TWO of Americana's cornerstones, Grandaddy and Lambchop, both have a sprawling membership but each is essentially a one-man band.

Kurt Wagner, leader and songwriter of Lambchop, used to fund his Nashville collective with a day job as a floor sander until his alt.country soul band took off commercially.

Jason Lytle's Grandaddy never made that breakthrough, however, and at the start of 2006 he said goodbye to his idiosyncratic psychedelic group and his Central Valley home town of Modesto.

Ironically, his notice to quit elicits his best work in years, an elegiac, whimsical farewell foretold in such titles as Summer... It's Gone, Rear View Mirror, Disconnecty and the devastating valedictory, This Is How It Always Starts.

Come back soon, Jason, wherever you start again. Unlike Grandaddy, the similarly enigmatic Lambchop are not for the chop. Instead, City Slang capitalises on their heightened status by re-releasing their back catalogue, topped off with Decline', a new collection of singles and rarities from 1993 to 1999.

Muted reflections I Can Hardly Spell My Name and The Gettysburg Address are the pick, with room too for bonkers experimentation on Two Kittens Don't Make A Puppy, manic frivolity on Mr Crabby and Nine and even a ragged Costello cover, Beyond Belief.