This weeks roots CDs reviewed

BRETT DENNEN

Hope for the Hopeless Dualtone Records***

This seems a distinctly apt title for our good selves, such are the times we live in. Dennen is a 29-year-old Californian-born singer-songwriter and social activist whose first album in 2005 impressed me. This is his third, and a very solid collection it is. Dennen's alt.everything melodies have a habit of taking up residence in your memory. Calypso pop feel-good tunes such as Make You Crazy(featuring Femi Kuti, the eldest son of Nigerian legend Fela) ooze midsummer contentment. But Dennen is not short of more reflective material, including Heaven, from which the album's title is drawn, and slightly harder material such as Wrong About Meand Who Do You Think You Are?. At times his vocals make him sound like Ron Sexsmith, and occasionally the shadow of Ryan Adams lingers, but Dennen's honest and open observations make him both interesting and engagingly vulnerable. www.brettdennen.net

Download tracks: Who Do You Think You Are?, Make You Crazy

SHAWN COLVIN

Shawn Colvin Live Nonesuch ****

The stage can be a desperately isolating place, especially when you're up there alone. Austin-based singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin makes light of that predicament, even with folk-rock songs shorn of their rock element. It helps that Colvin is a lovely, fluent guitarist, and her voice has so much colour and variety of tone and timing that it seems to pitch differently with each of the 15 tracks. Yet there's a mannered coolness to this performance, in keeping, perhaps, with the kind of detached intelligence that pervades Colvin's excellent if infrequent albums, it requires time to warm to. Once in the loop, the richness of these mostly self-penned songs, such as her Grammy-winning Sonny Came Home, plus a couple of well-chosen covers (Gnarls Barkley's Crazyis gorgeous), repays repeated listening. www.shawncolvin.com

Download tracks: Fill Me Up, Sonny Came Home, Crazy