WHEN is a mini-album not a mini-album? When it is a six-track EP (Isobel Campbell) or a ten-inch single, limited to 2,000 vinyl copies (The Hidden Cameras).

Whatever the definition, there has been a rise in short-order releases, useful as a stop-gap or a coda to a current album or as a welcome antidote to the relentless expansion of album lengths on compact disc. Witness Janet Jackson's Damita Jo, which runs to no fewer than 22 horny tracks, a display of excess as unnecessary as her Superbowl wardrobe malfunction. Oxford's Goldrush and American duo Joy Zipper have kept their flame alive with mini-albums, and now The Broken Family Band, the unlikely Cambridge wing of the Americana movement, are doing likewise with a suite of songs on country music favourite Jesus Christ. Recorded in the middle of nowhere one industrious weekend, it allies darkly twisted urban lyrics to rustic country with wit and enchantment and relishes its rough edges.

Far smoother is the honey-kissed, French-fragranced, cinematic EP from Belle And Sebastian escapee Isobel Campbell. The bittersweet lead track is a string-varnished duet with Vaseline singer Eugene Kelly from her Amorino album; Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan out-rumbles Lee Marvin in his guest vocal on Why Does My Head Hurt So? and Isobel slinks her way through the noir undergrowth of Bordello Queen. In two film-inspired covers, she gives Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) the slow-death treatment, a la Nancy Sinatra on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol 1 soundtrack, before digging up Argomenti from a long-neglected Ennio Morricone film score. Another Campbell scoop.

Joel Gibb's Toronto collective The Hidden Cameras are the best gay band in the world...ever. If the intelligent, effervescent orchestral pop of debut album The Smell Of Our Own escaped you last year, then here is a second introduction: six home-spun recordings from a couple of Canadian radio sessions from 2002. They pre-date the band's signing to Rough Trade and have a ramshackle charm, tenderness and vitality that can never be matched in a studio recording.

Updated: 08:38 Thursday, April 22, 2004