Album

Fife's own musical micro-industry

Yorkshire electronics guru plays it safe

First UK release from powerful and strange Michigan singer-songwriter

Misunderstood pop maverick's heyday ('71-'75) and later forays reassessed

In tandem with her recent, more rock-oriented collaborative albums (corralling everyone from Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker to Billy Corgan), Faithfull has pursued her other career as a torch singer, the regal ruin of her pristine '60s folk voice now the perfect expression of seen-it-all wisdom/ennui. In the company of pianist Paul Trueblood and at the end of a world tour (recorded at the International Jazz Festival in '97), she's bawdy, wry and always wrenchingly expressive: in short, quite the best exponent of this sort of thing.

Outstanding neo-classicism from German composer/pianist

That's as in Robert, the devil, and a hellhound, too...

Belated arrival of American indie duo's second album

Second from Athens, Georgia quartet led by R.E.M. remixer/Bright Eyes engineer Andy LeMaster

Doomed US troubadour with the gentle touch