When it was nominated for the Mercury Prize, it looked like McRae’s star would rise to the heights it deserved… but it didn’t. No airplay means the majority never get a chance to discover his remarkable talent. Nor did his flawless second album, Just Like Blood (2003), attract the significant attention required to secure his career, despite selling over 80,000 copies. All this makes me very, very angry, because Tom McRae is one of the greatest singer-songwriters of this or any other generation; his talent doesn’t lie in the catchy single or the showy public persona. His talent is simple: he makes beautiful, haunting and (yes, I do dare say it) perfect music.

Which brings us to his third and perhaps finest album to date, All Maps Welcome. The title is a window on McRae’s music: he sings about the sense of isolation and dislocation with the world we all feel at times. Where do we go next? How to we find our place in a world fundamentally screwed up by our own selfish natures? As McRae has said, he doesn’t do happy songs, but this never prevents his music and poetic lyricism uplifting you: “And if you only had one choice my dear/would you fly, or would you sing?” Like all the best artists – musical, literary or otherwise – he spends a lot of time torturing himself in his head, but rather than this album being about him, it rapidly becomes about you. About love (‘My Vampire Heart’), about being lost in the world (‘Silent Boulevard’), about the fear of your ambitions falling short (‘Packing For The Crash’). His words and music possess a clarity of expression and depth of emotional honesty that seize your heart and mind and will never let go.

All Maps Welcome