Album: Vince Gill, Guitar Slinger (MCA/Decca)

How do you follow up a 43-song Grammy-winning album? If you're Vince Gill, by going back to basics and recording a straightforward Nashville pea-souper, thick with sentiment, big feelings and yet more emotional confabulations about life, death and the whole damn shooting match.

He's smooth as syrup, ol' Vince, and twice as sticky but there is something about his unrelenting musicality which hooks the ear good. If mainstream and soulful's your country bag, you can do a lot worse than this. Nick Coleman