Hot on the heels of fellow ex-Drive By Trucker Jason Isbell comes this album by DBT founder, Patterson Hood. Recorded largely in 2005 around the time of his daughter’s birth, Murdering Oscar is as close to a Truckers album (one of the older, great ones) as you’ll ever need. Recorded with friends including Will Johnson and Scott Danbom of Centro-matic, various Truckers, and his dad David Hood, this is a layered, rich, burnished oak bar-top of an album, with that soulful Muscle Shoals-y kind of sound on some deep Southern blues-y country rock. No surprise that his dad worked as part of Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section for many years… With themes including Kurt Cobain, the Bible and various states of mind, this is an album to savour. It may barely register a tremor on the UK charts, but this is exactly the kind of tasty homegrown organic produce that foodies love so much.

ACE rating 9/10

Goodness knows how someone can do what Jay Mascis does in Dinosaur Jr for so long and stay so fresh. Starting with songs that Nirvana would have been happy with, then layering over insanely great fuzzed up lead guitar in a kind of Zappa-esque frenzy, it shouldn’t work as anything other than an ego-fest, but it does, wonderfully. Farm is a fantastically resolved album, better than pretty much any of the 8 preceding – and its predecessor, Beyond, was perhaps the greatest return to form for any of the 90s stars (Dave Grohl notwithstanding…). Farm is tight, urgent and remarkably whole – having Lou Barlow around makes a massive difference: a great artist in his own right, his songs here are very strong. If everyone who likes the way Neil Young does what he does when he rocks out would only give this one listen, they’d be converted. Genuinely great, and so surprising that Mascis is the one who made it this far, improving as he goes.

ACE rating 9/10

What can be said about REM’s sophomore release? More urgent, and rockier, than their debut Murmur, Reckoning cemented them as a serious proposition. With its 25th anniversary, these albums are coming out remastered and packaged up with a live ‘doubler’ CD, and in this case, while the reminder of just how great this album was is welcome, the remastering is icing on the cake. The songs like So. Central Rain, and (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville would make any band’s reputation if released now. It is hard to see exactly who these re-releases are aimed at, other than those fans who are in the club already – the live disc (an unreleased show from 1984) captures a pretty fiery performance from the band, but an often off-key Stipe makes the disc a nice-to-have only: it is unlikely you’ll give it more than a listen or two.

ACE rating 7/10