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Chasing Pavements UK two track CD pressing of the first single pulled from the South London singer/songwriter's 2008 debut album 19. Although similar to the likes of Kate Nash and Lily Allen, Adele has a more soulful urban feel and acoustic tip to her music. A fan of such diverse artists as Jill S...	Rockferry Welsh songbird, Duffy, came to the attention of Rough Trade Management's Jeannette Lee in August 2004. Rough Trade pointed Duffy in the direction of guitarist/producer Bernard Butler in London's Crouch End. Duffy spent the next couple years honing and developing her songwriting s...	Mercy	This Is the Life International pressing of her extraordinary debut album. At just 19, Glaswegian singer-songwriter Amy possesses a talent way beyond her years. Since signing to Vertigo, Amy has had a phenomenal few months. She's supported a diverse mix of artists including Travis (her childhood i...	Autumn Fallin' 2007 debut album from this young New Yorker. She's in love with books and music and she writes eloquent, beautiful songs about the heart, her life in New York and the seasons. It won't be hard to fall in love with her. 10 tracks including 'Gray Or Blue', 'Sycamore Down' and more. Heavenly.
Made of Bricks Thanks to a gaggle of loyal MySpace friends, Kate Nash skyrocketed to the top of the British charts just a year after penning her first song, so you might expect her first album to sound a bit cobbled together. In reality, it is a wildly exuberant, refreshingly original set of so...	This Is the Life Amy MacDonald is that proverbial old head on young shoulders, a Scottish singer-songwriter who, despite her tender 19 years, writes songs with the grace, wisdom, and proficiency of one with a score more on the clock. As influenced by the Libertines as by any venerable old folk ha...	Jukebox - Deluxe Edition Her second album of covers; this one a tribute to the great vocalists who've influenced her over the years. The album comes in two versions: deluxe silver-foil gatefold cover (LP and CD) with bonus disc of extra tracks and regular jewelcase version (CD only). Backed by Dirty Delt...	Asking for Flowers After a three-year hiatus to catch up on life in her native Ontario, Kathleen Edwards has done nothing to separate herself from the small pool of North America's fast-rising songwriters, in which she is a deeply immersed member. Her third album continues her clear-minded, open-he...	Keep It Simple On March 11, Lost Highway will proudly release Keep It Simple, the new album from Van Morrison. Keep It Simple is Morrison's first album of new material since 2005, and the first in several years in which he penned all 11 songs specifically for one album. In the interim the legen...

Amy can sleep easy...
With declining album sales, and with the smashing success of Amy Winehouse (millions sold, 5 Grammys won), it seems every British record label has been on a major quest to discover the next Amy Winehouse as a solution to their woes. One of the names being touted for that post is Adele Atkins, who had every major and minor music critic jostling to outdo each other in lavishing her with plaudits. Heck, she's even getting a Brit award later this month, and all this before she had even released her debut. While most girls her age grew up listening to Britney, Spice Girls and Kylie, Adele was listening to some of those too, as well as to Eva Cassidy, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, and some Amy also. She does have a rich, smoky world-weary voice to boot. Listening to "19" (titled after her age), I didn't find it as immediate as Amy's CD was, but it is a grower and there is an attempt at sonic variety. The album was produced by Mark Ronson (who also did Amy's, and just won a Grammy for producer of the year). I guess in an attempt to deflect too much comparison, Adele's disc isn't restricted only to smoky retro jazz/blues sounds in the 12 tracks. In fact, opening cut "Daydreams" is an acoustic ballad as are "Best for last" (though this has jazzy phrasings), and the sparse bluesy "Crazy for you". Lead-off single (and #2 UK hit) "Chasing pavements" is a lush, sweeping jazzy power ballad. Similar is closing cut the stirring "Hometown glory" (an ode to Tottenham), a stunning piano/string ballad and my favourite. "Melt my heart to stone" is a downbeat blues tinged string filled ballad, while "First love" is lullaby-like, complete with tinkling bells. "Make you feel my love" is a sombre (almost hymnal) piano ballad with weeping cello/violin. Upping the tempo are "Cold shoulder" with skittery beats, "Right as rain" (Jazzy and bluesy, very Amy Winehouse), the catchy "My same" (with a snappy jazz/pop feel, I love it!) and "Tired" (lovely change in tempo midway). The new Amy Winehouse? Not quite (one listen to "Back to black" puts paid to any such notion), but she should be able to carve a niche for herself in a field that promises to get even more crowded as the year progresses (with people like Duffy coming). Not bad at all for a 19 year old.

Is she the new Amy Winehouse?
There's no disputing the gifts of Tottenham-born Adele Adkins, the latest BRIT graduate to stroll into the charts. As we know from her single Chasing Pavements, she has a sensational voice: rich, robust, voluptuously bluesy. Is she the new Amy Winehouse? It is not quite right. True, both are white girls who owe a debt to black soul, both sing with a London twang ("I don't get nuffin' back," rasps Adele on the punchy "Tired"), and both are in pieces because their man done them wrong. Eleven of the 12 songs on Adele's debut are about heartbreak (the other, "Hometown Glory", is about how cool London is). Adele, though, is easier to listen to than Winehouse. Her music is cleaner, less menacing: there's the bright acoustic-guitar chime of "Daydreamer", the lullaby twinkle of "First Love", the plush strings of "Melt My Heart to Stone". Lyrically she's simpler, too, occasionally even soppy: "When there's no one there to dry your tears, I could hold you for a million years," she gushes on "Make You Feel My Love". Where Back to Black sounded emotionally and musically true, almost everything on the covers-all-bases "19" sounds like it was absorbed by osmosis at the London's BRIT School for Performing Arts.(where she and Winehouse are alumni). Some will find Adele rigidly old-fashioned. Her influences (Etta James, Dusty Springfield, Billie Holiday) are from another age. A cursory listen may lead you to conclude that Adele has a voice way in excess of her years. In terms of technical ability, that's true. The instrumentation seems designed to usher you to that conclusion: a dash of jazz bass, the odd string arrangement that seems to take its cue from Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy". All that we can say is that she sings with unabashed passion about a kind of pain we can all recognise, and that sort of thing doesn't date. Made of Bricks Piece by Piece Spirit