Album: Jim White, Where It Hits You (Loose)

Jim White's wife left him during the recording of Where It Hits You, which makes it a tricky prospect for both performer and listener.

There are moments, during the plaintive "The Way of Alone" and "State of Grace", and the desperately positive "Infinite Mind", when it's like intruding on private grief.

But White's albums have tendrils that imperceptibly wrap themselves around one's attention; and such is the case here, when the haunted reveries of "Chase the Dark Away", "My Brother's Keeper" and especially "That Wintered Blue Sky" cast their smoky spell in tints of cello, guitar and piano.

By the end, you're left with the feeling of having accompanied the singer's passage to "a state of cockeyed grace"; though as he admits in "Epilogue to a Marriage", "On the best of days, still there's hell to pay".

Download this: Chase the Dark Away; My Brother's Keeper; That Wintered Blue Sky