Album: Fionn Regan, The Shadow of an Empire (Heavenly)

While you couldn't speak about Regan's Mercury-nominated debut without name-checking Nick Drake, it's impossible to talk about its follow-up without mentioning Bob Dylan.

And while that sounds like a sure sign of creative constipation, in fact this young Irish singer-songwriter is merely tipping his hat to the greats (there's some Cohen and Cash in there, too), before moving along on his own not-so-merry, last-days-of-Rome way. Angry, funny, relevant and summed up in one line, "You curse the darkness/ And I'll strike a match".