Road-tested in a car speeding the mean streets of Staines, Stars Of CCTV - the debut album from Middlesex's Hard-Fi - consciously sets out to update the sense of frustrated tension and suburban dread that powered second-wave ska acts like The Specials and The Beat back at the close of the `70s. Don't get it twisted, this isn't ska-punk a la Brit troupers [Spunge] and Capdown: Hard-Fi ...

Manufacturer: Necessary/Atlantic

Third albums are supposed to be notoriously difficult for most bands (just ask the Spice Girls, but Sunshine proves that S Club 7 don't seem to have this problem. The shiny perfect world that they inhabit seems to be showing no signs of losing its sparkle--who else could release an album called Sunshine in the heart of winter and get away with it? Few albums can boast three number ...

Manufacturer: Commercial Marketing

Calling an album Love And The Russian Winter was a surprisingly courageous--some would say foolish--move. Ask any would-be world conqueror: a Russian winter is the surest way to suffer crushing, final, demoralising defeat. Still, though, Mick Hucknall's confidence would not be swayed, so it's to his credit that the evocative title is justified by the songs, from uptempo pop to their ...

Manufacturer: East West

Thinking It Over was originally titled "To Those Who Wait" and considering Hear'say have released two albums and are already yesterday's chip paper it would have been a very appropriate title. The delay was in legal wrangles over their name but with all that behind them, and a shiny "X" appended to their moniker, they can unleash their poppy brand of US-styled R&B and UK two-step. Apart ...

Manufacturer: v2

The new millennium saw a change in Madonna as, ever at the forefront of popular music trends, she took the earth mother vibes of Ray Of Light and transposed them to the heart of the dancefloor. The end product, Music, is a wondrous mixture of the familiar and the audaciously new--tracks like "Amazing" and "Runaway Lover" would have slotted nicely into the more uptempo sections of ...

Manufacturer: Maverick

Manufacturer: Warner

Putting aside the Girl Power phenomenon--really, what were the chances five scantily-clad birds flashing their knickers with kung-fu kicks wouldn't make it in the music industry?--the Spice Girls really do mean something: great singles. There's not a dog in their whole back-catalogue. They kicked off their career with "Wannabe", "Say You'll Be There" and "2 Become 1"--that's the pop ...

Manufacturer: Virgin

The jumpy, Timbaland-esque beats that kickstart the title track of Fanmail, TLC's long-awaited follow-up to 1994's zillion-selling CrazySexyCool, are a lot more impressively modern than the "computerised" voices that introduce several cuts. Most of the album's production is similarly up to date, displaying the trio's smouldering style to good effect. A few of these songs ("Silly Ho," ...

Manufacturer: Arista

Biographers of Norman Cook should look no further than the title of this--his second album under the pseudonym Fatboy Slim. From humble beginnings as the bass player in prole rock band The Housemartins, through chart-topping fame with Beats International, and even a spell scraping a meagre living from writing computer game soundtracks in the early 90s, Norman Cook has done it all. You've ...

Manufacturer: Skint

In coming back after the disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards, Everything Must Go had to be special. Thankfully, the album shows extreme dignity in the face of adversity, with its big, Phil Spector-ish production and the pure lyrical perfection of "A Design For Life" (the least patronising, most spot on discussion of the working class ever to reach number two in the charts). ...

Manufacturer: Epic