YOU are probably best advised not to use Colm O Ciosoig’s excuse when handing in work late. Explaining why eight years have passed since The Warm Inventions’ first album, he says, “Time is vibrations for us”.

Hope springs eternal, however, and so the northern Californian-southern Irish bonding of Sandoval and O Coisoig has finally delivered a beauteous, pastoral work of light and shadows that demands yet more patience. The devil in Through The Devil Softly is indeed in the detail, the mystery in the mist.

Thankfully, Dawn Landes operates in real time, and so the Brooklyn singer-songwriter’s sequel to Fireproof arrives only a year later. Whereas Sandoval’s album maintains a mellifluous flow, Landes’s new set matches the restlessness of its rodeo theme as she sees parallels between the vicissitudes of romance and the rigours of bull riding. Climb aboard, the ride is wild, fun and bumpy.