North , Deutsche Grammophon, 2003.

In North, the clever word play that has defined the Elvis of previous albums is mostly gone. In its place is a softly crooned series of love songs detailing his break up with his recent wife, an ex-punkette. Many people would be glad to be rid of her, but Elvis, at his most vulnerable and sensitive, displays a range of emotions behind that complex four-letter word. (That's love, not the other one).

This latest project is a suite of eleven piano ballads, his furthest departure from rock so far. The destination is jazz, but he arrives somewhere in between, having discovered along the way a steady baritone, and new vocal dexterity.

The bitter, ale-soaked and political troubadour has given way to a poet, possibly to the disappointment of his old fans. In When it Sings , Elvis croons “All the word's you say to me have music in them.” In Let Me Tell You about Her , the newly-smitten singer, admits that “when I start to speak [friends] roll their eyes.”

The tone here is intimate, reminiscent of Nat King Cole, and even ole blue-eyes Frank Sinatra. There are no dramatic pop choruses. Instead, we have soft jazz chords, evoking our friend from last month, Charles Mingus. For those for whom Elvis Costello will always be the angry 1970s quasi-punk poet, North may be annoying, even nauseating. But then, Elvis has never set out to please fans or critics, even in showing his sensitive side.

You are the Quarry , Attack Records, 2004.

The Pope of Mope is back. It was dismaying to read in a recent Spin Magazine interview that the L.A. Sunshine (and possibly a therapist's prescription) had cheered the 1980s gloomster up. Have a Nice Day? from the brains behind 1988's Viva Hate ? Maybe I would need the therapist.

Morrisey's politics even seem to be reaching beyond bitchy quarrels in mildewed English lit staff rooms and animal rights. In America , the opening track, he admonishes a country he loves for having a “head too big,” and a “belly too big.” Then it's not too long before he's back to his old self. “She said she loves me,” he sings in How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel , “so she must be insane.”

Somehow, this underwhelming new album hasn't stopped Morrisey's 2004 comeback in the UK, including the first top 10 hit in a decade, Irish Blood, English Heart . The album itself is Number 1 in the UK and Sweden (of all places) as a new generation of teenagers discovers the most articulate whiner in pop history.

As he hits 40, Morrisey is showing signs of not having moved on. When he moans about “standing by the flag and not feeling shameful, racist or partial,” he seems to have forgotten Geri Halliwell's cool Britannia Union jack miniskirts of 1997. In America , he hits us with the stunning revelation that some Americans are overweight and U.S. foreign policy might not be entirely altruistic. Sadly, though, despite a few high points and nicely turned phrases, this album is reminiscent not of the Smiths, but of the solo albums that sent Morrisey into hiding in the first place.

deb , Island Records, 2003.

Not speaking Arabic or French, it was impossible to know what this honey-toned Algerian singer-guitarist was actually saying in any of deb's 12 tracks.

But really, there's nothing altogether too foreign about most of the music on deb , which Google tells me means heartbroken. The tunes are gentle, lightly spiced with a Magreb accent. Massi draws on both French chanson and American folk pop songs. Sometimes live, she sings in English as well as French and Arabic.

The album includes some flamenco, Andalusian guitar. On the tracks Ech Edani and Yawlidi she almost goes for a pure Algerian Rai sound.

Overall Massi, who is a star in France, has blended Middle Eastern influences into an easy listening pop record.

Reviewers who do understand Arabic and/or French say the album is laced with tear-jerking songs of loneliness and love lost. In Yemma a girl telephones her mother to tell her “it's cold here… no one takes care of me.” With luck, she'll try dangdut on her next album and come to Indonesia, where it's not so cold. An Inul and Massi duet? Oui!

John Coltrane Paul Quinichette,

Cattin' with Coltrane and Quinichette, Prestige Records, 1957, 1990

In this re-release of the 1957 classic, Coltrane and Paul Quinichette have a series of relaxed “conversations” in tenor saxophone. Quinichette gets so close in sound to “The President”, Lester Young, one of the all-time greats, that he is dubbed the Vice President.

The passion and energy of Coltrane sits nicely against the relaxed

Mastery of the older man Quinichette. Coltrane is generally regarded as the greatest tenor sax player of his generation. Unlike Miles Davis, Coltrane died at the age of 40 in 1967, too early for any major embarrassments (such as trumpet solos in the Australian desert).

This 1957 recording came two years after Coltrane's “discovery” by Miles and counts in the early phase of his career with Prestige Records. Later, after he joined Atlantic Records in 1961, Coltrane recorded many classics include A Love Supreme , completed before his death of liver cancer.

In Sunday the older Quinichette was a match for Coltrane in the swing tradition. In Anatomy , the two have their famous “conversation” in an arrangement of All the Things You Are . Many critics regard Cattin' as one of the most nuanced recordings in the history of saxophone Duos.