Singing in the Dark Hibernian Music****

Ambitious and wilfully jagged- edged, Susan McKeown's 12th album focuses on the intersection where madness, mania, depression and creativity collide – or occasionally, coalesce. Just as Natalie Merchant chose to explore childhood through poetry on last year's Leave Your Sleep,McKeown (a some-time collaborator with Merchant) takes the melancholic words of poets as diverse as Lord Byron, James Clarence Mangan and Theodore Roethke, bathes them in dissonant chords wholly in keeping with their subjects, and then lets them float free, finally untethered from their pages. It's not a collection for the faint of heart, but their riches (both lyrical and musical) unfurl themselves slowly with repeated listening. Making their acquaintance is worth the intense pursuit. See susan mckeown.com

Download tracks: Mad Sweeney, In Darkness Let Me Dwell