The Wave Pictures: Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon (Moshi Moshi)

3/5

Co-Written and produced by cult English polymath Billy Childish, the latest album from The Wave Pictures exhibits an infectious amount of energy and rock’n’roll attitude.

Mining some of the best bits of post-’60s guitar music, the trio rattle through 13 songs with amusingly wordy names like The Who-influenced title track and the garage rock-out I Could Hear the Telephone (3 Floors Above Me).

The tight rhythm and blues of Dr Feelgood seem to be a key touchstone, along with the naffness of Brighton-based oddballs The Brakes.

The middle of the album comprises two stomping Creedence Clearwater Revival covers ­— not sure why, but somehow they work.

Vintage without sounding derivative, anyone who is familiar with the British popular music canon will find much to love on Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon.

Ian Sinclair

Southern Tenant Folk Union: The Chuck Norris Project (Johnny Rock Records)

5/5

Ah, Chuck Norris. An all-American icon, at least in the bits of the US keen on guns and God and not so fond of socialists or the 21st century.

He’s also an unlikely inspiration for STFU, the erstwhile bluegrassers now peddling an ambitious and off-the-wall brand of widescreen avant-folk.

This concept album takes a dozen of the meat-headed martial artist’s film titles as the starting point to talk about what’s really wrong with politics and the US.

Not Barack Obama and gay rights — as Norris would have it — but rampant gun ownership, exploited workers, fear, paranoia and the increasing difficulty of even imagining a better world, never mind building one.

Backed by evocative arrangements, with a strong flavour of Shaft-style ’70s funk, it’s another gem from Edinburgh’s most unpredictable band.

James Miller

Fairport Convention: Myths And Heroes (Matty Grooves)

5/5

This umpteenth album release by folk veterans Fairport Convention is inspired, according to member Chris Leslie, by humanity’s hope of putting its faith in things that aren’t always what they appear to be.

The songs on offer range from the personal on Clear Waters, which refers to the not-so-clear waters of the band’s working relationships, to explorations of local legend and history — Theodore’s Song is about a hermitic Oxford watch and clock repairer who travelled the county’s lanes and byways pre-1950.

But the Fairports really come into their own when they ditch the more electric rock numbers in favour of gentler fare.

John Condon, a version of a poignant WWI song by Irish singer Janet Dowd about the gravestone of a boy solider at rest in Belgian fields, is a case in point. Convention completists will not want to pass this, and others on this stand-out album, by.

Will Stone