At their best, cover albums have a strange way of galvanizing an artist by returning to the songs that inspired them; the artists can find the reason why they made music in the first place, perhaps finding a new reason to make music. Robert Plant's Dreamland - his first solo album in nearly ten years and one of the best records he's ever done, either as a solo artist or as a member of Led Zeppelin - fulfills that simple definition of a covers album and goes beyond it, finding Plant sounding reinvigorated and as restless as a new artist. Part of the reason why this album works so well is that he has a new band – not a group of supporting musicians, but a real band whose members can challenge him because they tap into the same eerie, post-folk mysticism that fueled Led Zeppelin III, among other haunting moments in the Zep catalog…

Champion Jack Dupree’s expressive voice and natural feel for the piano made him one of the greatest of the barrelhouse blues genre, the New Orleans native making a name for himself on the Chicago music scene, his stage name acquired after a stint as a champion boxer in Detroit, encouraged by Joe Louis. Dupree spent time in Europe in the late 1950s, which resulted in collaboration with a number of noteworthy British blues men, and following the success of From New Orleans To Chicago, featuring John Mayall and Eric Clapton, Mike Vernon brought Dupree onto his Blue Horizon label for When You Feel The Feeling You Was Feelin,’ another excellent set from 1968, this time with guest contributions on the B-side from guitar god Paul Kossoff and drummer Simon Kirke of Free, Pretty Things bassist Stuart Brooks and Fleetwood Mac associate, Duster Bennett on harmonica…

West Side Story was a bit of an unusual session for several reasons. First, the popularity of both the Broadway musical and the film version that followed meant that there were many records being made of its music. Second, rather than woodshed on the selections prior to entering the studio, the Oscar Peterson Trio spontaneously created impressions of the musical's themes on the spot. "Something's Coming" seems like a series of vignettes, constantly shifting its mood, as if moving from one scene to the next. Ray Brown plays arco bass behind Peterson in the lovely "Somewhere," while the feeling to "Jet Song" is very hip in the trio's hands. The snappy interplay between the musicians in the brisk setting of "Tonight" turns it into a swinger. "Maria" initially has a light, dreamy quality, though it evolves into a solid groove…

Clearlight fourth album, released in 1978, one year after the disappointing "Les contes du singe fou" shows a more new age direction, as the beautiful cover shows. Like the previous album, it's a half success, actually an unequal album. The opener "Spirale d'amour" features Verdeaux pastoral piano work, nice melody but really too gentle. It may evoke children cartoon music! You can virtually imagine a gentle pink rabbit appearing.We're very far from "Symphony" or "Forever blowing bubbles" acid cosmic spacerock. "Full moon raga" is the long ambitious piece which actually saves the album. It's a very good jazzrock tune which may evoke Mahavisnu at times. Only the drum lakes fineness, but we're already in 1978, so this explains that…

Deep Skies 1: Light From Orion (2003). Forming the first release in Kevin Kendle's exciting new Deep Skies series, this is music inspired by the constellation of Orion. Orion contains some amazing features - supergiant stars, beautiful star-forming nebulae - these were the inspiration behind the amazing sounds on this album. All the hallmarks of the finest American space synth music pioneers of the mid-late eighties, combined with the best influences of artists such as Serrie and Stearns. But the sheer magical feel and atmosphere of the music sets it apart from even those great musicians…

It only seems like there has been an endless stream of Grateful Dead compilations. In reality, there has only been a handful, and the most notable of those were released while the band was still an active recording and touring unit in the '70s – and before they had belated chart success in the late '80s, 20 years after their debut album. So, Warner/Rhino's 2003 collection The Very Best of Grateful Dead marks the first attempt to do a thorough single-disc overview of the group's career, encompassing not just their classic Warner albums but also the records they cut for their own Grateful Dead/UA and Arista.

Pleasures takes us back to the live album of that name culled from two evenings of concerts in Hamburg in August 1975 and is a reissue of that album together with five extra cuts from the same sets (three of which duplicate songs featured earlier in alternate performances). This is definitive mid-70s Chapman, here featured first in solo acoustic mode then from track five onwards with a band (Keef Hartley, Steffi Stephen and Achim Reichel), arguably at the zenith of the soulful-rockin’ phase of his career.

A-ha's sixth studio CD (seventh if their greatest-hits collection is included) came seven years after their previous album, Memorial Beach, and in that time it seems that a-ha mellowed out. They do not seem to have concern about attracting the youth/dance market, but instead seem to be focusing in on how to make perfect middle-of-the-road pop songs with '90s technology. This is not a criticism, as it produces several fantastic songs, such as "Little Black Heart" and the wonderful "I Wish That I Cared."