When Joe Strummer was around to take for granted, most of his solo projects seemed sadly desultory: Strummer's passion was never in question, but his band the Mescaleros suggested a toy Clash with more world-music spice. In his unexpected absence, however, their 2001 second album, Global A Go-Go, sounds stronger, more plugged into current conundrums, even as his old bandmate Mick Jones' Big Audio Dynamite records keep getting harder to reach for.

Now, Mescaleros guitarist Scott Shields and keyboardist Martin Slattery have finished what amounts to Strummer's detailed sketch for the group's third release. Streetcore continues the band's lightly amplified muscular-acoustic sound. Because his restless, barbed self will never be back to shake us awake, it's almost more fun to hear Strummer spill his subconscious in numbers such as "Ramshackle Day Parade" (Marilyn Monroe meets William Burroughs meets U-Roy) than to partake in the sturdy romance-adventure yarn "Coma Girl." A few songs give you an honest-to-goodness pang: The cover of Bobby Charles' "Before I Grow Too Old" (here called "Silver and Gold") is about kissing life on the lips before it's too late. And Strummer wrote his own finest eulogy in "Long Shadow," a number intended -- talk about pangs -- for Johnny Cash: "If you put it all together, you didn't even once relent/You cast a long shadow, and that is your testament/Somewhere in my soul, there's always rock & roll." (MILO MILES)

The Shins Chutes Too Narrow (Sub Pop)

It must mean something that the freshest indie rock boasts tunes more substantial that what is sold in the mainstream. The Shins, an unassuming quartet originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, have not only assimilated several decades of Brit rock, chamber pop and DIY punk but have nonchalantly slipped those influences into their own intricate yet durable musical designs. On this slightly more polished successor to their 2001 debut, Oh, Inverted World, the Shins make each minute matter without strain or lapsing into fake mellowness. The band's arrangements are concise, yet singer James Mercer's melodies wander -- calling for repeated plays -- as odd lyrical phrases pop up over mutating guitars and keyboards. Getting intimate without giving away their secrets, the Shins walk a fine line between familiarity and mystery. (BARRY WALTERS)

Mandy Moore Coverage (Epic)

Effortlessly genial and impossibly well-scrubbed, Mandy Moore is almost shimmery enough to overshadow her middling vocal talent on Coverage. Taking on familiar songs, though, always unearths the rough edges beneath the polish, especially when they sound flat wrong emanating from the mouth of America's peppiest nineteen-year-old. Listen to Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" or the Waterboys' "The Whole of the Moon," on which Moore wails "While you filled the skies/ I was dumbfounded by truth" about as convincingly as a flight attendant. Other tracks that were rendered indelible by previous vocalists -- Carly Simon's "Anticipation," Joe Jackson's "Breaking Us in Two" -- sounds little better than American Idol outtakes here. The irony is that in denaturing these songs, Moore truly makes them her own. (JON CARAMANICA)

Van Morrison What's Wrong With This Picture? (Blue Note)

On the title track of What's Wrong With This Picture?, an ode to his ever-changing self, Van Morrison proclaims with uncharacteristic giggle, "It don't mean a thing/if it ain't got that swing.And a ring-a-ding-ding." True to his word, on his first album for the legendary jazz label Blue Note, Morrison blends Duke Ellington's mantra with Frank Sinatra's finger-snapping tuxedo cool, swinging from straight blues and R&B to classic pop and jazz. He's still grousing about the media in songs such as "Too Many Myths," "Fame" and "Goldfish Bowl." But "Whinin' Boy Moan" shows that he can stand back and laugh at himself, too. Other highlights include the beautiful "Evening in June," the jaunty "Once in a Blue Moon" and "Little Village," a song that would not have been out of place on Moondance. Eclectic and ambitious without ever seeming forced, Morrison is relaxed throughout this entire set. There is no filler or slackness here, either. In fact, there is nothing wrong with this picture. (RICHARD ABOWITZ)

Something Corporate North (Drive-Thru/Geffen)

With Leaving Through the Window, Something Corporate's 2002 major-label debut, the Orange County band delivered a collection of piano-driven power-pop tunes about pining for punk rock princesses and battling school bullies. What a difference a year makes. After months of touring and experiencing quasi-stardom, the group delves into an entirely different world on its latest offering North. This time, lyrics explore a darker place, but just what that place is, it's hard to say. Songwriters Andrew McMahon (frontman and pianist) and Josh Partington (guitarist) express clear angst, but storylines are vague. Reflecting that mood, guitars sometimes flare into uncharacteristically incendiary riffs. But Something Corporate is at its best when it relies most on the instrument that sets it apart from the acts it shared billing with on 2002's Warped Tour. McMahon's piano melodies flourish beautifully through songs like "Ruthless" and "Down," making them the highlight of the album. (KRISTIN ROTH)

The Band of Blacky Ranchette Still Lookin' Good to Me (Thrill Jockey)

