Chris Cornell
Carry On
Universal (61m 50s) .

SOMETIMES famous musicians go into the studio and make very tactical, very physical and very direct albums. Sometimes their passionate fans will tell you the result is a work of art when really it is shit hanging from a stick. There's are no short passes here on the former Soundgarden frontman's second solo album, no backheels, no changes of pace or moments of skill, just more three-minute existentialism, vocal gymnastics and bluesy rockabouts. It also lasts almost as long as a Champions League match and I have to confess I turned off by the time I got to the cover of Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean'.

Download: the album Superunknown by Soundgarden

Neil Dunphy
Wilco Sky Blue Sky Nonesuch (51m 07s)
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Over the past 12 years Wilco have become the country band that indie kids are allowed to like.

Each of their six original albums (not counting the Woody Guthrie tributes) have worn their idiosyncrasies on their sleeves, but here they are buried among simple, straightforward - even adult-oriented - structures that grow and grow with each listen. If Tom Petty, Gram Parsons and Buffalo Springfield had gotten together at their respective peaks this is probably the album they would have created.

Download: 'Sky Blue Sky' 'Walken' 'Impossible Germany' Neil Dunphy

Jazz

Fred Hersch
Trio Night & the Music Palmetto
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PIANIST Fred Hersch is probably the closest thing to a visionary composer and performer in the mould of Bill Evans. Very much his own man, Hersch and his trio, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits, nonetheless recall the intensity and open interplay that characterized Evans' great trios of the sixties. This album . . . mixing standards from Porter and Monk with the pianist's own compositions . . . is the trio's first studio recording in nearly fifteen years confirms Hersch's pre-eminence. Cormac Larkin

Classical

Mozart: Violin Concertos
Maxim Vengerov
EMI Classics
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Violinist Maxim Vengerov has been touring the programme of this recording, Concerto no. 2 and no.4 and the Sinfonia Concertante, for almost a year now. The violist in the Sinfonia is Laurence Power, an apt name for this musician. The stylistic boat is pushed to the limit sometimes but the sound quality is glorious and listeners will enjoy the buoyancy and near- naivety of the approach.