Robert Beaumont

James, Living In Extraordinary Times (BMG) *****

IT was always supremely ironic that the stratospheric success of Hotel California, the Eagles’ chilling warning about the dangers of decadence and debauchery, gave the group a blank cheque to be as decadent and debauched as they wanted. And, boy, did they cash that cheque.

WHEN Lucinda Williams released her breathtakingly brilliant eponymous debut in 1988, she revived Gram Parsons’ dream of creating cosmic country music.

STARSAILOR, despite a succession of excellent albums, remain on the outside of the music business. Too cerebral and challenging to appeal to the mindless masses who devour Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Take That, the band remains curiously out of favour with the hipper elements of rock.

JAMES have always defied categorisation. Originally hailed as a whimsical version of The Smiths, they were ultimately likened to grandiose stadium-fillers U2. The truth is they were neither.

STEVE Earle has always been a country boy at heart, although his extraordinary drinking, drug-taking and womanising might make even the hardest Nashville star blanch.

I HAD fallen in love with Ian Hunter’s world-weary, Dylan-esque voice long before Mott The Hoople hit the jackpot with a unique version of Bowie’s All The Young Dudes.

SHAWN Colvin and Steve Earle first met 30 years ago, when Earle “was off everybody’s radar including my own”.

SOMETHING Tamed, Something Wild, the first track on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s magnificent new album, beautifully sets the scene for a poetic journey deep into her sensitive soul.

DISTANCE Inbetween, The Coral’s latest burst of quintessentially English psychedelia, harks back on an earlier age, that of the late Small Faces and the early Deep Purple, of the Moody Blues and Syd Barrett, bridging the gap between the classic three-minute single of the 1960s and the behemoth that was prog rock in the 1970s.