Album: Dexys, One Day I'm Going to Soar (BMG)

How does it feel to reach an age at which you are expected to have left behind the turbulent emotions of youth, but still be stricken with unrequited lust, wracked by restlessness, wrestling with issues of identity (both personal and national)?

Kevin Rowland knows. At the age of 58, almost three decades since the last Dexys album, Rowland and his band have delivered a burning, vivid, typically candid record which defies the received logic that artists of that vintage can only impart placid wisdoms, like a river reaching its estuary. It centres around a five-song sequence in which Rowland pursues, ensnares, then rejects singer-actress Madeleine Hyland.

ODIGTS is the soul album of the century. It might yet turn out to be the album of the year.