Released to coincide with his Lifetime Achievement award at the 2003 BRIT Awards, Greatest Hits brings together some of Tom Jones's biggest songs to one CD, including favourites such as "Delilah", "It's Not Unusual", "Kiss", "Mama Told Me Not to Come" and "Green, Green Grass of Home". Combining both the old and new high points of his decades-long career in music, this is an essential introduction to this classic singer and national treasure. -Ted Kord.

Chutes Too Narrow, the second album by American indie-rockers the Shins, isn't the defining moment that their debut was. But that's by no means a bad thing-in the US at least, O, Inverted World was almost universally lauded as one of the best albums of the new millennium. So expectations were almost unfairly high for Chutes Too Narrow, making another exceptional Shins album sound almost ordinary, but only by comparison. The Shins still manage to combine a timeless grasp of melody and songcraft with a thorougly modern willingness to experiment and a fair share of quirkiness-the end result is pitched somewhere between Steve Malkmus and Brian Wilson. Though the Shins are a band, Chutes Too Narrow sounds more like a singer-songwriter's album than its predecessor. Many of the sentiments here are deeply personal; often, the bruised, rambling lyrics sound in stark contrast to the sunny arrangements, infusing the whole thing with a sense of nervous giddiness. Indeed, album opener "Kissing the Lipless" starts with the mellow strum of an acoustic guitar, lulling the listener (and, presumably, the song's intended) into a false sense of security before singer James Mercer launches into a passionate tirade ("Secretly I want to bury in the yard / the grey remains of a friendship scarred"). Fans of modern American indie music, particularly Modest Mouse and Spoon, will find that there's much for them to enjoy here. -Robert Burrow.

"Sister Morphine", the heart of guitarist Mick Taylor's first full studio album with the Stones, doesn't get brought up as often as "Brown Sugar" or "Wild Horses". But it's one of the most vivid, horrifying songs about drug abuse ever recorded-as Mick Jagger sings "from my hospital bed," the ringing guitars of Taylor and Keith Richards build to full catharsis behind him. On that and lighter songs like the countryish "Dead Flowers" and the rocker "Bitch", Charlie Watts establishes himself as rock's prototypical drummer. He's creative and propulsive and knows how to swing, but he never overwhelms the song or the other Stones. -Steve Knopper.

It's often said that a musician's debut represents the culmination of a lifetime's worth of experiences, but their sophomore effort is usually derived from just the intervening year. By waiting 12 years between The Red Shoes and her new double CD, Aerial, Kate Bush has tried to regain that lifetime. It's a remarkably coherent recording, reflecting the unique world of sound and spirit Bush has inhabited since her debut. The first disc, subtitled A Sea of Honey, is a suite of personal reveries. It ranges from "King of the Mountain", a contemplation of unbridled celebrity and its isolation that references Elvis and Citizen Kane, to the piano-and-voice study "Mrs. Bartolozzi", an ode to household chores whose chorus is "Sloshy sloshy sloshy sloshy, get that dirty shirty clean". With its Depeche Mode-influenced synth-pads, electro pulses, and lyric cadences, "King of the Mountain" is vintage Bush pop. But many of the songs attain more epic proportions, like the dynamic "Joanni", a hymn to Joan of Arc. It's the second disc-a suite called A Sky of Honey-on which Bush really comes into her own. Using metaphors of the turning of the day and the flight of birds, she orchestrates a meditation on the cycles of life. [+]

A good overview of Sting's radio hits and popular album tracks with no major omissions, Fields of Gold also offers three previously unreleased songs. "This Cowboy Song" and "When We Dance" appear on no other album, while "We'll Be Together" is an alternate interpretation. The import version of this collection offers a substantially different and expanded track listing, dropping "Fortress Around Your Heart", "Be Still My Beating Heart", and "Why Should I Cry for You"; and adding "Nothing 'Bout Me", "Mad About You", "Seven Days", "It's Probably Me", "Love is the Seventh Wave", and "Demolition Man". -Gavin McNett.

If Scott Walker's first solo album, 1967's Scott, had been about wilfully laying waste to the pretty-boy pop star image he had established with The Walker Brothers, Scott 2 found him relaxing into the role somewhat, and is probably the better record for it. The basic modus operandi remained the same-epic, string-drenched ballads, written by a combination of Walker and his heroes Jacques Brel and Tim Hardin-but a more playful spirit was directing matters. The difference is reflected in the choice of Brel songs alone. On Scott, Walker had picked such grim room clearers as "Mathilde" and "My Death". Here, he kicks off with an exuberant romp through "Jackie", Brel's sketch of a cheerfully dissolute rock & roll wastrel (Marc Almond released a barely distinguishable version a couple of decades later). Later, he camps up Brel's hilarious military reminiscence "Next", and contributes a composition of his own called "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg"-it seems reasonable to suspect that Walker had been listening to a fair bit of Anthony Newley around this time. All this blithe good cheer can be taken so far, of course-the original sleeve notes, credited to "His friend Jonathan King", suggest that Walker could have been more cautious about the company he was keeping. -Andrew Mueller.

In 1979, not content with being one-third of America's hottest recording act, Barry Gibb still had some songs to spare. However, perhaps fearing that the famous falsetto was already proving a little too ubiquitous, the hirsute Bee Gee hooked up with Barbra Streisand. Predictably, Guilty instantly became the singer's biggest selling album. With the Donna Summer duet "Enough Is Enough" still fresh in the folk memory, many expected Gibb's involvement to result in a full-on disco extravaganza. Gibb though, had already left the dance floor behind and, if anything, Guilty is best seen as a companion piece to the Bee Gees' beautifully introspective Spirits Having Flown album. "Guilty" and "Make It Like A Memory" are particular standouts, object lessons in pristine FM pop, whilst the Grammy-gobbling "Woman In Love" singlehandedly explains why Streisand insisted on posing in Gibb's embrace for the sleeve image. -Peter Paphides.