BABYBIRD'S Stephen Jones was last heard singing in a child-like falsetto on last year's Almost Cured Of Sadness, for which he had returned to recording in the messy, DIY manner of his formative series of Sheffield bedroom albums.

What came in between were his commercial years for Echo, a run of eight Top 40 hits that began with Goodnight in 1996, hit pay dirt with You're Gorgeous that autumn and are now corralled into a workaday compilation with no extras, lyrics or comment piece. You're Gorgeous may have become the jukebox anthem of drunken chat-ups but it was a sordid tale of pornographic exploitation. Typical Jones: a charming melody had thrown the listener off the scent from his disarming, sourly witty lyrics. Sixteen more bittersweet tracks scurry by in no particular order, putting the world to wrongs before slowly sinking in the east. Hopefully Jones will rise again, when his voice breaks.

A compilation of a different kind comes from Peter Bruntnell. Played Out is not a greatest hits set - not least because he hasn't had any - but an acoustic re-working of his prime cuts in the manner of those Unplugged albums that MTV made briefly fashionable. Bruntnell is the British troubadour whose records are filed in the Americana section, and this could be a porch recording, just mellow, melancholic Pete and his young sidekick James Walbourne on guitar, piano and mandolin. Their homely, hushed recordings are lovely but not lively, the spotlight falling too much on Bruntnell's warm and worn voice.

Updated: 11:52 Thursday, March 18, 2004