It's been a remarkable year for Ryan Adams, who not only saw the ''lost'' third Whiskeytown album Pneumonia released but even flirted with mainstream success with the unexpectedly high sales of his wonderful Gold album, the best Rolling Stones-play-Gram Parsons album since Exile On Main Street.

The huge success of the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack meant that Gillian Welch's austere third album, Time (The Revelator), also made unexpected, albeit well-deserved, inroads into the mainstream charts.

Old favourites like John Hiatt and Boz Scaggs made strong returns with The Tiki Bar Is Open and Dig, while even Leonard Cohen put in an unexpected reappearance with his Ten New Songs album.

Manu Chao's Proxima Estacion: Esperanza was as barmily infectious as Cohen was considered. The reissue of Love's Forever Changes confirmed its status as a classic and Nick Lowe's marvellously mature The Convincer was, quite simply, the best album of his career, which is saying quite something.

Roots album of the year for me, though, was Lucinda Williams' Essence. Not as immediately hook-filled as its predecessor, it nonetheless oozed passion and, let's not beat about the bush here, sex. The real thing without a doubt.