul Weller’s home studio in Surrey and featuring guest spots from the Modfather, doesn’t sound as though Macdonald is feeling the pressure. It is a bold, grand statement of intent, full of songs of epic sweep that build to undeniable choruses, to be enjoyed by the largest possible audiences.

It sounds bigger and more ‘produced’ than This Is the Life – there is no sense of the girl from Bishopbriggs recoiling from the spotlight. That said, there are a number of tracks here about the perils of fame. Of the dozen songs on A Curious Thing, half concern our celebrity-obsessed culture and the cult of personality that Macdonald has witnessed first-hand since her arrival on the world’s stage. On No Roots she is positive about the rock star milieu: “This life I lead, it’s a curious thing, but I can’t deny the happiness it brings”; but on This Pretty Face she is less charitable: “I don’t care who does her hair / Or what clothes she wears.”

Next Big Thing takes a dim though sympathetic view of reality TV wannabes and An Ordinary Life is a dig at the Z-list celebs she saw flocking round actor Gerard Butler at a party last year. On My Only One she sings, with a weary sigh, “There was time when the whole world was looking at you... They changed their minds from day to night.” Finally, there’s first single Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over –about a pop star she recently saw in full pompous effect. And yet for all that A Curious Thing doesn’t feel bitter or downbeat. If anything, MacDonald appears to have been energised by her colossal success. The music here is richer and fuller, the hooks more emphatic, and her voice meets it head-on, with a stridency and vigour reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan, even Sinead O’Connor. Even a title such as Give It All Up, which could have been drenched in defeat, is resilient, even defiant. A triumphant return.

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As the most anticipated musical of the millennium, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies is almost guaranteed a lukewarm reception. Being the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, the most successful musical of all time, tends to have that effect. Indeed, the ‘phans’ have already shown online support of what little they’ve been allowed to hear, but as the show takes up residence at the Adelphi there’s sure to be an increasing gulf between them and all other consumers. In truth, this cast recording inevitably falls somewhere in the middle of the two camps.

Immediately, the obvious plot asserts itself as a weaker aspect of Love Never Dies – even the title assures the audience that they’re unlikely to be too bleary-eyed as they leave. The action begins around ten years after Phantom, in Coney Island, where the Phantom (Ramin Karimloo) has risen to lead a freak show. Without divulging too much, the love he lost at the end of Phantom returns with her ghastly husband and all necessary plot twists (involving paternity issues, among others) are present, if rather hackneyed.

Lloyd Webber shows no musical progression since Phantom, and the emotional content is disappointingly broad and impersonal. There is not enough menace in the freak show sections, and the attempts at rock during The Beauty Underneath are laughably leaden (especially given the rollicking numbers that pepper Jesus Christ Superstar). Perhaps most damagingly, the female lead of Christine is underwritten and terminally fixated on the Phantom’s magnetism.

Memorably, this male dominance is accentuated by an entertaining display of bravado early in the second act as the Phantom and Christine’s husband trade insults in a bar, making the crucial female parts seem almost forgotten by the composer. Likewise, in the musical’s most memorable song, ‘Til I Hear You Sing, Karimloo’s performance is full-blooded, but the melodies are not as immediately recognisable as, say, The Music of the Night.

Themes from Phantom are reprised occasionally, with The Point of No Return featuring prominently – however, harking back to the original only highlights the inadequacies of the whole. Simply put, the songs aren’t there and the dark emotional milieu of the original has been lost in favour of confusion. It’s not as loveable and not as shattering in purely musical terms. That’s not to say that it’s without highlights, but it gives Lloyd Webber a problem: phans will rejoice, but most likely alone.

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Libera, the decade-spanning, revolving-door-style boys’ choral ensemble, clearly fulfils several different roles for both listener and artist. It’s a non-profit organisation that fosters the talents of young Londoners from all backgrounds, whisks them around the world on tours and lets them record popular albums – all unquestionably good things for seven-to-10-year-olds to be doing. What, though, can be said of the final and lasting product, ie the albums? Peace is their 17th, and offers nothing in the way of musical innovation, but plenty in the way of fuel for cynics.

Broadly, you might describe Peace as a hybrid of New Age and classical – the instrumentation is sparse and largely electronically manipulated, but takes its source material from a light classical and choral canon. Consequently, we hear recognisable and unchallenging melodies from the Adagio from Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (here delivered too fast and robbed of all maturity), an almost-obligatory John Rutter number and several traditional works, mostly arranged by Libera’s mastermind, Robert Prizeman.

As director, Prizeman’s influence looms long over Libera. Because it is an ensemble made up of children, one suspects that any stylistic decisions come from either Prizeman or other, more industrial figures. The boys are decked in now-trademark monastic white robes on the sleeve and, more disturbingly, appear on the back cover wearing identical white hoodies, black trousers and Cons, as if they’re on some kind of choral downtime. This, though invisible to the dedicated audience, is packaging to make a saleable whole. With better direction and handling (doing away with the robes would be the first thing to do), they would stand a chance of making an album of worthwhile artistry – this current model can only continue to tread water.

Of course, the point of Libera isn’t the quality of the albums they release; it’s the fact that they exist at all. Peace is not the vehicle to afford Libera a significant increase in either popularity or authenticity, but it is the one to be strategically released in time for Mother’s Day, bring a smile to said mothers’ faces and provide enough interest and money to last until the next one. They might do better in critical circles to steer away from the cult-ish robes, cringe-worthy photography and banal arrangements of standard repertoire, but it’s clear that if ever there was an ensemble that had no cares for what the critics thought about them, it’s Libera.

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