After the career wobble of 2003’s Rock’n’Roll and the reaffirmation of 2004’s Love Is Hell, Cold Roses confirms that Adams is back on track, with a clear understanding of what it is he does best: depending on your age, you’ll call it country-rock or alt-country. He has two main reference points. First, Neil Young (the minimalist Young, not his raucous alter ego), whose spirit runs through Blossom, Mockingbird and Meadowlake Street, where Adams’s voice is so fragile, you think he’ll never be able to negotiate the chorus’s chord changes. Second, Roy Orbison, whose sense of yearning is beautifully evoked on If I Am a Stranger and Easy Plateau, with its call for a moment of calm in life’s journey and its agonised question: “How do I hold onto you if I can’t hold onto me?” Adams’s new band, the Cardinals, are superb (and, significantly, earn co-writing credits on every track). The only quibble is the suspicion that Cold Roses should have been a single album instead of a double — that a little bit of tightening up could have given it much greater focus.

Lost Highway

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