Eleanor Shanley: "Desert Heart" (Warner RTE) Dial-a-track code: 1421

Full marks to anyone who kicks off an album with a reference to a graveyard, as Eleanor Shanley does in The Dawning Of The Day. This anthem for Dublin drinkers also is a crystallisation of Shanley's peculiar talent, showing her ability to sing lightly of heavy" subjects. Not that she lacks emotion. Far from it, as is obvious from the understated longing at the soul of her reading of Behan's Liverpool Lou and of Jimmy Faulkner's Save Me A Place in Your Heart, with its delicious tin whistle and guitar embellishments, provided by Neill and Colum McColl. The same sense imbues songs such as Jimmy Duhan's Flame and From Galway To Graceland, a tale of a besotted Elvis fan. A lovely album.

Chess: "The 50th Anniversary Collection" (Chess Records) Dial-a-track code: 1531

Chess Records was formed in 1947 by Polish brothers Leonard and Philip Chess and originally specialised in jazz and jump blues. But all was changed, utterly, with the success of Muddy Waters, whose phallocentric classic Hoochie Coochie Man is the second track on this album, edged from the opening slot by Howlin' Wolf's great voodoo chant, Smokestack Lightin'.

Chess steeled up the rock `n' roll era with hits from Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley. Cross-over pop hits include mod classic The `In' Crowd by the Ramsey Lewis Trio and Rescue Me by Fontella Bass. Essential.

David Byrne: "Feelings" (Luaka Bop/WEA) Dial-a-track code: 1311

No, this isn't the former Talking Heads singer's album of ballads and love songs, although A Soff Seduction does deliver some gentle, sensuous strokes. Byrne's fourth solo album since hanging up the Big Suit is a variegated species, and sometimes it seems like a dense, difficult jungle of disparate influences. Fuzzy Freaky is a typically offbeat opener, while Miss America is a racy, Latin-tinged paean to Byrne's homeland. Dance On Vaseline, a collaboration with UK hip-hoppers Morcheeba, takes the conga-line down ethnic backroads, but The Gates Of Paradise suddenly shifts into 10-gallon territory, stirring up the dust of True Stories. Songs such as Amnesia, Daddy Go Down and Finite = Alright delve into the terrain of the mind and soul, but though the album is interesting and intelligent, it's not necessarily involving.