By Russell Barker

The Ladies are neither plural nor female, being simply Martin Austwick. The music itself falls into two categories, jazzy sounding loveliness and wailing oddities. In the former section we have 'Worse', all Thom Yorke mumbled vocals and tropicalia rhythms and the Lambchop like 'Spider'. 'Nightmare no 6' and 'I Promised Myself I Wouldn't Cry' fall into the latter; too much fuzzed-up guitar, screeching vocals and lack of direction for my liking.

Theoretical Girl's single is a bit spoilt by the mix; the vocals are far too low on 'It's All Too Much'. Also the discordant keyboard sound proves a bit irritating. The sparse lyrics suit her music well and the whole thing benefits when the keyboards are toned down to her level near the end of the song. Her theme song fares better, the original version of 'I Am Theoretical Girl' sounding like a robotic Elastica and the Vicious Pink Goo Remix spruces it up with some Balearic beats a la New Order's 'Fine Time'.

Another band seemingly partly inspired by Elastica is They Drove Me To It, whose 'Save Me Sinner' gives that band a glam metal makeover. Unfortunately 'Bulletproof' is an overwrought, dramatic ballad and lets the single down somewhat.

The Pocket Gods 'Brian' EP is full of ramshackle indie tunes, tinged with a country flavour. They unfortunately have a tendency to spoil the tunes by trying too hard to be eccentric, or badly recording stuff, deliberately or otherwise. It's a shame, as there as plenty of good tunes trying to break through.

Anna Bengo's demo has discovered a way to make commercial pop palatable to the alternative sector. The three tracks within are great bouncy pop tunes, with a slight Alanis Morissette influence. With the right breaks Anna looks set to join the ranks of the nation's top female singer songwriters.