The main signifier is Peyroux's sound, now as downhome as a chicken shack and artfully haunted as a Cassandra Wilson session. Tasteful.

Loud guitars are everywhere, bucked by riffing horns, and the general vibe is testosteronal and sleeveless. He is a rippingly good player.

All diva froideur and drum machine snap, it nevertheless transcends pastiche via a pervasive air of murky ambiguity.

While nothing grates, all it really achieves is to make you want to hear Hank sing them.

Desperately, painfully arty but worthy of your recollection.

This is another acting job, in a sense, and Laurie's faux-Southern drawl grates a little, but he's assembled a band of N'awlins old hands to add authenticity.

Composer Joe Acheson seems more interested in texture than development and you can long for a discordant voice, but as head-nodding experiences go, this is pretty good.

His second solo album, while often truly horrible, is also fascinating and funny.

It borders on the twee. That it doesn't cross the frontier is the reason this is worth your attention.

The effect is softly inclusive without being entirely bland, and even if Holland's poetry doesn't ring your bell as poetry, then it certain works in this context as sound-art.

It's a little too polished for the Oh Brother... crowd, but fans of Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss should take note.

By Ben Gibbard's own admission "a much less guitar-centric" record than usual, it is therefore, if only by default, the closest thing yet to a follow-up to Give Up by Gibbard's other concern, the Postal Service, although it's more about pretty pianos than effervescent synths.

It's a jukebox-jumpin' take on straight-up Dolly with a smile behind its eyes and a rockabillyish skip in its step.

Whatever they say, this isn’t the “comeback story of a lifetime”: it’s the low-risk re-entry bid of a band who know where their bread is buttered.

Planta feels lightweight; not much really catches the ear or imagination.

Nice is the word.

Throughout, we get a wounded and fragile man setting his hope-filled heart to music.

The result is refreshing but also a bit boring, although things get interesting towards the end.

It's difficult to tell, though, how much is sock and how much darn.

MFAD! finds them sounding like exactly what they are, namely an airbrushed, Massachusetts version of the Stones.

Over rudimentary backing beats, in that "ya feel me?" accent, his humour often hits the spot. However, the going-through-Customs skit, followed by a track about having his urine tested at the airport, is as tedious as it is righteous.

An example of its genre it most certainly is.

It's high-class karaoke, covering the Chi-Lites, Dorothy Moore, The Dells, Womack & Womack.

A loose-limbed, spacious, American indie-folk-rock. Political, challenging, dissatisfied and, naturally, righteous.

A charming companion piece to The Best of...

It won’t frighten the horses, but it might encourage you to buy an overpriced T-shirt.

Dazzling songs, dismally sung.

It remains the case that this kind of thing only has something to say about distance travelled, no more.