k.d Iang: "Drag" (Warner) Dial-a-track code: 1311

The Canadian lady's follow-up to 1995's All You Can Eat is a concept album of sorts a collection of torch songs all about lighting up. Non-smoker lang wraps her pristine vocal chords around such standards as Don't Smoke In Bed and The Air That 1 Breathe, exploring the constant craving for a fag in her own smooth, sultry style. Of course, tunes like My Last Cigarette and Your Smoke Screen are less about Benson & Hedges and more about love and sex, and the ciggy metaphors are an excuse to address universal themes of compulsion and addiction. Why lang decided to cover Steve Miller's The Joker is unclear - just like smoking it doesn't suit her. The final track, Love Is Like A Cigarette, seems to sum up the overall message, but the whole thing dissipates long before you've finished reading the smoke signals.

Andrea Bocelli: "Romanza" (Philips) Dial-a-track code: 1421

This collection of pulsating ditties will take you right back to sunny evenings on the Italian Riviera, complete with an espresso at your elbow and a dash of vino rosso by your side even if you've never been there. Bocelli is being marketed as "the next big tenor", which is nonsense - the girth may be about right, the intonation certainly isn't but he's wise enough to avoid anything remotely resembling tenor repertoire, surrounding himself instead with throbbing strings, rippling piano, poppy-voiced pals and lyrics which wouldn't disgrace either a Eurovision entry or a particularly cruel parody of same on, say, Eurotrash. This disc ought to be horrific - perhaps it is - but it has seduced half of Europe and will, if you let it, seduce you too.

Paul Young: "Paul Young" (East West Records) Dial-a-track code: 1531

Give a guy a "goatee", a guitar, a long black coat, tell him to pose on a country road beside a pick-up truck, and lo and behold you have a new image. That certainly seems to be the premise behind the "new look" Paul Young. Happily, the voice of this British blue-eyed-soul brother remains largely unchanged, apart from the added resonance that comes with the passing of nearly 15 years since his debut album. His choice of material is as eclectic as ever, ranging from a sensitive reading of Willie Nelson's Across The Borderline to a pretty weird take on It Was A Very Good Year. Cuts like Tularosa similarly straddle the middle of that old country-rock road.

Hardly essential listening.