Still Lookin' Good to Me -- the fourth album by Giant Sand-man Howe Gelb under his countryish moniker the Band of Blacky Ranchette -- is all about frequent flyer miles and a rolodex, fourteen songs recorded with friends in Tucson, Arizona; Aarhus, Denmark; Austin, Texas; and just outside the Nashville International Airport (where Gelb and Lambchop mainmain Kurt Wagner are shooed away by a State Trooper while recording the bluesy "The Muss of Paradise"). Still Lookin' is a meandering delight, a shoebox full of sonic postcards with oddball scribblings that capture quick, inspired collaborations with buddies like Wagner, Neko Case and Grandaddy's Jason Lytle. Gelb's comfortable croak and a warm, spare, instrumental pocket are the vessel common to most of the tracks, with his friends putting some sun-soaked skin over the loose song skeletons. Case adds something resembling country sass on the lusciously-titled "Mope-a-Long Rides Again," while Lytle's squeaky warble offers a nice pardner to Gelb's own vox on an enjoyably lazy cover of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Gelb might still be best known for the swirling guitar feedback he stirred up in Giant Sand. But between the beautiful and fragile The Listener (released earlier this year) and Lookin', he's quieted down a bit. Amped up or stripped down, Gelb's songs are always fascinating finds. (ANDREW DANSBY)

Various Artists Buddyhead Presents: Gimme Skelter (Buddyhead/Nettwerk America)

Assembled by the pranksters at Buddyhead, best known for spreading music gossip (and platinum rockers' home phone numbers) around the Internet, Gimme Skelter is an all-new underground compilation that merges the masterful with the mediocre. Kicking things off by proclaiming his disdain for Moby, Iggy Pop delivers on the raw, humorous and powerful anthem "New York City Is Beating Its Chest Again." Grunge vets Mudhoney keep things in high gear with the skuzzy, Sabbath-y anti-war rant "Hard-on for War," and Cave In's Cobain-derived "Harmless Armless/Minus World" is equally good. Not so for Pleasure Forever's psychedelic yawn, "King Cobra in the Guts of Valhalla" or Radio Vago's sluggish, droning "Yearly Note"; both are worth skipping. Of course, Weezer's fab Pinkerton-era outtake "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" (formerly known as "Who You Callin' Bitch?") and Yeah Yeah Yeah's debased punkabilly nugget "Shot Down" are the best reasons to grab this almost super hodge-podge. (JOHN D. LUERSSEN)

Beth Hart Leave the Light On (Koch)

For Beth Hart, making music has always been the eye of an otherwise stormy life. But following an arrest and rehab, she's never looked healthier . . . or sounded more passionate. On her third full-length, Leave the Light On, Hart is a soulful mythologizer of her own self-destruction; the Janis Joplin sound-a-like mixing American roots forms with classic rock into bloodletting songs with mainstream pop appeal. On the title track, the twenty-nine-year old sings "Can the damage be undone? I swore to God I'd never be what I've become . . ." And on an upbeat Black Crowes-style shuffle, she remarks, "I'm just dirty footprints at your door." The record has its lusty and celebratory moments too, and of course plenty of catharsis to offer Adult Pop radio programmers who jumped on her 1999 raw-nerve hit "L.A. Song." (TODD SPENCER)

Rachel's Systems/Layers (Quarterstick Records)

Spliced with field recordings, answering machine messages and the sounds of a Japanese musical garbage truck, Rachel's sixth album, System/Layers, is a stunning concept-piece about modern urban life. The neo-classical compositions like "Water From the Same Source" and "Unclear Channel" embody restraint and intellect. Beautifully crafted sonic portraits (created primarily with bass, cello, viola and piano) pull fragmented images from the recesses of the brain, as recordings of airport boarding calls sit alongside chirping birds. Where bands like Sigur Ros wrap the ambient and ethereal into blankets of warming detachment, Rachel's are not afraid to assault the listener with cacophonous clamoring of our noisy world reveling in the spectrum of their sound and jolting those who think it's possible to passively engage their music. As they wander through contemporary society with an acute ear, Rachel's translate the commonplace and overlooked music of existence into subtle, minimalist art that is unclassifiable and enigmatic. (TYSON SCHUETZE)

[the] Caseworker These Weeks Should Be Remembered (Manifesto)

On These Weeks Should be Remembered San Francisco's [the] Caseworker extract dreariness from inside whispery, ambient pop. While some songs drive, there's nothing speedy here. The melodies undulate, the guitars tease and fuzz, and the rhythm section quietly pulses, threading together a foreboding mood of spook and danger. The sarcastic Conor Jonathan and the enchanting Eimer Devlin -- the band's core is formerly of Half Film -- exchange spoken word and stringy lullabies throughout songs that are as hooky as they are haunting. When Devlin sings "No rules abide/Whatever happened here?/With wide-eyed stares/The motion was unfair" on the starry "No One Lives Here," she seems completely enraptured and awesomely dazed by the music's hypnosis. If Yo La Tengo still reign as king of indie-ambience, then this quartet should now stand as [Sir] Caseworker. (BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND)

(October 20, 2003)