The Cowboy Junkies - 21st Century Blues (CookCD352)

The latest from the Junkies is their most successful since The Caution Horses in my view. It's sealed by a beautifully fragile interpretation of the U2/Eno anthem One - Margo's voice holding a complexity and depth that Bono can't reach. ALso on it are two new songs, two traditional songs and covers of Lennon, George Harrison, Dylan, Springsteen and others. However it all holds together to make more than the sum of the parts. Margo and Michael's big brother John joined them to produce an album that reflected our troubled times but ultimately offered hope - hence 21st Century Blues. Works for me.

Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue - LIBCD7154.2

Yes, she's the one in the suit of armour, milking a startled cow on an Alpine glacier on the cover of Moloko's I Am Not A Doctor. In spite of such larking about, and her snarling picture on the cover of the band's last album, she's got a great voice so don't think she's just about gimmicks, even though she's now apparently heavily into sequins. Having left Moloko, she's teamed up with Matthew Herbert to produce an album that could be described as eclectic or just plain odd. One preview said there wasn't one track that would leave you with a melody in your mind. Well, the reviewer couldn't have got as far as the last track, The Closing of The Doors, which is, simply, a ballad. The rest is mixture of trip-hop, funk, jazz and rock so expecting a melody really isn't the point, I guess. However, as with good jazz, the tune's always in there somewhere; it's just that no one is singing or playing it very much. And can anyone honestly tell me that Night of The Dancing Flame isn't catchy? Overall, it's fresh and it's fun.

Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate - In the Heart of The Moon - WCD072

This collaboration between two of the superstars of West African music was recorded in a hotel room overlooking the River Niger in Bamako, Mali, where the musicians and crew could watch the pirogues drifting past. The music is improvised and intricate so don’t expect any fireworks - the whole album has a sense of calm, drifting in whatever direction the two artists decided to go, Farka Toure on guitar, of course, and Diabate on kora.

If you’re a purist, you probably won’t be pleased to hear that Ry Cooder and his son, and the Buena Vista bass player, Orlando Cachaito Lopez, turn up on a few tracks but they’re pretty much in the background so this is still an African album, rather than a hybrid like Talking Timbuktu. And if you turn your nose up at it because the Cooders are now ubiquitous, you’d be missing something really special. It’s also a beautiful recording, supple and dry as dust at the same time.