Pop music has always had a talent for smuggling awkward ideas past the doorman. Ooberfuse, the London duo of Cherrie Anderson and Hal St John, have built a career on this trick. Their collaborator list runs from Snoop Dogg to Cameroonian musician Abdel Tchatchet. Their conscience stays on the dancefloor, and it has rarely been dressed more sharply than on "Electrify".

Most of us have, at some low ebb, sought comfort in the misfortunes of strangers. Nikkole Stone, the Toronto singer-songwriter who is Dynasty Four, did it with unusual thoroughness: all twenty seasons of *Hell's Kitchen* in two months, a sustained act of self-medication by shouting. Where others would have emerged with a sourdough starter and a vague sense of shame, Stone emerged with a single, and a very good one.

Seven players, one question, and nearly seven minutes to chew it over. JFK Blue's new single is a slab of blues rock that has no interest in being polite.

Twenty-one years is a long time to be a secret. Josh Orange, a Sydney folk-rock band, have spent that stretch writing, recording and playing for the faithful few, and their sixth album, *The Fire & The Call*, finally gives that patience somewhere to land. It runs to ten songs and thirty-nine minutes, with nothing wasted, nothing padded and nothing apologised for. It is the sound of a band who know exactly who they are.