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'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.

And speaking of beautiful male voices, here's one that ties the post about The Divine Comedy written below and the next video I shall be posting very soon: Scott Walker and his second solo album, simply titled 2.

I've listened so much to his music and voice that he's almost part of my own DNA. He touches all the right nerves and spots and I really feel transported to a very special place in my mind whenever I listen to one of his songs. This album in particular has a handful of my favorite songs from him but I guess I could've picked any album from the first part of his career (which continues to be the benchmark of the continuous fascination he provoques on audiophiles, although he'd be very mad at these words if he read them, with all the avant-garde records he's been putting out recently) and I wouldn't go wrong.

If you like lushly orchestrated pop ballads sung in the most melifluous of voices, this is the record for you. And I leave you with a masterpiece: Plastic Palace People. Until the next post, be safe.

Something strange happens when The Divine Comedy release a new album. Unknowingly to the impending release, I start listening to their records almost as a compulsion and then when I go to their official website to find out what they've been up to recently, I discover that they are about to put out a new album in the near future. Serendipity, they call it.

This is their last one and its title - Victory for the Comic Muse - is a nod to their very first and quite rare album - Fanfare for the Comic Muse - a quite different and very indie-sounding recording that is very much at odds with their following releases.

Victory (...) sees them return to their comic sensibility at its best, combining satirical lines with british wit and heartfelt lyrics often through the course of a single song. It's a trait that its mastermind, Neil Hannon, has been demonstrating again and again to be his main gift and reason behind the band's success. And noone does it quite like him. His character driven songs woven through exquisitely melodic songs are quite a treasure in today's music scene. Not to mention his amazing voice, seemingly intact since he started his career.

I'm going to leave you with my favorite song of the album, the affecting Lady Of A Certain Age. Brilliant, that's all I have to say.