Joe Breenlistens to a comprehensive new Townes Van Zandt best of and Lucinda Williams's latest album.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS

Little Honey

Lost Highway

Lucinda's in love, but don't expect tales of moon in June or stars in her eyes. Williams is hard core; she doesn't take prisoners, and even true love deserves a rocking good thrashing (on Honey Bee) just to be sure. Armed with Buick 6, her lethal band of swaggering fellow travellers, Lucinda rips into songs of love and lust with her trademark visceral intensity.

Doug Pettibone's jagged chords and snarling riffs are a constant, but it is those hazy, slurred 3am vocals and songs of surprising openness and vulnerability that are the hallmarks of this instalment in the 55-year-old's epic journey.

Elvis Costello throws in a great duet on the almost cartoonish Jailhouse Tears, while Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet add backing vocals throughout - including Little Rock Star, a plaintive message to Britney. Williams makes a few false moves towards the close ( Plan to Marry) but this is an affirmation of love's great power and possibilities.

www.lucindawilliams.com

JOE BREEN

Download tracks:Real Love, Little Rock Star, Honey Bee

TOWNES VAN ZANDT

Legend: The Very Best of Townes Van Zandt

Charly

Van Zandt died 11 years ago from the ravages of alcohol and the clinical depression that plagued him for most of his 53 years. Yet the Texan has never been more popular. How can it be that someone who recorded the bulk of his best material in the 1970s, only to pour his life away over the following 20 years, is now considered one of the great country songwriters? The answer is in the oddly beautiful songs he wrote in that period, from the heart-breaking smalltown sadness of Tecumsah Valleyto the broader canvas of Pancho and Leftyand the quintessential love song If I Needed You.

This double collection features 46 tracks, 40 from those key recordings on the Poppy and Tomato labels. There are rakes of variable Van Zandt albums out there, but the value of these tracks is that these were the originals and they retain an endearing monochrome quality; songs such as Flyin' Shoeswill never lose that beguiling sense of sweet sadness.

www.townesvanzandt.com

JOE BREEN

Download tracks:Tecumsah Valley, Pancho and Lefty