Matt Hales, the man behind Aqualung, has had mixed success here in the UK. The single Strange and Beautiful made it big, but his previous albums have had mixed success in his native country, despite making it in the US. Let's get this straight - Memory Man is like the best of OK Computer Radiohead, Snow Patrol and Keane. If any of those bands appeal, there is no doubt whatsoever that this is an album for you. The album kicks off with the singles Cinderella and Pressure Suit - each outstanding - but, if anything, the album gets better as it goes on. The left-field perspective, the introspective lyrics, the not-quite-expected instrumentation: all contribute to a Keane-that-cooler-than-thou-indie-kids-can-love sound, with a Thom Yorke voice drifting and nailing the feel. And it's a sound of emotion - anguish, longing, yearning, ache - a plaintive voice that reaches deep. Memory Man is an astonishing album - Radiohead, Keane and Snow Patrol between them haven't made an album as good in 3 years.

ACE rating 9/10

When Sufjan Stevens and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie suggest someone has one of the most beautiful voices in pop music, there is a reason to pay attention. A Brooklyn-based songwriter, Temple has the same approach to song structure as Sufjan - start with something gorgeous and see which way it goes. With a voice in the same soaring and hushed angelic space as Jeff Buckley or Jacob Golden, Temple soars over and into some remarkable songs, with a variety of instrumentations. Like great poetry, the songs don't reveal themselves on first reading. Listen to the whole thing, digest, go back and eventually you build up a sense of what was happening in his head - small stories, stories of small things. What impresses is the way that the songs build texture and feel organically - Snowbeast has almost no verse-chorus-verse structures. Saturday People, the album's opener is maybe the closest to that, and is one of the more immediately accessible, so long as your new folk ears are ready for the Sufjan Stevens-like chorus. Genuinely wonderful.

ACE rating 8/10

Jason Isbell was one of the three writers, singers and guitarists of Drive By Truckers, one of the best Southern States rock bands. Having departed that band, to stretch the range of material he can record, one might expect some kind of radical departure. However, Sirens of the Ditch stays pretty close to the pattern, but without some of the glorious crunch that the Truckers used to add in. Isbell's voice is a lot like Don Henley's and it is easy to imagine this as a long-lost Eagles album - it doesn't aim at the same kind of sophistication that Henley went for solo - with maybe a bit of Lyle Lovett (Hurricanes and Hand Grenades) in the mix. There are some outstanding songs here - In A Razor Town, The Devil Is My Running Mate, Shotgun Wedding, Try - songs which, although they don't attempt to redefine anything, are easily capable of becoming genre classics. Isbell is joined by most of the Drive By Truckers on the disc, but don't come to Sirens expecting a DBT album by proxy - this is a more genteel affair.

ACE rating 7/10