July brought some relief as a month more notable for new records than industry upheavals. Business as usual then, firstly for Sonic Youth . Their latest single Sunday, taken from the album A Thousand Leaves , is a typically understated guitar pop tune that gently rumbles along, continually threatening to spark into something louder and brasher but never quite making it. That may be its charm, or maybe it's the fitting lazy, Sunday morning vocals. Either way it's a tune that reverberates around the head long after the record's stopped.

Exercising more of an energetic, Saturday night kind of energy are Chicks - 3 young guitar-toting girls currently carrying the "one to watch" tag among the music press. Their most recent release (maybe even their debut, I'm not sure at the moment), the 4-song seven inch Criminales, Coches, Pistoles Y Chicas (or "Criminals, Cars, Guns and Girls) contains a similar brand of blissfully simple but sweetly formed buzzing pop songs to that which brought so much attention to Kenickie and Helen Love. A cracking bit of fun, so watch that space.

A softer and more melodic ride come in the form of Lodger 's new single Always Round Here. The inevitable journalists tag that will be set in stone to hang over them (and will, one day no doubt, be dropped on their heads) still remains a little fuzzy. Some would have them as some sort of indie/pop supergroup (as they feature Pearl, formerly of Powder, two former members of Delicatessen and unofficial member Danny Goffey of Supergrass). Others simply the collected remnants of a few that didn't make it ( Pearl, formerly of Powder, two former members of Delicatessen and unofficial member Danny Goffey of Supergrass). The fact is they're not quite well known enough for the former and just too clever for the latter. Though saying that Always Round Here lacks the hooks and instant classic feel of first single I'm Leaving, but it has a rather nifty little tempo change in there to keep us all amused for a few minutes. Sadly that's all for this time, but there's plenty of foundation to build on.

Basking for a long and welcome while in the upper reaches of the charts was Karen Ramirez' debut offering, a cover of Everything but the Girl's Looking for Love. Normally this kind of thing would count for little with me but there's a charm about it that didn't turn my head for the original... It's a smooth flowing tune, nicely produced and with a soft sweet voice. Good video too, one that exemplifies the notion that the simple ideas are the best. Karen repeatedly walks the same route through a room, with the camera flicking back to the beginning of the shot each time like an instant replay. Only the varied events occurring around her, and obviously the words she sings, are different each time. It all works wonderfully well, and must have had a number of people wishing they'd thought of it.

Godzilla the movie (or Godzilla the Hollywood movie as it should be known in the wake of the umpteen Japanese versions) came out this month and needs to detailing here except to say many people watched it, but most that I knew weren't over impressed. Being a big, high profile movie it naturally boasted a soundtrack packed with songs contributed by top recording artists, each featured for all of 30 seconds in the film, if they were lucky. In the service of this all too common misuse and degradation of music and movie a diamond is created in the form of Jamiroquai's Deeper Underground. It is a funky mother (to the tune of Samuel L Jackson's "That is a tasty burger" in Pulp Fiction) on the simplest of terms - stripped down, fuzzed up guitar riffs working under main-man Jay Kay's inimitable vocal and styling, together making a delightfully infectious tune. The video too is a piece of work, directed in style by the man who did the film, whose name escapes me. Jay grooves his way over the stalls of a flooded New York cinema (or, I presume, a blue studio backdrop, but let's not spoil it for the kids) while the big old lizardess, or perhaps the US armed force wreaks havoc outside. It boasts its very own special effects and doubtless, a price tag to match. In the rising tradition of Jamiroquai vids, it's very cool though.

Little to fault musically in Godzilla's other big single, originally by Led Zeppelin before a mauling at the hands of Puff Daddy. Perhaps not so much talent, but there must be some sort of unique ability to take something so majestic as "Kashmir" and in a few steps make a pudding titled Come With Me of it. This involved firstly hacking the eight-and-a-half minute epic down to around four, adding his own cRap over the top and squashing in a middle section in which he makes some horrible cracked attempt to sing. Strangely, Jimmy Page's name appears alongside Puff's, but clearly he is only a culprit for letting the man have ago at it. Of the two, I'm delighted to say Deeper Underground hit number 1 and Come with Me didn't.

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