The Raveonettes

Another oddity from Scandinavia, home of the 60s garage band revival and matching shirts and ties.

Following on from The Hives, here we have more rockabilly, spooky trash. The spiritual offspring of The Cramps offer us high-octane rawk.

It's only 21 minutes long, but is presumably being rushed out to pre-empt that major label debut just around the corner.

Howling guitars and vocals hit the spot and you could do worse than check out this clanging-banging, feedback-heavy doomfest.

Their name is apparently a tribute to pop impresario Phil Spector! I'd play that one down in future interviews.

Antony Silson

Nada Surf -- The Proximity Effect

Following on from last year's wonderful Let Go album, Nada Surf have their year 2000 debut re-issued by Heavenly Records.

Fourteen tracks plus a video on this enhanced CD.

Funny that; the record labels are going all sulky about CD burning so they are pressing disks that won't play on a computer -- but on the other hand they include CD Rom extras which encourage us to play the things on our PCs.

The whole album is built of indelible melodies that won't leave your head for days.

Hyperspace, Amateur and Bad Best Friend are stand-out tracks and The Voices is a genuine classic, but there isn't an average song to be found on the entire recording.

Let Go was an outstanding album but The Proximity Effect is even better.

Graham Scaife.

Good Charlotte -- The Young And The Hopeless

Looking like a cross between King Adora and Idlewild, but sounding like a nasty playground scrap between Greenday and Busted, Good Charlotte step where every band has been before, peddling diluted US punk rock.

The amusing aspect is they also throw in large orchestral percussion every now and again, the odd kettledrum roll for example, adding misplaced drama to insipid melodies and uninspired vocals.

The guitars race and the drums do their best to catch up throughout 14 tracks of grim monotony.

The occasional production trick is thrown in and the lyrics are wryly amusing in parts -- the Blur dig on Girls and Boys is a step towards something interesting -- but I'm sick of this kind of band now.

James Heward