Caribou is essentially one man, Dan Snaith, and his box of tricks. Andorra is the fourth Caribou album, and the first for cult American indie label City Slang. A few years in the making, Andorra sees the Caribou gift extended and amplified, to make an album of rare sonic quality. This is the most modern 1960s album you'll hear in a long while, all Beach Boys meets psychedelic Beatles - maybe there's some Pink Floyd and some new-indie in there too. The use of electronics leavens the organic songs - increasing texture and interest: the melodies infuse the songs with golden sunshine, and ecstatic blissful energy (you'll never need another Polyphonic Spree album). Andorra is an overwhelmingly pretty album (at least until the closer, an 8 minute trance-like nod to the electronic 80s) - and it is easy to see fans of bands as disparate as Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses, Battles, Aqualung and later Radiohead finding this excellent disc well worth the effort to seek it out.

ACE rating 8/10

The Broken String is the first proper studio album from Brooklyn band Bishop Allen, which is essentially two friends and a bunch of musical collaborators. The 'friends' bit is important, as Bishop Allen make a kind of music that sounds like everyone involved is having a whole lot of fun. The music is hard to pigeonhole - at turns, a little bit folk, a little bit rock and a lot of indie spirit - but every song is just that, an individual song with hooky melody, proper lyrics, proper beginning, middle and ends. References to other bands wouldn't make sense - maybe there's a touch of James, maybe a piece of Beautiful South, a smidgen of Spoon, a chunk of Bright Eyes - unless to suggest that this isn't a band that relies on arch coolness. Just genuinely excellent and compelling songs, infectious fun and catchy choruses, played through instruments as diverse as clarinets, flutes, strings and guitars. A genuinely lovely find - The Broken String sounds like a Greatest Hits album from some band you'll wish you'd found sooner. Album of the Week.

ACE rating 8/10

Minus The Bear have always sounded like Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland got fed up with their mediocre bass player and set out to make genuinely intelligent rhythmic rock. On this, their third album, the better-Police sound is intact, but enhanced with some experimental fluid rock guitar and keyboards - almost prog in its landscape (tones of Yes or King Crimson). What Planet of Ice also has is an amazing ability to hold the tension of each song until its fantastically controlled release - most of the songs build to an indie rock climax. The guitars are properly guitar-god great, all technically perfect but with proper (if perhaps slightly mathematically geeky) emotional soul. The control is managed well - it could have overwhelmed the music, but the band retain some of their earlier humour (when song titles were as off the wall as "Houston We Have Uh-Oh...", "Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!" and "Lemurs, Man, Lemurs". Anyone with an open mind who liked the Police albums (as opposed to only the singles) will find a lot to love in here.

ACE rating 7/10