Wizard of wheeze

Ed Harcourt From Every Sphere (Heavenly)HHHH Various Stateside Sampled (Stateside)HHHH Simple Plan No Pads, No Helmets Just Balls (lava)H CalexicoFeast of Wire (City Slang)HHH ZwanMary Star of the Sea (Reprise)HHHH In Punch-Drunk Love, the terrific new film from Paul Thomas Anderson, repressed salesman Adam Sandler salvages a battered harmonium that has been dumped on his sidewalk. Despite a lack of musical talent - and the fact that he's pure mad mental - Sandler's character coaxes a wonderfully wheezing sound out of the wind-powered keyboard that soothes his psychological turmoil, for a little while at least.

Dreamy singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt obviously understands this innate power of the harmonium; it crops up a fair few times on From Every Sphere, the follow-up to his Mercury-nominated debut album Here Be Monsters. But despite some sonically soothing moments, the album could easily be subtitled Here Be More Monsters, with Harcourt warily eyeing up his own demons before rolling up his sleeves and grappling with them, all against an intoxicating musical backdrop.

The piano-powered pop froth that initially distinguished him from the pack has since mutated into something sleeker, darker and more dangerous. It's there in the spy-theme piano spiral of Undertaker Strut, it undercuts the sweet melody of The Birds Will Sing For You and it makes the kiddie glockenspiel during Metaphorically Yours sound extremely sinister. If - unlike the recently- married Nick Cave - Harcourt stays unhappy, he should go on to even greater things. But this'll do for now.

Stateside Sampled is one of those "them's the breaks" compilations that name and shame musical pickpockets, collating 18 tracks from the legendary imprint that have subsequently been poached by sneaky rappers or lazy dance artists. First spin, you're spotting the lifts - Eminem Shanghai-ing a Labi Siffre number for My Name Is - but after that, you can just lie back and enjoy the rare groove and soul nuggets. It's worth getting for Minnie Riperton's Baby This Love I Have alone; the woman is a goddess.

Simple Plan are about as simple as it gets; a Canadian pop-punk five-piece who sound like the dumb younger brothers of Blink 182. But for all their gnarly riffing and breathless enthusiasm they seem suspiciously Tetrispop - like fellow Canuck Avril Lavigne, ruthlessly manufactured to jigsaw with a certain demographic. Simple, then, but hopefully ineffective.

Far more intriguing is the new album from Calexico, the faux- Mariachi troupe spearheaded by Joey Burns and John Convertino. They have long specialised in alt-country with spaghetti western overtones and Feast Of Wire is their most sustained and satisfying album yet. The highlights are Close Again (a wide-prairie instrumental) and Across The Wire (a slide-guitar lament with flamenco flourishes), but their rough-and-tumbleweed approach won't be to the taste of every hombre.

Here's Zwan I made earlier a new band reuniting Smashing Pumpkins men Billy Corgan and Jimmy Cham-berlin. The singer and drummer have teamed up with post-rock pioneer David Pajo to create cathartic rock of the highest order, with Corgan's trademark operatic excess reined in almost completely (though the title track does go on a bit). Sometimes Zwan are indistinguishable from the Pumpkins, especially on the nuclear-sludge riffing of Honestly. But elsewhere, they demonstrate an elegance, finesse and optimism all their own.

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