Album: Luke Haines, Outsider/In: The Collection (Music Club Deluxe)

Few performers have managed to give the swerve to whatever trend drove an era's music fashions quite as reliably as the redoubtable Luke Haines, former grey eminence souring the laddish spirit of Britpop.

But as this 2CD retrospective confirms, Haines's jaundiced, renegade spirit frequently came closer to the maverick essence of great British pop than his contemporaries. Who else would claim to be writing an alternative national anthem while proclaiming "I'm at war with every last one of you in England, Scotland and Wales"?