IF it's tempting to think an album of cover versions of former classic pop songs is a contrived attempt to resurrect Patti Smith into the popular consciousness, at least she didn't ask Rick Rubin to produce the 12 songs here. Not surprisingly Smith hits the bullseye and misses the board completely on occasions. Hits include Hendrix, Stones, Beatles and Jefferson Airplane classics while duds include workaday Tears For Fears and Paul Simon hits. But the show stopper is Nirvana's biggest hit, complete with banjo and stream of consciousness poetry.

Download: 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' 'Are You Experienced?' 'White Rabbit' Neil Dunphy

Nine Inch Nails Year Zero Interscope (63m 50s) . . . .

THE sound of walkie talkies in a washing machine is how one critic once described the rage of Trent Reznor's 1994 opus 'The Downward Spiral'. Reznor is now less concerned with his own nihilistic tendencies and more worried about America's rush towards self destruction. As such 'Year Zero' is a concept album of a future where the religious right have taken over the White House and the world is threatened by nuclear war, global warming and drug addiction.

The music is funkier, less dissonant and a more likeable squall of electronic fuzz. The lost soundtrack to Terminator 2, perhaps.

Download: 'Capital G' 'The Warning' 'Meet Your Master' ND

Bill Callahan Woke on a Whaleheart Drag City (42m 38s) . . . .

THE cyclical nature of life absorbs Bill Callahan on this debut solo album - though not primarily in the paired tracks 'Day' and 'Night', more concerned with surmounting venality and temptation in order to improve society, bit by bit. It may be an illusion, but he seems more anchored and content among the metaphors of birth, decay, evaporation and precipitation.

Musically, Callahan has ceded ultimate control here to Neil Michael Hagerty, who locates pretty much the appropriate style - from Johnny Cash-style trotting strum, to tack-piano stomp, brittle newwave brio to sinister Twin Peaks twang, pizzicato strings to poppy organ - for each song. Andy Gill

Monstrance Monstrance Ape (2cd, 100m) . . . . .

HAVING recorded ambient/newage soundscapes with Harold Budd, and psychedelic pastiche with Dukes Of Stratosfear, the exploratory nature of this Andy Partridge project is no surprise - less of a surprise, probably, than his reunion with keyboardist Barry Andrews. Andrews left XTC in 1979, going on to form avant-rock combo Shriekback, which also supplies the third member of Monstrance, drummer Martyn Barker. Recorded with no planning or rehearsal, this double album is a series of openended improvisations of startling invention. There's an almost telepathic bond between the three, of the kind that drives the best jazz improvisers. AG