MARK Lanegan has fallen far and often, but the Seattle grunge scene's one true rival to Kurt Cobain keeps landing on his feet as the stoner hired voice of choice.

After Queens Of The Stone Age and his Lee and Nancy liaison with Isobel Campbell, he now stokes up the fires of Stoke-on-Trent electronic duo Soulsavers.

Without him, Ian Glover and Richard Machin merely sprinkle pretty dust across an arid landscape; with his battered baritone growl in songs of sin and redemption, their melancholic melange of hip-hop, country, rock and soul turns unholy and hellish on Kingdoms Of Rain or holy and meditative on the gospel opener Revival and Spiritual.

A soul saviour to file alongside Portishead, Nick Cave and Spiritualized.

Son Volt's fifth album opens with Eastern sitar and the drowsy mantra of "Feels like driving around in a slow hearse" on endless repeat, and songwriter Jay Farrar follows up with the jaunty, mercy-seeking brass blast of The Picture, but after these two changes of direction, The Search loses its way in dusty Americana.

Only Methamphetamine and Highways And Cigarettes are worth the long drive.

Farrar's former colleague in Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy, is absent from the latest incarnation of his alt.rock side project Golden Smog.

Tweedy's pre-occupation with Wilco's new album has left the Jayhawks' Gary Louris and Marc Perlman as the songwriting fulcrum of a mini-album of off-kilter new material and side orders from last year's Another Fine Day set, bolstered with tofu covers of Bowie's Starman and Dinosaur Jr's Tarpit.

Blood On The Slacks is slack and bloodless too.