Autobiography of a Princess 1975 is an hour-long piece in which James Mason and Madhur Jaffrey sit in a genteel flat

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Autobiography of a Princess (1975) is an hour-long piece in which James Mason and Madhur Jaffrey sit in a genteel flat in London, switch off the lights, watch home movies and discuss life under the British Raj. Did you know, for instance, that they did surrealism? Savages (1972) is the company's ambitious but rather garbled attempt to make a picture along the lines of Bu?'s The Exterminating Angel (1962), and earn a rave in the pages of Cahiers du Cin? The title sequence suggests a 1920s musical. Then, after appearing to be a black-and-white anthropological documentary, the film switches to colour and applies itself to depicting a painfully symbolic country-house weekend.Did you know they did camp? The Deceivers (1988) is a ripping imperial yarn in which Pierce Brosnan uses brown make-up, a turban and an It Ain't Half Hot Mum accent to infiltrate a lethal Hindu sect. It is, in effect, a remake of the Hammer horror flick, The Stranglers of Bombay (1960) - though alas not, like the original, shot in glorious "strangloscope".Some of these oddities are more than failed experiments. Among film critics and commentators, the producer-director-screenwriter partnership of James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has come to stand for decorative, conservative and complacent film-making: Sunday-supplement cinema for middle-class people who don't really like cinema very much but can't quite be bothered to read books. It was Alan Parker who wrote the epitaph for Merchant-Ivory.

Rolling his eyes at A Room with a View (1985) - which had just won three Oscars and hoovered up $20m at the US box office - he dismissed the picture as an example of "the Laura Ashley school of film-making" The label stuck. And certainly, the title-track is cause for celebration, a 10-league bootstomp that explodes into jagged Atari Teenage Riot-style digital shards 40 seconds from the end; the new single, "Burn It Off", is similarly brash and bare-nerved rock'n'roll, while "Mars, Arizona" is the sonic equivalent of molten lead. Damage also features intriguing collaborations, with David Holmes exulting in the splashier, more miasmic possibilities of the Blues Explosion sound on "Spoiled" and "You Been My Baby", and Dan the Automator focusing on the trio's core business of hardcore Stones raunch on "Crunchy", underscoring Spencer and Judah Bauer's guitars with burring organ and honky-tonk piano. Elsewhere, DJ Shadow helms "Fed Up and Low Down", a punk-funk barrage featuring barely audible sax from The Contortions' James Chance - a more successful collaboration than their hook-up with Chuck D on the anti-war "Hot Gossip", which is just stodgily declamatory But overall, Damage is a return to something like form.. "No matter which way you fold or bend/ You're never gonna top us, you're never gonna beat us/ Can you dig my band?" hollers Jon Spencer at the start of Damage, an album that seeks to regain some of the raw power lacking on the bloodless Plastic Fang. Elsewhere, The Blues Explosion talk a good fight, at least.

The Blues Explosion talk a good fight, at least. The French style, the subtle inflection of the language, may as yet be a little alien to him, but the singing is fabulous. "My whole being cares for nothing but you," he implores, and we all of us - not just Charlotte - feel the heat of his ardour. But here is a tenor who will always find nuance in rapture, and rapture in restraint.His quiet singing was, as ever, a joy, thanks to his ability to support the sound on barely a breath and then let it melt away like his dreams. These are the enticements that separate the artists from the singers, the purveyors of bel canto from the merchants of can belto. "Overwhelm me with your fragrance," he sings, on his entrance Massenet obliges, and so does he But without preciousness. And because he voices feelings that others in this opera dare not even think, there is something overwhelming about the delivery of his final "Pourquoi me reveiller?", in which private rumination becomes public declaration It brought the house down But still it could not unlock Charlotte's fatal inhibitions.

And guilt.That's the overriding tension in this opera - the surface of restraint that tells you that nobody really says what they mean or acts on how they feel A tragedy of manners. They are blooming once more with the thrill of performing, as Lowe's enthusiasm leads them back toward the joy of their youth The moves are all intact. The Prunes have managed to erase the intervening years that separate them from their golden age Touring to Tuesday. But the Prunes have been penning new songs, much in the spirit of the old: the governing concept is California life. It must be said that some of the new numbers are markedly inferior.Lowe has a pleasing attitude, embodying a sense of casual self-deprecation. He scoffs at extended encores, but the band decide to premiere a new song anyway.