The essential story behind this album is that Justin Vernon installed himself in a log cabin in rural Wisconsin for 3 months, and emerged with this collection of nine songs. The story is important - like all art, its concept is an integral part of the piece. The name Bon Iver is a purposeful misspelling of the French for 'good winter' - meant to be a greeting, to us, one presumes. The music is backwoods hypnotic, lush despite its limited instrumentation (Vernon recorded all vocals and instruments himself), and unfailingly beguiling. Although it is occasionally inconsistent, tracks like Flume, Blindsided, re:stacks, and Creature Fear are simply gorgeous, like Chris Bathgate but without the staring intensity, like Jose Gonzalez, or perhaps most like the quieter moments of Damien Jurado. It may be that this is the only album that Vernon may want to make in this way, and the critical acclaim (the blogs have gone wild) accorded For Emma will certainly increase the pressure on his follow up, but this album is a sweet little gem in its own right.

ACE rating 9/10

Garage rock is full of bands who turn up their fun dials, sometimes at the expense of their audience. The Dirtbombs started with two drummers, two bass players and singer/ guitarist Mick Collins, and threw heart and soul into a youthful mess of fuzzed-up punk, glam rock, soul, R&B and dirty-sounding garage. Like albums by the Mooney Suzuki, Little Killers, and maybe even the White Stripes, there is a scuzzy delight in the simple fact that someone is throwing pure great sound onto disc, and worrying a lot less about style or substance. We Have You Surrounded is the most experimental of the band's albums - a cover of Sparks' Sherlock Holmes makes do with only drums and an occasional bass note, Leopardman at C&A is a Nick Cave-like rant, I Hear Sirens sounds like some 70s punk classic, and Race To The Bottom becomes an 8 minute assault of seemingly random noise. The Dirtbombs aren't a band to be played quietly; they're a band to be experienced live, and definitely a band to keep away from your grandparents.

ACE rating 7/10

There is a trick at the core of this album - it's essentially two albums. The Saturday Night rock bit is produced by Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Pixies) while the Sunday morning acoustic bit is produced by Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Josh Ritter). It's an old idea, and at first makes the album seem a touch confusing - following 6 years after its predecessor, one might expect a little more evolution to have taken place. In places, the album sounds like a computerised remix of previous discs, from when they were good, and from 2002, when they peddled whatever was lying around the studio when they went in. The songs here aren't strong. At their best, they come close to the sound of August and Everything After, or Recovering The Satellites - openers 1492 and Hanging Tree are a great start. At worst, as on On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago, it is almost unspeakably woeful. Adam Duritz can often fall well over the line into whiny love soldier, and the steely edged rock helps hide that tendency. Unfortunately, those songs that sound like they're being made up on the spot - On Almost Any Sunday Morning - will test the reserve of all but the hardiest fan. Good, but nowhere near the Counting Crows that made it big in the first place.

ACE rating 6/10