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Their press materials use the phrase “indie supergroup,” which is a bit of a stretch – of the three members of the Rescues, you’re liable to recognize only Gabriel Mann’s name, and that’s only if you’ve spent a fair amount of time trawling CD Baby and its kin for unsigned singer/songwriter types – but puffed-up verbiage aside, if you’re at all into introspective, harmony-fueled acts, you’ll want to look into getting yourself a copy of Crazy Ever After right away. The Rescues’ songs are frustratingly uneven – the album veers from strong stuff like opening track “Lost Along the Way,” which sounds like something Fleetwood Mac’s younger cousins would cook up, to mopey coffeehouse tracks like the interminable “California Rain” – but when the trio is on, they’re eminently listenable; it isn’t hard to hear what soundtrack supervisors see in the band. (They’ve already been tapped for “Superhero Movie,” “Igor,” “Army Wives,” and “The Lucky Ones.”) The album’s lack of consistency is particularly aggravating, given that all three of the Rescues made their bones as songwriters, and pooling their material should have been more satisfying than this. All in all, though, not a bad debut, and it’ll be interesting to see where they go from here. (Red Wind 2008)

The Rescues MySpace page

The year has already brought a bumper crop of female nouveau-soul singers from the United Kingdom – and they’re still coming: Meet Amy MacDonald, the Scottish chanteuse whose debut has already spun off a handful of hit singles and moved a million units across the pond. The timing of This Is the Life’s release will provoke comparisons to Duffy and Adele, but vocally, MacDonald bears more of a resemblance to Dolores O’Riordan, with a little Kirsty MacColl and Sinéad Lohan thrown in for good measure, blended with acoustic guitar-based singer/songwriter arrangements. All these other names are helpful for providing musical points of reference, but they also do a fair job of summing up MacDonald’s main problem – namely, her music does a better job of evoking others’ than it does of standing on its own. Her songs are agreeable enough, particularly the quieter ones, but none of them are particularly memorable. (Decca will also have its work cut out for itself when it comes to promoting such oh-so-British tracks as “Footballer’s Wife.”) Still, if she lacks the sort of killer first single that peers such as Adele have enjoyed, MacDonald does boast a quiet consistency entirely in keeping with her album’s muted, ‘70s-inspired artwork. One to keep an ear on. (Decca 2008)

Amy MacDonald MySpace page

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Let us address the star rating right up front: Sarah McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is a modern-day classic, one of the finest pop albums of the ‘90s and absolutely worthy of the “deluxe edition” treatment. The problem with this deluxe edition, though, is that it brings nothing new to the table. Disc One is Ecstasy in its entirety (they wisely moved the piano version of “Possession” to its own track, rather than being the hidden track behind the title song), and Disc Two is The Freedom Sessions, the 1995 stopgap album of Ecstasy demos and alternate versions. The DVD is “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: Live,” originally released on VHS in 1994 and issued on DVD in 2005. Odds are, fans of McLachlan have some or all of these individual pieces already, and will not need to upgrade. However, if you are one of the six people left who have thought about buying Fumbling Towards Ecstasy but haven’t yet done so, this set is a gold mine. (Arista/Legacy)

Sarah McLachlan MySpace page