Grade: A+

While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters remain happily anchored in that much more agreeable decade which came directly before. The 1970s was the era of the introspective, self-pitying, prolix, hairy and winsome singer-songwriter — both the good ones (Young, Martyn, Buckley) and the, ahem, less gifted (Taylor, Forbert, Stevens).