Look past the tacky, sad-clown velvet painting on the cover (a Grammy winner for album design in 1959!); there's nothing cheap or sentimental about this record- the bleakest and blackest album of popular songs ever recorded, so quietly powerful it can leave you slumped in your chair with the ice cubes still rattling in your glass. Every single "suicide song" (as Sinatra liked to call them) on Only the Lonely is a stunner that will take your breath away. Nelson Riddle's arrangements are like shadows, almost colourless and motionless, so that all you hear is the ache in the singer's voice. "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby" each deserve an album to themselves-so exquisitely moving that at the end of three minutes, you feel like you've just heard a lifetime of loneliness. The only regret-and it's a big one-is that this flawless masterpiece doesn't include Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life", which truly belongs here; Sinatra put it into an already overcrowded recording schedule and, when fatigue and the difficulty of the song defeated him after a couple takes, he gave up and never attempted it again. We get the chillingly lovely "Willow Weep for Me" instead, so it's hard to complain-but that just adds to the pang of loss that this album expresses so vividly. Drink up! -Jim Emerson.

New Order took the gothic overtones and deadpan synthesisers from their previous incarnation as Joy Division and updated them via the New York club scene. To a nation of dour, angst-ridden, raincoat wearers, this album gave them their daily bread with a buttering of disco. In retrospect, it was a brave idea; in reality, Power, Corruption & Lies' success is the reward of artistic endeavour, of maverick musicians pushing forward and creating a sublime work. These songs are hypnotic dance tracks that vary the pace enough to intrigue bedroom-pop listeners and satisfy the club cognoscenti. They combine despair and celebration with a subtle melodic grace that has all the guile of a pocket-sized orchestra. It's streets ahead of its time and is one the best examples of why New Order are one of the most important and essential bands of their time. -Ben Clancy.

As tour guide on a trip through the midnight-to-dawn streets of Los Angeles that the beautiful people never see through the smoked- glass windows of their limos, Waits details the lives of hipsters, down-and-outers, and lost causes in latter-day beat poetry and small- jazz-combo arrangements. This live album from 1975 almost has the quality of standup comedy, but the routines are richer and more carefully drawn. Check out the vivid detail, low humor, and hooker- with-a-heart-of-gold emotionalism Waits brings to songs such as "Nighthawk Postcards", "Putnam County", and a memorable reading of trucker poet Red Sovine's "Big Joe and Phantom 309". -Daniel Durchholz.

While the Calling don't blaze any new trails on Camino Palmero, they have revived the power ballad to give it their own emotionally charged spin. And if that weren't enough, they inject so many inspirational messages into the 11 songs on their debut that one could almost mistake them for a contemporary Christian band. Musically, this band stands proudly next to such earnest forebears as Creed, matchbox twenty, and Lifehouse (the latter makes sense given that Calling guitarist Sean Woolstenhulme's brother, Rick, is Lifehouse's drummer). With their brooding, contemplative lyrics about love, loss, rejection and revenge, the Calling embark on an anxious journey into the state of modern relationships. And while they don't offer any conclusions, they certainly provide an interesting mirror on an apprehensive time. Along with their sturdy musicianship and rhythmically driven melodies, this band very likely will enjoy a longer shelf life than most of their contemporaries. -Jaan Uhelszki.

While it's truistic to state that success breeds success, for his seventh album, Life In Slow Motion, David Gray appears creditably disinclined to exploit the mainstream global success of White Ladder by languidly adhering to any prescripted expectations. Evidently not one for squatting on his laurels-years of pre-fame self-sufficiency has seen to that-Gray has toiled towards new horizons, drafting in an external producer for the first time. Marius De Vries, whose duties grace the more recent works of Bjork, Madonna and Rufus Wainwright, adds a more poetic dimension to such Thomas Hardy-esque musical landscapes as "Now And Always" and "Nos Da Cariad", where the negligibility of human emotion is contrasted with the raw omnipotence of the environment and the succinct brutality of existence. Not that Gray is a total mope; "The One I Love"-a paean to life expressed through the lips of a dying battlefield casualty-is a fine, if anomalistic, pop song in the Springsteen tradition and the cinematic sweetness of "Alibi" disguises its hair-tearing, long-distance estrangement in one of Gray's more superlative radio friendly tunes. Life In Slow Motion might well be David Gray's darkest hour yet but for homogeneity, ambition and self-expression it's also his most realised record by some distance. -Kevin Maidment More to Explore A New Day at Midnight (CD) White Ladder (CD) David Gray - Live (DVD) A Way of Life (DVD) Find more from David Gray.

When Alanis Morissette visited Mother India in 1997, she gained new composure and, in a state of numinous bliss, wrote 17 songs for Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, each suffused with the search for enlightenment and self-knowledge. To the likely dismay of many fans, Morissette now rages at herself. But this long-awaited follow-up to 1995's record-smashing Jagged Little Pill is far from a disappointment. Imbued with dark, swirling psychedelic licks borrowed from Jimmy Page's song book, the disc is paradoxically both more enigmatic and revealing than Pill. And while Junkie shows that Morissette is no less stingy about revealing herself to her fans-her staccato stream-of-consciousness style is again employed to surrender her secrets and foibles a little too easily in these tales of abuse, lost love, and self-flagellation-Junkie also makes one wonder what this musical sphinx holds back. In "Baba" she takes on competitive spirituality, sneering at the fashionable grasp for enlightenment. "Would Not Come" returns to a similar theme-taking us on a tour of her diary. "Would Not Come" and "Your House" offer the only hints of sexual innuendo. The only revenge she wreaks on an errant lover is in the percussive "Are You Still Mad", this time dishing up a much subtler payback than on "You Oughta Know". The record's standouts, meanwhile, are "Thank U" and the hip-poppy "So Pure". [+]

Few albums are as fuelled by hope, possibility and the lure of the open road as Born to Run, a virtual concept album about small-town New Jerseyites in search of a better life via hot-rodding out on the turnpike, scoring some small-time hustle or blowing out of town altogether, either across the river to New York City or west for parts unknown. Songs such as "Jungleland", "Thunder Road", "Backstreets" and the title track are epic productions, both sonically and lyrically, borrowing from Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and West Side Story. When Born to Run was released in 1975, it earned the then-unknown Springsteen the rare honour of simultaneous covers on both Time and Newsweek in the US. The attention was warranted then, and it still is now. -Daniel Durchholz, Amazon. com.

A cheerful pluck at the heartstrings, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant-Belle And Sebastian's fourth studio album-finds Scotland's finest twee-pop ensemble in playful mood. While previous album The Boy With The Arab Strap was characterised by hushed operatic drama, Fold Your Hands Child. skips and romps like an unruly infant-a far less focused piece, but endearing nonetheless. Stuart Murdoch is, as ever, the heart and soul of Belle & Sebastian, and it's his contributions that really shine-the sprightly "Woman's Realm" effortlessly taking centre stage. On "Beyond The Sunrise", Stevie Jackson hasn't quite grown into his Leonard Cohen baritone, and on "Family Tree", Isobel Campbell's lyrics are cloyingly twee: "I'm stuck in a cage / With a bottle of rage / And a family like the Mafia. " But forgive them their follies-on Fold Your Hands Child. [+]