KEY POINTS:
JOE HENRY
Civilians (Anti/Shock)
Verdict: Madge's bro-in-law delivers a career best
Herald Review: *****
IRON & WINE
The Shepherd's Dog (Sub Pop/Rhythm Method)
Verdict: Hushed folk fellow revels in new found sense of rhythm
Herald Review: ****
DEVENDRA BANHEART
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (XL Recordings)
Verdict: Hippy wonderboy loses the little focus he had
Herald Review: ***
JOSH ROUSE
Country Mouse (Shock)
Verdict: Soft rock guy fails stylishly again to locate volume knob
Herald Rerview: ***
Gosh darn. The new James Blunt album still hasn't arrived. How can I stand the anticipation? Well, by dealing to this small pile of other singer-songwriters who are a little different to Blunt.
They're American for one thing. Also they're variously imaginative, literate, heartfelt, distinctive and - unlike Mr Blunt - sharp.
The keenest of this bunch is the most experienced too. The superb Civilians is Joe Henry's tenth album in 20 years and it may well be his best.
Long pegged as an alt-country troubadour, Henry of late has balanced his own output with a regular gig as a producer to his singer-songwriter peers (Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Jim White) and to various soul legends (Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Mavis Staples, Ann Peebles, Irma Thomas), as well as helping out on the soundtrack to Knocked Up.
And there's the fun fact that he's married to Madonna's sister and that his famous in-law reassembled his track Stop into her 2000 hit Don't Tell Me, a song which is shaping up as the last decent song of her career.
Henry's got plenty more where that came from on an album that might be a little alt-country around the edges.
But it's also doing jazzy, bluesy things in the big spaces that producer Henry creates for himself while his tunes and arrangements seem to spring from the dusty attic corners where Tom Waits keeps - or where Bob Dylan buries - his.
Meanwhile, Henry's wry lyrics - delivered in a voice which can sound like Dave Dobbyn's American cousin - eloquently swing between the personal and political.
For every rumination on the state of his nation (at best on Our Song which tells of Henry encountering baseball hero Willy Mays in a chainstore), Henry matches it with one of his disarming contemplations of true love (at best on the self-explanatory Love is Enough and the quietly psychedelic Dylanesque folk jangle of Scare Me To Death).
Between the slouching title track which opens proceedings and the gorgeous piano ballad God Only Knows which closes it, Civilians' 11 songs coalesce neatly into a cinematic whole. A ready-made classic.
Iron and Wine is the nom du folk-rock of Texas resident Sam Beam, and The Shepherd's Dog is his third album after 2004's gorgeous but acoustically austere Our Endless Numbered Days, and a string of EPs .
Like Henry's set, this branches out from the guitar-framed Americana of his past with arrangements which take everything from boogie-woogie piano (The Devil Never Sleeps), to minimalist electro-funk (House by the Sea), desert-dry dub reggae (the title track) loping African rhythms (Boy with a Coin), like the Waits-ian rumbling blues (Peace Beneath the City) and Calexico mariachi-rock (Carousel)
Fortunately, Beam's honeyed voice doesn't get lost in all that new-found eclecticism. And the result is positively mesmerising, whether it's offering up another percussive excursion of psychedelic lushness or Beam is sweetly crooning his way through the album's traditional country-folk numbers, like the equally gorgeous Resurrection Fern and Flightless Bird, American Mouth.
You do end up wishing for one or two less time signatures among the gentle clatter of its dozen tracks, but The Shepherd's Dog sure sounds like it enjoys being let off the leash.
If it's crazy creativity you're after, go no further than Devendra Banheart's unwieldy Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Mountain, the latest from the San Franciscan Venezuelan-American folk freak following 2005's Cripple Crow.
That last one was six songs longer than the 16 tracks of Smokey, but the new offering feels like it rambles more as it plays a sort of stylistic hopscotch with occasional diversions into comedy.
It starts off nicely enough with a couple of Spanish-sung numbers like Samba Vexillographica.
But by the time it gets to Seahorse, with its Dave Brubeck-meets-Doors inspired jazz-rock epic of Sesame Street lyrics (about Banheart's desire to become the creature of the title), this album sure starts craving one's indulgence.
True, Shabop Shalom, which puts a Yiddish spin on the 50s chestnut Who Wrote the Book of Love? is amusing enough, and the garage psychedelia of Tonada Yanomaminista is a cracker, but it gives way to serious meandering as Banheart invokes gospel-by-numbers on Saved, 70s disco on Lover, and reggae on The Other Woman.
In the above company Josh Rouse's Country Mouse sounds terribly ordinary.
But as with the many previous albums by the prolific soft-rockin' guy who divides his time between Nashville and Spain, he manages to makes a virtue of his detached smoothness.
Songs like the languid Italian Dry Ice and the perky Hollywood Bass Player are like a cold flannel over the eyes after the likes of Mr Banheart, while final track Snowy outdoes even Jack Johnson for laid-back inoffensiveness. Kinda boring, but unlike Mr Blunt, in a good way.
