Grief rarely arrives dressed for a party, yet Ricky's Rebel Rabble have put it in satin and platform boots and sent it dancing. "Molly" is a tribute to the aunt who raised Ricky and then helped raise his disabled son, and who died suddenly. Rock and roll has always been better at mourning than at being cool, and this single understands that instinctively.

Grunge has always had a fondness for the apology. Cobain mumbled his through a mouthful of gravel, and Cornell sang his from the bottom of a well. Barbaros Evin's contribution is the rarest sort: an apology delivered in advance, to a son who is still growing into the world it describes.

The gap has always been fond of pop. Consider the pause before a chorus lands, the held breath before a key change, the half-second when a stranger's eyes meet yours across a crowded room. Delphine Savatte's new single builds an entire song around that fondness, and the result is the most disarmingly lovely thing the Montpellier vocalist and her producer Al Young have yet released.

"You Don't Know" begins with a guitar that plays as if it were afraid of waking someone. Jacob's Cry sets the instrument down in the middle of the room and lets it breathe, and for the first thirty seconds nothing else is asked of it. The restraint is the first sign that this is a singer who understands how much weight a quiet note can carry.

Twelve months is a short time to follow a debut with a second album, and a shorter one still to make it better. The Crystal Teardrop have done both. *The Crystal Teardrop Is Forming* arrived last May as a handsome calling card for a band steeped in jangle and Paisley Underground fuzz. *Love You More* is the sound of that band after a year of motorway miles, sweaty stages and nightly proof that the thing works.

Molly Warburton has served her apprenticeship in public. Years of gigging around Lancashire and beyond, from Kendal Calling to The Great Escape, plus a national-competition slot on Lucy Spraggan's tour, have given her the kind of stagecraft that cannot be faked. *Eyes Wide Open*, five songs long and released this September, is that education turned into craft. It sounds like a record by someone who has watched a great many faces in a great many rooms and learned what they need to hear.

Colin Crooks has made a lifetime's worth of racket with admirable commitment. PBR Streetgang put out singles on Good Vibrations, the Belfast label that made a habit of backing the gloriously unlikely. Bad Noise Monster, his current outfit, announces its intentions in the name. Anyone arriving at "We Are Chaos" with that history in mind will reach instinctively for earplugs.

Dogs have been the subject of sentimental songs for as long as men with guitars have owned them, and the results are usually a slobbering mess. Uncanny Valley Girls, a London band who have spent eight years earning their keep in the sweaty back rooms of the capital, have written a love song to a dog that is clever, tender and very funny, with none of the usual mawkishness.

Heavy music has always been a refuge for people who feel things too loudly for polite company. The best of it doesn't pretend otherwise. It plugs the feeling into a wall of amplifiers and lets it howl. Escape The Box, the Anglo-electro-metal duo of Ziey Kizzy and Dreadf4ll, understand this in their bones, and on *Dead Ends & DayDreams* they have made a mini-album that howls, whispers, and occasionally does both inside the same four minutes.

Sixteen years is a long time for a record to spend in a pile of cuttings. Hamish's second album, the follow-up to 1999's *Picture In My Bag* (produced by Les Penning, best known for his work with Mike Oldfield), went missing, resurfaced, went missing again, and was finally rescued by a lodger. Chris Oldfield, late of Dreadzone, rented the cabin at the bottom of Hamish's Stroud garden and stayed to become the producer the songs had been waiting for. The result is a 15-track collection that sounds like a life's work assembled with love.