Tom McRae - All Maps Welcome (2005)

The Brit/Mercury-nominated McRae has been publicly trashed by his recent ex, American singer Rachel Yamagata, whose forthcoming album is devoted to making him "sorry" for leaving. This presents the enjoyable prospect of retaliation from McRae on his own record, but no such luck.

The blue mood that characterises All Maps Welcome was inspired instead by a previous relationship that rattled him enough to bring out the Enya in him. He sings with a touch so feathery as to be barely audible, and the opener, For the Restless, is nothing less than Enya's Orinoco Flow, rewritten.

His stately progress is augmented by delicate pedal-steel brush-strokes on How the West Was Won, non-schmaltzy strings on Hummingbird Song and anxious falsetto on My Vampire Heart. I suspect his musical model was Nick Drake. This album will appeal mostly to the coffee-table massive: they'll be discerning coffee tables, mind - this is a classy product.