Music Blogs

With the summer of outdoors rock a distant memory, it's time to look forward to the last lap of an up-and-down 2008. This is the time when all the big hitters limber up for one last bout of battle with their big new albums.

And while Oasis might be overshadowing most things in their wake, there's more happening than Dig Out Your Soul alone. This autumn sees returns, stealth or otherwise, of what we call the Britpack Class Of 2003. All those bands who retooled British pop about the time I arrived in London are reaching the middle of their careers, maturing (or otherwise) with what they hope will be defining third albums.

So how have they done?

Bloc Party were the first out of the traps, doing a kind-of Radiohead thing by flinging Intimacy out online just two days after it was announced.

After the disappointing second set A Weekend In The City, it's a happy return to form, if not familiarity. Produced half by Paul Epworth and Jacknife Lee, Intimacy is a brave and bold odyssey into futurist oddness and nineties dance. If not quite their best ever, it certainly contains some of their best work, like the impossibly beautiful "Biko." The songs are all better than disappointing red herring of a lead single, "Mercury."

Keeping things on the wrong foot, they're ploughing ahead releasing an all-new, non-album single "Talons."

Kaiser Chiefs didn't have much of a better time on their second album. Yours Truly, Angry Mob might have boasted their first U.K. number one, "Ruby," but the album sounded like a dark reaction to the sprightly way in which they'd sold themselves as cheeky chappies first time round. They didn't look like they were having any fun, and it burnt through into the songs.

This time they were taking no chances. Out went longtime producer Stephen Street; in came fashionista du jour Mark Ronson --he brought Lily Allen along, but thankfully left the horns at home. And the result, Off With Their Heads, strikes a happier line between Kaisers' standard jollity and more serious stadium indie.

The single "Never Miss A Beat" is pretty decent too.

Razorlight's third album Slipway Fires, due at the start of November, arrives at a time, post-Dylangate, post-Kirsten Dunst and post-"America," where the only people with a good word to say about frontmanJohnny Borrell are...actually nah, sorry, you got me there.

But he's nothing if not tenacious. Johnny took himself away to remote Scotland (best place for him, plenty would say), but something remarkable may have happened. After heading into their publicist's office to hear the album yesterday, I was puzzled and surprised. They've mainly ditched the sinewy, bangy indie in favour of widescreen '70s rock, and at least one gentle folk song that sounds not unlike Paul Simon. If that sounds strange to read, imagine how it felt to type...