Various Artists: "Across The Bridge Of Hope" (White Records)

Music has the strength to move people to tears, and the power to heal wounds, but even the greatest music is impotent before the evil of those who orchestrated the Omagh bombing. There's no question that this album is in a good cause, and the sincerity of the contributing artists is beyond doubt. But though Across The Bridge Of Hope will raise funds for the victims of the North's worst atrocity, much of the music contained within may offer only a slight salve for the mental and emotional scars.

Actor Liam Neeson sets a sombre but hopeful tone with a reading from Seamus Heaney's The Cure At Troy, while Sinead O'Connor takes an ABBA tune, Chiquitita, and turns it into a wistful, childlike, comforting embrace. Van Morrison gets up close and personal with an alternative acoustic version of The Healing Game, helped along by Brian Kennedy, Paddy Moloney and Phil Coulter, while U2 contribute Please, one of the more resonant songs from their Pop album. Boyzone and The Corrs are stymied by their limited powers of expression: the twee cover of The Bee Gees' Words and the anodyne What Can I Do seem completely inadequate.

Daniel O'Donnell manages to rise a little above this level with Beyond The Great Divide, but it's The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon who really reaches the heights with the stirring, angry and ultimately cathartic, Sunrise. Listen to it, think of Omagh, and weep.