Keeping my promise of writing more about Tori Amos, my Muse, here I am today with what is perhaps my favorite album of hers: from the choirgirl hotel, a 1998 release. I still vividly remember putting it for the first time on my CD player at close to maximum volume and let its many wonders enrapture me like very few have done since.

Musically, it was a quantum leap for Tori, what with her previous album - Boys for Pele - being an almost exclusively acoustic affair, complete with harpsichords and all. This time around, Tori decided to brew a very special kind of aural magic, lending her classical piano to the drum beat and the electronica sounds. The end result still sounds today as fresh as it came out and as adventurous. Her voice was also able to reach such emotional highs that it drove me to tears in the simple space of a chord change. I clearly remember feeling dizzy for days with the whole experience and this is something that has only happened to me once. What a gift, then. My humble thanks go over to you right now, Ms Amos.

Listen to Liquid Diamonds and let yourself go.

I know, I know, I'm always late to the game. But I've explained here before - I find it much more exciting to (re)discover these new artists just as their hype is going down and I'm therefore able to appreciate and enjoy them in a much more personal way.

I have to say that the title of this album is more than appropriate - Lungs - because this girl has some serious pipes to her credit. It's almost like she's channelling some sort of multitude of angry voices that come out of her throat all at once and the feeling throughout the album is one of exhilaration and urgency. The album is not without its faults, though, with some songs sounding much like each other and there is a variety of singing styles sorely lacking. But I guess all can be forgiven when the end result is as addicting as this.

I'm going to leave you with one of favorite tracks: Rabbit Heart (Raise it up). See you all soon.

He burned as brightly and as quickly as a match, his legacy is forever and ever like all good mavericks' works tend to be. And lately one of his songs keeps playing in my head over and over, almost like it's trying to telling me something. The thing is, I know what it is.

António Variações is currently a legend in his and my home country, Portugal. He only made two albums to his name and some TV showings and just as he was ready to embrace a much wider reach, he died. Such are the lives of mercurial talents. His works keep on being rediscovered by generation after generation and rightly so, because he was able to tap into what makes us portuguese and infuse it with a modern feel, almost like giving us a new fresh look at what we can be.

The song I referred to is called Estou Além [I'm up ahead] and for me it reflects quite perfectly that very state of an artist/person constantly unsatisfied with his/her position in the world and always on the search for something more, something other than this. How do I understand him.

Another proof on how to not fall prey to the dreaded sophomore album curse. Laura Marling says she speaks because she can and we believe her all the way. This, her next after her brilliant debut, proves once and for all that she is here to stay and furthermore that she has made an album for the ages.

It's quite incredible the songwriting maturity she displays in each and every song of this follow-up, with a noticeable improvement both on the lyrics and arrangements department. It's a self-assured artist we hear now and the pathos invested in some of the songs give it gravitas and resonance in a way seldom heard. And if you think I'm going loco with the superlatives, just pick up a copy of this album and give it a try. You'd be hard pressed not to concur with me.

Listen to Darkness Descends, a quite up-beat song albeit its misleading title.

It's been a long time since I've listened to this album and I always get a kick out of it. It's one of the most infectious retro-pop albums I've heard and it still manages to hit some high notes on the pop barometer.

Written and produced by Paradis' then beau Lenny Kravitz, this is a collection of songs that recall a whole period of time that's very much loved around these parts. Not quite recapturing the pop magnificence of the albums Gainsbourg made with Bardot and Birkin, it's still a nice try and quite a good entry in that particular musical cannon. Paradis sings it all the way through in that Lolita voice that she made all her own and it fits the festivities to a T. In short, I love it.

Listen to the hit single Be My Baby and fall in love all over again.

The french have somehow always managed to produce some of the most enduring and original pop albums that I can remember. I don't know how they do it. Guess they have it in their blood. And when on top of this, they channel their longstanding love of all things Americana, we have something like the album I have here for you today: Emily Loizeau's Pays Sauvage.

Sung both in french and in english, it's almost like hearing the songs a young french female pioneer composed when she first entered american shores and got in touch with "God's Country" very own soul and musical wavelengths. The feeling of the whole album is therefore very "live" and it sometimes feel like you've crashed a barn party and somehow instantly fell in love with it. The songs have a rhythm and a groove that completely permeates any room or space that you listen to. Yes, it's a winner on all fronts and I'm hooked.

Here's one of its more mellow moments: Songes [Dreams]. Take care.

Genre-hopper extraordinaire Ryuichi Sakamoto's Smoochy album is one I find myself listening to from time to time always with a renewed sense of wonder. It's almost like I keep finding new things about it everytime I listen to it.

And this is a crucial album if you want to find out what this man's music is all about and how it got where it is today. In it are the seeds of everything he went on to do, be it his electronic explorations with Alva Noto, his acoustic albums with piano and strings, or even his ongoing romance with bossa nova and other latin american music languages. It's all here.

I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite tracks - Bibo No Aozora - one that has been reworked by him in multiple ways in the past and always successfully, which only goes to prove just how simple in their complexity his songs really are. And in this lies his greatest gift. Enjoy it.

If you haven't heard of this man, shame on you. But don't stress. Here's your opportunity to do so. And prepare to fall in love with one of the most beautiful male voices ever to grace a recording studio.

Ney Matogrosso is a brazilian artist with quite a long career on his shoulders and who's still going from strength to strength with every tour he undertakes. Yep, he's still touring and one of my biggest sorrows is never to have caught him live, even though he's been to my country many times. I'll try and reassess that the next time he'll be here. For sure!

Bandido is one of the many albums he recorded in the 70's after going solo (Secos e Molhados was his first musical project) and one that deserves to be better known. Combining popular and traditional brazilian music with a latin american twist, this album manages to seduce its listener and enchant us in a way very few can. I could choose any track to represent it here but right now I'm absolutely in love with his rendition of Gaivota (Seagull). So here it is.

Somehow, I find it hard to leave french-speaking territories music-wise whenever I start listening to their music. There's something quite intangible about the way they sing, the way they feel and the way I feel them singing. And let's be honest for a second here: it's hot singing in french.

Today's singer is Salvatore Adamo, more widely known as simply Adamo, a very popular singer/songwriter from the 60's to the 70's that managed to pen quite a considerable number of hits in his heyday. Although I'm not sure, I am almost certain this is one artist that I can imagine my mother listening to the radio to when she was younger and the world in brighter colors. French music was constantly in the airwaves in my home country some 40 odd years ago, so it's not completely impossible that she did hear him singing a song or two. I'll have to ask her.

In the meantime, listen to Mon Cinema, an impassioned chanson with a funky bass line only the french are capable of. See you soon.

I've fallen completely head over wheels over this canadian fille... A child prodigy and piano player since she was 3 years old, she started composing very early on and here it is, her debut album. And, as usual with me, I've just found out about it and now I'm raving about her to all my friends.

Sometimes, I really don't mind to discover artists this way, when they're about to release a new work (which must be her case any month now) and the promotion for the current album has dwindled and silenced. It's almost like finding out about a well-kept secret and being the last one to know. Wait - maybe that's not so good after all... Oh, heck, I really don't mind just as long as secrets are as sweet and enchanting as these.

I'm going to leave you with the album closer: C'était salement romantique. Stay safe.

I've just found out about this amazing album through some friends of mine. I honestly (and foolishly) thought that Mike Patton, of Faith No More fame, had sort of abandoned his musical career after the band's breakup but I had no idea how wrong I was! He has apparently been involved in a myriad of musical projects with other bands, artists and movie soundtracks so I guess the man is here to stay, after all. And this particular album - Mondo Cane - might just prove to be his biggest claim to musical legitimacy he'll ever do. I sincerely hope he can prove me wrong because now I really want to know what he's going to do next.

Mondo Cane was apparently inspired by the fact of Patton having married an italian girl and moved in to Italy where he started to realize that italian radio stations filled the air with old italian pop songs. Which I simply love, in case you haven't noticed yet! This album is a sort of hommage to those years and those songs and that kind of sound that I guess you can instantly recognize in some Morricone soundtracks. And that's exactly where I'm going to leave you: a rendition of Deep Deep Down, a track that can be found on the soundtrack of Danger: Diabolik, a key movie of those times. And prepare to be amazed.

I've been waiting for the right moment to write about Neil Hannon's The Divine Comedy new album - Bang Goes The Knighthood - but I guess now's as good a moment as any. This is pop music for all seasons, so let's start the month on a high note, shall we?

This is their first album on their own label, Divine Comedy Records, and the tenth under their moniker and it also marks a sort of stripping down of their usually string-laden songs. While a part of me is kind of sad at the lack of big, dramatic numbers, it's also kind of refreshing to see them try other aural landscapes and come out unscathed and renewed at the end.

However, I have to say that I'm still not completely won over by this new offering, though I'm starting to feel that it's slowly sinking in without me noticing it. Which is always a good thing. I'm going to leave you for now with a delicious duet: Island Life.

Rufus Wainwright's new album - All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu - is a rare thing in pop music today. A veritable treasure trove of meticulously composed piano songs, it manages to not be repetitive, self-indulgent or vain. It is instead beguiling, wondrous and completely addicting. But not at first. It takes some listening before it all starts to make sense and for all its dormant beauties to come out from within the intricate patterns of the songs. Which is always a good sign, in my book.

According to him, this particular album serves as a sort of sorbet between courses, in which he takes a break from all the heavy instrumentation that sometimes plagues his other previous albums (though I've never minded that...) and goes back to the basics, in this case, the piano-based song (he being a big fan of the instrument and of the opinion that the piano song is the basis of all pop music, going back to the german lieder as a tradition).

I went to see him live last month and the show was great, just him and the piano and it had two very distinct parts. In the first part, he played the whole of the new album! Every single song! Talk about spoiling the fans. Anyway, enough chit-chat, let's hear some music. Here's my favorite: The Dream.

I've been meaning to write about this album for so long now that it's almost criminal it took me this long. And it's also criminal that this wonderful hommage to the wonderful yé-yé music that is so in vogue again these days has been so overlooked. Let's try and reassess that, shall we?

This isn't Emmanuelle Seigner's first foray into music but I think it's safe to say that this is her official debut as a force to be reckoned with in the current french musical scene. Practically all the tracks are killers and for me the best thing about it is that you feel as if you're listening to something very familiar even though none of the tracks are covers. And I personally couldn't ask for anything more.

I'm going to leave you with a delicious duet between Seigner and her husband, Mr. Roman Polanski himself. And if you happen to be reminded of another very famous french duet, don't feel bad about it. It's all good. Listen then to Qui êtes-vous?.

This being a blog about what music I'm currently listening to, I have to make a guilty confession: I've not been 100% truthful to my readers. I explain. I've been obsessing about Tori Amos musical career for almost 20 years now and I've just realized I've yet to write a post about her. So here it is. And I promise to write more posts on her in the future as penitance.

After the last two posts, it only seems fitting that the Amos album I choose to write first about is American Doll Posse, this one being about the many roles women play in the society, while at the same time using five alter egos (the titular Posse) to sing about what was going on in America at the time of its release. The result is a sprawling double-album of 23 tracks that manage to run the full gammit of piano-led ballads to schizophrenic rock extravaganzas. And schizophrenia is the key word here because Amos is able to encompass so many styles and music signatures in the songs contained in this album that sometimes you feel that you're listening to five different albums at the same time.

The end result is an album that pushes our perceptions of what female singer/songwriters should be all about: fearlessly provocative and endlessly talented in her case. I leave you with Big Wheel, the first single that had very limited airplay due to the inclusion of the acronym MILF in the bridge... Just goes to show how far behind we all still are...

How can you not love an american girl from California whose love of 60's french pop is such that she releases album after album of old yé-yé covers draped in gloriously retro album jackets? It's practically impossible, isn't it? Well, her name is Elinor Blake, more widely known as April March. Delicious, isn't it?

The song I bring you here today has made her famous by being featured in two movie soundtracks but there's definitely much more to discover from this evergreen chanteuse. Of curious note is the fact that she has worked as an animator in some pretty high profile projects, namely Pee-Wee's Playhouse and the opening credits and video for Madonna's Who's That Girl. Pretty good, huh?

But I'm going to leave you with the french version of Chick Habit, the Gainsbourg penned Laisse Tomber Les Filles, made famous by another very well-known chanteuse - France Gall. See you soon!

To me, it's endlessly amazing how incredibly frenetic and vivacious the Yé-yé scene was. I seem to be able to find a "new" singing girl every month. The amazing thing about that is that the level of quality of the songs is most of the times very high. Infectious pop in all its glory.

Today's fille is one Annie Philippe, which had a brief but nonetheless hit-filled career. She somehow managed to make her mark among much bigger names than her on a market that was over-populated with female singers with arguably better song material than her (yes, I'm talking about Claudine Longet, France Gall and even Zouzou). In fact, her voice register is highly reminiscent of one Ms. Gall and if you're fan of the latter, you're sure to instantly become very fond of the former.

Philippe was very fortunate, though to have one Paul Mauriat as the arranger of most of her songs and this is where most of her appeal lies, as I'm sure that there are plenty of his admirers out there. But enough chatting - listen to one of her greatest hits: C'est La Mode.

Goldfrapp are seemingly incapable of making a bad record. Head First marks the fifth time they put out an album that is instantly catchy, addictive and barrier-pushing. What are they on and please can we have it, too?

This time around, they're back in time some 20 odd years and it's synth pop and breathy vocals all the way. 80's galore in full-on mode. And amazingly, it works. I have to confess not being particularly fond of that decade, so it's a bit of a surprise when I find that Head First has become my favorite pop record from the 80's, except that it was recorded last year!

Plus, it has the correct total number of tracks - 9, which is all one can take of hearing synthesizers going bonkers and Casio-like beats. The influences are all there to be seen and they do not try to hide them (thankfully) and it makes the record all the more fun for it. I'm going to leave you with Alive, currently my favorite track from Head First and wish you a great weekend - this is the perfect soundtack for that!

Camera Obscura's follow-up to the immensely enjoyable Let's Get Out Of This Country finds them again on familiar territory: exploring big soundscapes, keeping in mind the Phil Spector legacy and soothing us with the lead vocalist feminine ramblings on men, love and anything that passes her mind. You don't change a winning team, that's for sure.

My Maudlin Career is a perfectly respectable follow-up to one of the best records of late and, if anything, it even succeeds the impossible: it one-ups it. Maybe the songs are not as easily recognizable this time around but that is just a question of letting them enter your consciousness and soon after, you'll start humming them almost unawarely.

Much like She & Him's recent Volume 2, this album surprises in its unwillingness to change. All they have to offer is more of the same and I, for one, thank them for that. I'm going to leave you with the title track - My Maudlin Career, for those not keeping track... - and wish a great week all around.

And speaking of bands that can be filed under the "Baroque Pop" musical section, here's what's probably the most famous of them all: The Zombies.

But, amazingly, it almost was not to be so. Odessey and Oracle is now considered a pop music classic, filled to the brim with gems of compositional brilliance and highly elaborate arrangements. To think that they had such shortage of money at the time of its recording, they were still able to produce high quality material that still sounds as strong today as it did then. Talk about working on a shoe string! And the fact that their own record company didn't believe in the material they were producing! It just goes to show...

After being rediscovered by a multitude of new fans and being hailed as a "lost" masterpiece, they never stopped. Shame that it took them so long. Oh, well - better late than ever, I suppose. I leave you today with A Rose For Emily. Bye.