The latest CD releases reviewed

LAURA VEIRS
Saltbreakers Nonesuch ***

You just know that Laura Veirs was a clever clogs at school. Apart from the egghead glasses, her work gets more difficult with each release, more oblique though not necessarily more interesting. Her quirky worldview with music to match has been subsumed into an all-round kookiness, which seems at times quite studied. This album sounds a little haphazard, as if the band got the script only very late in the night. Veirs herself bounces from track to track with unflagging enthusiasm, her songs awash with maritime motifs. And when she is good, as on the gently insistent Don't Lose Yourself, she is very good, melodic, haunting and different. www.lauraveirs.com

Download tracks: Don't Lose Yourself, Nightingale, Phantom Mountain

SUNNY SWEENEY
Heartbreakers Hall of Fame Big Machine **** 

Honky-tonk music might seem an anachronism in this age of digital this and that, but as long as there are singers of the calibre of Sunny Sweeney there will always be a queue of folks ready to cry into their beers. Sweeney hails from east Texas and list as her heroes such country stars as Lorretta Lynn and Waylon Jennings. In other words, though she looks anything but, Sweeney is old-school. These songs from her debut album could have been recorded any time in the past 25 years. The pedal steel would have been there and the songs of broken hearts, broken dreams and broken promises would have been balm to the lost and the lonely. They still are, and the band is still sharp and willing, if sometimes a mite too predictable. www.sonnysweeney.com

Download tracks: Next Big Nothing, Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame