Album: Paul Brady, Hooba Dooba (Proper)

Paul Brady is the singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter, arguably held in higher esteem by peers such as Dylan, Carole King and Van Morrison than by the general public. Hooba Dooba is a typically assured set, opening in surprisingly funky manner with the gurgling clavinet and soulful organ of "Cry It Out", Brady advising blasphemy when dealing with the pain of failed love.

"Rainbow" continues the Little Feat-style country-funk progress, with Jerry Douglas's lap steel gliding through its genial romance, before Brady essays the first of the album's piano ballads with strings, "One More Today". At the heart of the album is a sequence of songs about ambition and destiny, with "Luck Of The Draw", the love-lottery rumination he wrote for Bonnie Raitt's album of the same name, bookended by the rolling groove of "The Winner's Ball" and the cautionary tableaux of gamblers, sex addicts and businessmen eager to realise their dreams in "Follow That Star". Subsequently, "Money To Burn" chides wealthy white males for their churlish complaining, before "Over The Border" takes pot-shots at both sides of the current religious war, Brady yearning instead for peace and mutual respect, where right-thinking folk would surely join him.

Download this Cry It Out; Rainbow; Luck Of The Draw; Money To Burn