Album: Cerys Matthews

Having recast herself as a folksy alt.country warbler with 2003's Cockahoop, Cerys Matthews makes a few tentative moves towards regaining her former indie-pop-queen status with Never Said Goodbye, but without relinquishing too much of a hold on her newer roots-rock style. The results are fairly decent for the most part, save for blunders like the mawkish ballad "This Endless Rain" and the saccharine, ickle-girly vocalising on "Blue Light Alarm". Elsewhere, the styles are more pleasantly jumbled on tracks such as "Seed Song" and the rumbustious "Ruby", and even "Oxygen" has a certain galumphing charm, despite the brash brass and the shrill vocal that recalls the darker days of Catatonia. Oddly, "Streets Of New York" is built on a frisky New Orleans second-line drum groove, while songs such as "Open Roads" and "Bird In The Hand" continue the celebrations of pastoral contentment and reminiscence begun on Cockahoop, with Matthews claiming, "I'm going nowhere/There's nowhere that I'd rather be/Than sitting here getting old/In the shade of the same old tree".

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Streets Of New York', 'Seed Song', 'Bird In The Hand'