The Martial Arts - Getting Stranger By The Month

If Pretty In Pink 2 ever gets made in Glasgow, then The Martial Arts will soundtrack it. Skinny tie new wave like the first Kiwi Jr album, only with a nod to The Cars rather than Pavement. All sighing backing vocals, fist-pumpin' powerpop and teen energy devoted to gurls and romantic tumult.

The Martial Arts is Paul Kelly (no, not that one, or that one, or even that one) but it's easy to imagine him being called Chip, Buddy or Jeff. I'm sure some of his favourite recording artists are The Go-Go's, Tom Petty and Elvis Costello. And if you were ever in doubt about a central inspiration, The Wild Humdrum hitches its hook on California Girls.

If the UK want to clean up at next year's Eurovision Song Contest, the clever money's on The Martial Arts reaching out across seas to unite nations in a harmonic whole.

Silver Biplanes - Parallel World

Parallel World is Forever Changes mariachi psychedelia meets bewitching English folk. When they pressed record, the sun was setting, home made wine had been drunk and whatever they're smoking wasn't sold over the counter. An instant hit (the music, not what the band were taking).

Think Again elevates the rarefied atmos to, well, let's call it Cosmic English Music. Because they remind me most of Red Chair Fadeaway, once of the Cosmic English Music stable, who numbered the Biplanes Tim Vass, now joined by Vanessa Turner, ex-Melons.

So you know there's pop pedigree, but this is something new (as well as being something old). It's a lathe cut so search auction houses for your fix, or just buy the songs from bandcamp. There's an album next year, and on the basis of these tasters it's going to be pretty sweet.

番長 Taste - Passed Out In Petals

Can a 3-minute instrumental be epic? Yes, yes it can. This is an interpretation of the US underground where grunge never happened, the SST and Homestead labels are the gold standard and those early Guided By Voices albums are scripture.

Passed Out In Petals is one dirty, nagging riff run through a 10-cent distortion pedal. There's no great mystery, no puzzle to complete: it starts, bulldozes everything in its way, then ends abruptly because it's finished. As you might be. Your only job is to play it again. And again.

You want biography and discography? Unimportant. Apart from they're from New Zealand so I'm sure correctly prefer The Gordons to Sonic Youth, and they're based in Japan. There are other records under other names, but Passed Out In Petals by Taste is the only one that counts now.

On the ever-reliable I Dischi Del Barone label.

Flinch - Enough is Enough

There's a tradition that dictates every insular, low-key, distaff act is compared to the Marine Girls. I get it, but pigeonholing every act as like the Marine Girls dismisses the range and ambition of so many bands.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Marine Girls, but they were so teenage. Comparing being told off by your parents to living in a totalitarian regime (Flying Over Russia)? How about being a bit older, like Flinch's Beth Black, and writing a song called Just Because She Likes The Same Bizzaro Crap You Do, That Doesn't Make Her Your Soulmate Tom?

Flinch are poised between the intimate Pacific Coast harmonies of Rose Melberg, the intensely melodic Fog Pop of Cindy and Flowertown, and the brutally self-reflective humour of anti-folk heroine Kimya Dawson. It will be a major injustice if Flinch aren't the support act on Withered Hand's next stadium tour.

You need this record, and not just because you don't already own one that includes I'm Sorry I Puked On You In That Rented Car.

Romero - Turn It On

Two years ago, Romero's debut single announced themselves with nagging, intense verse hook melodies like The Strokes once did so irresistibly. Those songs are on debut album Turn It On, but find themselves in the company of peacocking anthems that recall Thin Lizzy and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Gutsy, soulful vocals and duelling guitars make Sheer Mag their closest musical contemporaries, but there's none of Sheer Mag's political clout. Romero's fist-pumpin' soft rock seems untroubled by social consciousness but is superbly alive to axe heroics, love's tribulations and the fall out of over indulgence.

The clever money's on Romero dreaming of drum risers and dry ice rather than a socialist revolution. So what? It's rock music that's trying to conquer the world, not change it. Even if it's all surface, it shines gloriously.

Lewsberg - In Your Hands

Lewsberg have one or possibly two songs, and they're both Velvet Underground songs. Some of my favourite records play the same hand - Bewitched by Luna, for example. It's repetition as an aesthetic, like Galaxie 500.

Any cynicism I had about Lewsberg was blown away seeing them live recently. Their narcotic, monochromatic balladry is restrained and perfectly poised. It's atonal abstraction that's wonderfully unemotional - Yo La Tengo if they'd never heard The Beach Boys.

In Your Hands has no hits. That's the point. The vocals, like Nico's, are litanic, the music sparsely melodic, heavily rhythmic, tribal and ceremonial. It might be an acquired taste. I love it. Acquire it.

Beachheads II

In which Beachheads wind down the windows, feel the breeze in their hair and set the radio dial to AM. The Cars, Raspberries, Cheap Trick and The Undertones are on rotation. Beachheads - who are titling their albums numerically like their powerpop forebears White Wires - have put in place stricter quality control measures this time round and struck gold.

There's something approaching a powerpop hit factory in Norway. Frode Strømstad from I Was A King and Rider (their debut ep was one of last year's finest offerings) produced the album, and Anne Lise Frøkedal makes a guest appearance.

Anyone sad about Teenage Fanclub not making them like they used to must tune in. And anyone buying the excellent Standing In The Shadows compilations on MeanBean would do well to live in the present by buying this collection of impulsive, knockout pop songs.