The album is the second in the four-volume Nomad series and the Cowboy Junkies said they felt they owed Chesnutt something. They have paid their debt in handsome fashion.

British rock desperately needs a big new act to capture the popular imagination. Though hyped in the music press and rising extra-fast, this London-based quartet lack the vision to fit that particular bill.

Knocking around for twenty years and now down to a duo, Cornershop are still coming up with brilliantly playful pop.

Despite her weak voice and empty lyrics, the troubled Disney graduate has placed herself at the avant-garde of pop with this masterful mixture of über-cool dubstep and sugary pop.

She attacks old soul numbers with gusto, turning them into cheery Stones-ish romps, but is at her best on pared-back material heavy with world-weary pathos.

It could have been mawkish but it's a simple, affecting and lovely tribute.

It's all an interesting time capsule and what makes it worthwhile for Cash fans is that there are 26 previously unreleased tracks. Disc 2 sounds a tad more produced but a song about dismissing a former lover--Wide Open Road--and the jaunty Five Minutes To Live are treats.

Full of tunes and pizzazz, it's unexpectedly good fun.

They take a sombre aspect of their native Northumbrian traditional music, regional accent and dialect intact, and, sprinkling in a few intriguing covers along the way, build something string-laden and luscious but also delicate, wistful and melancholy.

This third comeback album unearths some of the band's less visible roots, in Broadway musicals, soul balladry, Stones-y orchestral pop and Fifties R&B.

This is an album you admire rather than love.

Buddy Miller organised a Grade A country guitarist convention, threw in some wonderful guest vocalists and then recorded, as if live, an impressive album.

The result is never maudlin, but big, bouncy and entertaining.

There are still a little too many US FM radio pop-metal vocals, but happily there's also plenty of fierce, melody-laced drum & bass action that will please festivals and dancefloors the world over.

Heartfelt, spirited, lyrical, moody and mostly magnificent pop rock.

As always, his technical control is astounding.

Their last album, The Seldom Seen Kid, managed the rare feat of winning the Mercury prize and huge public affection. So how do Elbow follow it? With continued greatness and without fuss.

She certainly knows how to convey emotion.

Recorded partly in Senegal with contributions from Youssou N'Dour and Orchestra Baobab, the good hearted energy of this second album announces him as a potentially major figure to watch.

Although some of his anecdotes could drag on repeated listening, he is an engaging raconteur.

Not as cohesive as their very best work, R.E.M.'s 15th album is still as smart, sonically rich and emotionally resonant as a guitar band can ever hope to be.

The good news is that, from its amusingly headlong title down, Different Gear, Still Speeding feels a good deal less lumpy than the last few Oasis albums.

All in all, another real treat from the 63-year-old queen of English folk.

These exquisitely voiced musings on love, healing and mortality really hit the spot.

Every number is cleverly honed to leave you wanting just that bit more.

Ultimately it amounts to two decent tunes in the singer-songwriter pop idiom, padded out with angsty filler and hot air.

For all its despair at the cost of war, this is not a protest record, rather a consideration of our place in the greater scheme of things.

Raul Malo, the Cuban-American singer, has a wonderful voice but it's unlikely that his new album Sinners & Saints will bring him a host of new converts.