Smashing Pumpkins Zeitgeist Reprise (53m 20s) . . . .

SEVEN years since splitting in drugaddled acrimony, Chicago's grunge metallers return. Well, 50% of them do for guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy seem terminally out of the loop. So how come this sounds so like their debut Gish? The answer perhaps proves what the two exiled members always complained about: Billy Corgan is a control freak and probably did after all record the guitar and bass parts on Siamese Dream.

So this is vintage Pumpkins: claustrophobic hooks, pummelling basslines and Corgan sounding like a man being strangled by the process.

Throw in Jimmy Chamberlin's drum slabs and it's 1991 all over again.

Download: 'Tarantula' 'Starz' 'Doomsday Clock' Neil Dunphy

The Enemy We'll Live and Die in these Towns Stiff (37m 01s) . . .

ONE of the NME's darling bands, much is expected of The Enemy this year. A threepiece from Coventry who essentially play power pop, comparisons with Arctic Monkeys have come on the back of single '40 Days & 40 Nights' but you would never make the connection during the eight songs prior to that. Think more Kaiser Chiefs meets Blur. Every song is a densely joyous affair with plenty of 'Oh oh' harmonies while towards the end frontman Tom Clarke croons more mellow elegies to ordinary English life.

Download: '40 Days & 40 Nights' 'Happy Birthday Jane' 'This Song' ND

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Is Is EP Dress Up/Fiction (17m 43s) . . . .

IT'S hard to tell whether this EP is the missing link between 'Fever To Tell' and 'Show Your Bones' or the next step for the Brooklynites. Mostly it combines their unique mixture of bareness and depth. 'Rockers To Swallow' is rawkus and punk, but 'Down Boy' is more telling with guitarist Nick Zinner going off on one during the track behind Karen O's increasingly brooding, dark sentiments. 'Isis' is the highlight, displaying Karen O's high-reaching vocals. Again, they reaffirm themselves as the world's most exciting and mysterious band. They can snatch a hook from anywhere and conjure up emotion from nothing. We want more. Now.

Download: All of it Una Mullally The Holloways So This Is Great Britain?

TVT Records (42m 30s) . .

SNORE. Another corny Libertineraping pop band from London. It sounds a bit off-key when most of the band members are tipping thirty and they're singing about 16year-old girls. That kind of thing can get you in trouble, you know.

Anyway, here we go, it's all "I'm on the dancefloor, I'm drinking, give us a fag" twangalalala. That kind of stuff. 'Generator' is great fun though. The rest? Nursery rhymes, The (original) Moneys-aping harmonies that all sound a little McFly, never-changing guitar sounds. It's not that bad really, just as long as you're not looking for something different.

Download: 'Generator', 'Most Lonely Face' UM

Gogol Bordello Super Taranta!

Side One Dummy . . .

Sometimes, world musicians throw the baby out with the bath water in their eagerness to achieve some form of crossover compromise. No such worries with New York's Gogol Bordello, whose transglobal gypsy rebel rock roots remain firmly in the Balkans. Even when spiked with zingy flavours of Italian tarantella or Mexican mariachi, their whirl of guitar, accordion and fiddle retains an unmistakeable Romany core.

They pour scorn on outmoded notions of nationalism and religious fervour with 'Supertheory of Supereverything', a rumination on such matters as whether God has a sense of humour. If so, it's pretty black.

Andy Gill

Classical

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 Kyrill Kondrashin/Staatskapelle Dresden Profil . . . .

Recorded on 23 January 1974, this title is as historically significant as they come . . . the Dresden premiere of Shostakovich's last symphony, the 425th anniversary year of the Dresden Staatskapelle and Kondrashin's last concert with this distinguished orchestra. Full of allusions to the compositions of Wagner, Shostakovich's symphony lurches between impertinence and poignant isolation. The "adagio" second movement harnesses a dark menace while Boris Chaykovsky's Theme and 8 Variations for Orchestra, premiered here, completes a must-have addition for any Shostakovich devotee.

Karen Dervan