You may think you know this artist. And assuming you've had the radio dialed to an AC or Top 40 station at some time in the last near-decade, chances are you've heard this voice. It's instantly recognisable. But the music contained in his fourth album, The Tension And The Spark, is as far from his previous oeuvre as Neptune from Newcastle. And listening to it, you realise that you don't really know this man at all... and it makes you wonder if we can EVER really know an artist. This album contains piercing accidents of truth, painful honesty, and such a totally re-invented, unexpected, courageous, multi-textured sound...it's a revelation. And it belongs uniquely to this artist. Nobody else sounds like this, or writes like this... and if you think I'm having a hard time describing it... you're right. ;) If someone asked me to describe the work of Damien Rice, or Rufus Wainwright, I'd have the same problem...all of these arists have what can be called an amazing sense of interiority...an ability to peel the layers of the self right down to the tears. I could sum it up with words like intelligence, and intuition... but that (maddeningly) can't tell you how it SOUNDS. It sounds... in parts, like prayer. In other parts... like New Year's Eve down the Hobkirk coal mines. In other parts... like the best and gentlest lullaby your memory can conjure. And still others...like being jabbed with a particularly sharp nine-inch nail. It's impossible to convey it... you have to hear it. Which is what I sincerely hope you'll do... once it's available in the stores. This is a great album.