Editor's Pick of New Releases, October 2009

Good news, music fans - October was pretty cracking for releases worth investing in. So assuming you've some change troubling your pockets, take it down to your local record store (do people have local record stores anymore?) and part with it in exchange for one or two of these cream o' the crop discs.

F*** Buttons - Tarot Sport

(ATP Recordings, released 5 October)

Writes reviewer Louis Pattison: "This band's greatest skill is in creating earworms, melodies that sneak into your head and stay put. A noise band with tunes might sound like a contradiction in terms, but F*** Buttons have carved out a sound that owes more to personal inspiration that tradition, and here it works like a dream."

Read the full review of Tarot Sport

Watch the F*** Buttons' Surf Solar on YouTube

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Nancy Elizabeth - Wrought Iron

(Leaf, released 5 October)

Writes reviewer Nick Barraclough: "This is a sincere and genuine album of songs devoid of contrivance. The listener almost gets a feeling of illicitly listening in on a private performance. It's that rare collection where you feel she'd have written and sung and played them exactly that way even if they were never to be recorded, the mood a happily uncompromising one."

Read the full review of Wrought Iron

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Portico Quartet - Isla

(Real World, released 19 October)

Writes reviewer Chris Parkin: "Sure, their love of the minimalists makes for the same cyclical grooves and a less-is-more attitude as Knee-Deep in the North Sea, but in Portico's Balkan-infused melancholy, thrumming textures and skronking outbursts, it's a deeper, scarier world this time. A second Mercury nomination shouldn't be out of the question."

Read the full review of Isla

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Sufjan Stevens - The BQE

(Rough Trade, released 19 October)

Writes reviewer Will Dean: "Sufjan Stevens is one smart cookie. You could hear it in the arrangements of albums like Illinois and Michigan, you can tell it from his witty and idiosyncratic overlong song titles, and you can witness it via his grand ambitions. And here he's recorded a classical/techno/indie epic about a bit of tarmac. And he's done it beautifully."

Read the full review of The BQE

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Mayer Hawthorne - A Strange Arrangement

(Stones Thrown, released 19 October)

Writes reviewer Sam Hesketh: "A label that has built its reputation on the back of artists such as Madlib, J Dilla, Oh No and Guilty Simpson has thrown the curve ball of the year by releasing an album that sounds so authentic of soul it could have come from the Detroit of the 60s. For those who are fed up with the new wave of soul and want the real thing, Hawthorne has stepped up with a cracker of a debut."

Read the full review of A Strange Arrangement

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The Twilight Sad - Forget the Night Ahead

(Fat Cat, released 5 October)

Writes reviewer Mike Diver: "Forget the Night Ahead captures its makers at the peak of their abilities. It's an album to return to frequently, fresh nuances rising through a fog of dizzying distortion with every listen, and unequivocally one of the best rock records of 2009."

Read the full review of Forget the Night Ahead

Watch the I Became a Prostitute video on YouTube

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Those with cash to spare may also want to investigate new releases from The Flaming Lips (Embryonic), A Place to Bury Strangers (Exploding Head), Shafiq Husayn (Shafiq En'a Freeka), Tony Allen and Jimi Tenor (Inspiration Information 4), Themselves (CrownsDown), Matias Aguayo (Ay Ay Ay), Rachel Grimes (Book of Leaves), Boo Hewerdine (God Bless the Pretty Things) and Converge (Axe to Fall).

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