Paul Tiernan: "Virgoville" (Right Stuff Records)

Rock'n'roll troubador Tiernan has been trekking down the back roads of Irish rock for quite a while, in search of an American vision of pure prairie pop. Tiernan is an old hand at penning a solid rock tune, and Kevin Is Dreaming opens his new account with some clever, offbeat riffing and a big, bad Creedence-style delivery. Heroine is more subdued, steering a path closer to The Replacements; Will You Run shuffles along on a dusty beat, and Beth slides gently on a Nashville breeze and a lonely steel guitar. While there's no faulting Tiernan's finesse, there's a feeling that he may be treading a well-worn but long-abandoned road while the rest of the world is crawling merrily along the superpop highway. Kevin Courtney

Nine Wassies From Bainne: "Ciddy Hall" (Numnum Records)

Rock albums as gaeilge are as rare as leprechaun's gold, but this crackpot Cork band gleefully sing in their native tongue, spitting out strange, grotesque tunes from an alternative Gaeltacht, where the landscape looks like a Hieronymous Bosch painting and everyone talks in Lear-style nonsense rhyme. As Gaeilge, of course. Songs such as The Day Got Mustrad Death, Whahi Whahi Did and The Bucks Of Bladdermore are mad excursions along the boithrins of Knockbonya, the Wassies' imaginary home town, where you can Shop At Fleadhworld and meet Mr & Mrs Lapsipah and Connie Balltie. Head Wassie Giordai Ua Laoghaire is the band's freaked-out Frank Zappa figure, directing the insanity with a cool, musically-accomplished hand, helped along by singer David W. Murray, drummer Peter O'Kennedy and a horde of special guests. Kevin Courtney

Lionel Richie: "Time" (Mercury)

Time? Lionel Richie seems to be lost in time. Not just in terms of the style of 1970s mush like Hello which made him his millions; maybe even more so for his Mills and Boon views on love. Once he told "his" woman she was Three Times A Lady; these days, in the imaginatively-titled Lady, he tells her "Lady, I'm your knight in shining armour and I love you". Progress, eh? And he sings with the same kind of "seductive" voice and "seductive" music designed purely to, eh, seduce the money right out of your pocket. Calculated romanticism at its most transparent. Concessions to modernism? To The Rhythm and Zoomin' which, at least - and successfully - offer slices of social realism and remind us how street-wise our Lionel used to be when he was with The Commodores. Joe Jackson