In one, the alienation is presumably so intense, a leg has been isolated from its owner.So too with the music, which also fails to reach the feet, so concerned is it with not having a good time. "Got a problem, I can't solve it," sings Yorke on the opener "Solved", before taking the next 40 minutes to prove his point. Like formula grunge songs, these tracks tend to start very very quietly and intimately, before swelling to a pitch of maudlin intensity for the choruses; except that unlike grunge, there's no release - the pain is never cauterised, because the singer enjoys it too much to ever let it go.This is the big difference between the Truth and American Music Club, with whom they're often compared: where AMC's Mark Eitzel routinely exceeds the boundaries of emotional discretion, wantonly reneging on the compact of intimacy struck between performer and listener, UT's songs never threaten to break their overly defined parameters. The inner sleeve photos in theCD booklet for Almost Here offer a clear indication of the album's emotional territory, with their snatched glimpses of loneliness - empty rooms, blurred windows, grey sea. The Allstars' pungent remix of American indie-rockers Pigeonhed's "Battle Flag", meanwhile, gives an indication of further possible transatlantic wrinkles to their sound.UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH Almost Here(Virgin CDVX2849)Has the Oxford Social Services Department been informed about the Yorke family? I only ask because Radiohead's Thom and his brother Andy, singer/songwriter with the hotly-tipped Unbelievable Truth, seem to have between them such a limitless fund of melancholy, one can but guess at the sheer hell their home life must have been. Apart from "I Used To Fall In Love", on which the rock guitar and burring organ combine a little too leadenly, the rest of the album is equally persuasive: the blend of fuzz clavinet and deep loping bass (courtesy of A One-Man Crowd Called Gentile, possibly the finest name in all of popular music, with the possible exception of Allstars' engineer The Many Tentacles) of "Kasparov's Revenge" is about as funky as white folks get, while the haunting "Nighttime Story" closes the album with a trip down a spooky deep-soul alleyway.

The way they're not afraid to borrow familiar melodies, hoisting Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" further into space on "Forgotten Sanity", and placing the James Bond Theme in further peril on "Alligators Getting Up", also speaks volumes about their approach now. The subject-matter covers roughly the same territory as before, too: erotic exhilaration ("Dirty High"); emotional apprehension ("Something Familiar"); and creeping dehumanisation ("Forgotten Sanity"), rendered with the kind of ice-queen chill not heard since Siouxsie Sioux's heyday. A welcome return.LO-FIDELITY ALLSTARS How To Operate With A Blown Mind (Skint BRASSIC8CD)The Lo-Fi Allstars' sound is scraped from the streets of Britain, a warped blend of hip-hop, house and rock whichfits comfortably into none of those categories, but adopts the most powerful aspects of each as it barges its way along. Overlaid with "cohesive lyrical maps" sneered out with Lydon-esque contempt by rapper Wrekked Train, these 11 grooves are simultaneously disorienting and seriously propulsive. Though there are obviously influential precedents in the work of Americans such as The Beasties and The Dust Brothers, How To Operate With A Blown Mind couldn't really have come from anywhere else but the UK, so well-fused is the Allstars' musical alloy.Last year's breakthrough singles "Kool Roc Bass" and "Disco Machine Gun" are both included here, the latter re-named "Blisters On My Brain"; they're as pumped and muscular as any heavy rock riff, and as infectious as a tube train carriage in winter. And judging by the toughened pop gloss of most of the songs on Come Clean, they don't intend to let this second chance pass them by.Tracks such as the searing "Chinese Burn" and the catchy "Coming Up Roses" are as commercial as any they've recorded, and although it's mostly comprised of the same kind of sculpted noise as their earlier records, there's a more confident swagger to the album - the difference, I suppose, between experimental tentativeness and pop confirmation. In too many cases here, it's as if someone has come along later and decided, as an afterthought, that what these old blues songs really need is a touch of jessying-up here and there.CURVE Come Clean Universal/Estupendo(UMD80475)Having watched from the sidelines as Garbage cleaned up (no pun intended) with the exact same musical formula they developed half a decade earlier, Dean Garcia and Toni Halliday have done the sensible thing and re-formed their seminal sampler-rock duo Curve.

Those on which Green and Watson just sit and pick are the most rewarding, perhaps because they're closer to Johnson's originals; there's something quietly satisfying about "Ramblin' On My Mind" and "Walkin' Blues", and their version of "Love In Vain Blues" - the same one covered by the Stones on Let It Bleed - has a lovely, lonely atmosphere, right up to the point when those gospel backing vocals come in on the chorus and ruin it. Compared to Clapton's comparable retro exercises, for example, which are always neat and efficient, albeit a little bloodless at times, these are just half-baked ideas which don't come off: the gospelly backing vocals on "Phonograph Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" are teeth-clenchingly inappropriate, while the sprightly minstrel-band arrangement of "32-20 Blues" is cornball enough to summon up the dark days of British "trad" jazz. In general, the simpler the tracks are, the better. It's not so much a matter of guitar technique or performance, but poor vocals throughout, and arrangement decisions which are eccentric, to say the least. Myself, I just hope that XFM continues to play the MC5 as drivetime and that enough complaints are put to the Radio Authority to ensure that at least one dissenting voice remains on the air.You can complain to the Radio Authority on 0171-430 2724 if you think Capital is big enough already I plan to..