Album

There's something novel about this concept: the soundtrack of a book. While the realistic word for it is probably "cross-marketing", the hapless dreamers among us can ponder: are we supposed to listen to the relevant song while reading Hornby's chapter on it? Even if we don't possess posh headphones like the pretty model on the sleeve (entirely inappropriate unless the album is also a bottle of conditioner), are we to aim for a music-literature 'synergy' experience? I've just tried skimming Little Dorrit while headbanging to lggy and, frankly, it doesn't work.

Adams' career is fast becoming a blizzard of lost possibilities and abandoned trails, with his 'proper' album releases, such as Gold and Rock'n'Roll, punctuated by closet-clearing collections of outtakes like Demolition and now Love Is Hell Pt 1, the first instalment of the album supposedly deemed too much of a downer to be the 'proper' follow-up to Gold.

Seventeen singles that reached pole position in the UK, US or Europe, plus new R Kelly ballad

Classic prog rock repackaged

Three individual box sets featuring miniature CD facsimiles of every EC single from 1977 to 1987

The dark lord lightens up, relatively

Winsome Australian duo's third album

Postmodern country from balmy-voiced Lambchopper

Not so much a greatest hits as a musical autobiography, including new tracks and re-recorded B-sides

Twenty seasonal helpings of doo wop, country, blues and rockabilly