This week on Stylus

Ian's right in labelling William B Swygart's latest effort the best Staff Top 10 ever to appear on Stylus: Top Ten Things About 'Rasputin' By Boney M - "'Rasputin', you would think, has some clever hidden context to it. It’s about love in some way, no? Well, though he does repeatedly get referred to as 'Russia’s Greatest Love Machine', there doesn’t appear to be any kind of a context beyond that at all. It’s the story of Rasputin. The authorities didn’t like him. He was quite good at sex. Women enjoyed this. The authorities attempted to poison him. They failed. So they shot him, and he died. And that’s about it. No metaphors, nothing like that, just the ultra-ultra-ultra abbreviated summary of Rasputin’s life and sexual prowess. With disco double handclaps. From Belgium".

There's also a fine crop of reviews...

Todd Hutlock is full of praise for British Sea Power's Open Season - "So what did British Sea Power deliver here then? Room On Fire? No, thankfully, more like The Jesus & Mary Chain’s Darklands. Like JAMC, BSP have given their sound a good scrubbing and waxing and the results reveal a shiny new Jag in the driveway where once there was a filthy pickup truck. Or perhaps more appropriately, they have come out of the damp, dirty sonic basement to embrace the sunshine and work on their tans. It suits them well.". I wasn't bowled over by the first album's songs in a live context, but this review and that by Jonathan on his blog) has convinced me it's time I gave them a proper try.

Derek Miller welcomes the return of Beck and makes his new LP Guero the Stylus Album Of The Week - "Even with Guero’s myriad sounds and seeming career-tracking, it’s far too facile to write it off as geriatric-chic, a final desperate wheeze for relevance. I fear many will bemoan the record’s relative familiarity as the death of one of our generation’s true studio showmen. Guero is nothing of the sort. With this, his eighth proper album, Beck has shed himself of Sea Change’s need to shelter himself in his songs. We have our urban craftsman back, to stir the dust in sampled record grooves and unearth for us, again and again, the new in the old and vice versa. Post-every-post, we have Beck".

The latest offering from Mike Patton's Fantomas, Suspended Animation, impresses Scott McKeating with its inventive integration of metal and cartoon sound effects - "Kicking off several times with big hairy riffs, only to brake sharply into piano lulls, ['04/06/05' Wednesday]it drains of colour before hitting a Jack-in-the-Box crazy lunatic wave and ending on a 'Last Post toy trumpet eulogy. Try asking for that from your favourite meat and potato rock band".

Mike Powell is nonplussed by Hot Hot Heat's second long-player, Elevator.

Mike has also kicked off quite a debate in his reassessment of The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat.