With Everything Must Go, the Manic Street Preachers proved that they had survived the loss of Richey James. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours finds the Manics getting on with their bid to be the best rock band in the world, or at very least the best band from Wales, no longer a foregone conclusion with the emergence of acts like Stereophonics and Catatonia.

As with all the Manics albums, the lyrical content is often dark on This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, with many of the songs painting a very vivid and bleak picture. With names such as If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, even the song titles convey gloom. There are some breaks in the clouds however, in particular You Stole The Sun From My Heart, which is way too uplifting musically to ever be dampened. As always, whatever the mood, James Dean Bradfield, sings every word with a passion that makes you listen.

Musically the Manic Street Preachers deliver brilliantly intricate melodies with a drive that carries you along in their wake, Ready for Drowning, Nobody Loves You & You Stole The Sun From My Heart being among the likely single candidates. Although two producers were used on various songs throughout This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the production negotiates perfectly the tightrope between swamping the melodies and stripping them too bare to do the songs justice.

As on Everything Must Go, the Manic Street Preachers have produced an album that combines catchy melodies with lyrics that are more than just some more aural wallpaper. With This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours world domination may be just around the corner, even if Welsh domination proves a harder nut to crack.

With Mezzanine, Massive Attack have produced a very dark album indeed. Everything about this album whispers somber. The downbeat tempo and the subdued singing throughout create a thoroughly Cimmerian soundscape.

All this may suggest a depressing offering from Bristol's finest, but the effect is more hypnotic than depressing. The rhythm and vocalisation insinuates itself into the mind, casting a mesmerizing spell that leaves you enthralled. After initially listening to this album I had my doubts, but with every listen some new nuance catches the attention.

Whether its the absorbing singing or the infectious melodies and rhythms, something about this album keeps drawing you back. With Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins adding her customary haunting vocals on the albums first single, Teardrop & Black Milk amongst others the singing talent on display is prodigious, yet is unlikely to raise the mood of the album.

However setting the mood of the album aside, songs such as Man Next Door & Inertia Creeps worm their way into the subconscious and reside there sending subliminal messages urging you to listen to this album again and again. While you're unlikely to find yourself humming too many of the songs on this album while waiting for the bus, and its not an album to listen to while getting ready for your Saturday night boogie down the local nightspot, its probably one of the most addictive albums you'll hear in a long while.

First things first, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie is not going to sell as many copies as Jagged Little Pill. Nor is it likely to have the same effect as what is considered Alanis Morissette's debut album, if you discount her career as a child star in Canada. So how do go about writing the follow up to a debut, which was more phenomenon than album. Well Alanis Morissette has avoided the obvious pitfall of trying to write Jagged Little Pill 2. She has also avoided the temptation to rush out a second album in an attempt to let it ride the crest of the wave created by Jagged Little Pill.

While Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie will sell a lot of copies on the strength of its predecessor, Alanis Morissette has put enough distance in terms of time and style between the albums for Supposed... to need to stand or fall on its own merits. So, is Supposed... going to launch Alanis Morissette's career once again?

Well Supposed... weighing in with 17 songs, spanning over 70 minutes, doesn't make for easy listening. As expected the lyrics sound as though they could have been written while stretched upon a psychiatrist's couch, with Alanis baring her soul even more than she did on Jagged Little Pill. Alanis even goes as far as to write a song entitled The Couch. I'll leave you to guess what it's about. Unsent is a series of unsent letters to former lovers. Sympathetic Character is the story of a doomed relationship. With Alanis Morissette, it seems songwriting is her therapy and no experience is too painful or personal to be aired in public.

As for the music, Supposed... is unlikely to spawn as many singles as its predecessor. One of the characteristics of Jagged Little Pill was no matter what the lyric it was carried along by well-rounded and catchy melodies. On Supposed... the music often mirrors the sentiment, which doesn't always make for comfortable listening. Supposed... still has its fair share of beautiful melodies, Thank U, Are You Still Mad and UR, being just a small selection of these. Simple songs such as Your Congratulations help to highlight Alanis Morissette's exceptional voice, while Alanis also makes use of some funky percussion on tracks such as, Front Row, I Was Hoping and One.

It may seem unfair to judge Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie against Jagged Little Pill, because if this album were her debut it would quite easily establish Alanis Morissette as a songwriter of the highest calibre. When judged on its own merits Supposed... is a good album which would probably have benefited by the pruning of a few of the less wise tracks, such as Baba, but that's just a minor gripe.