Album: Neal Casal, Roots and Wings, (Fargo Records)

You'd think, having spent the past five years as one of Ryan Adams's Cardinals, that Neal Casal might have picked up a thing or two about attitude.

But here he is, on solo album 16, still making folk-country music that is so polite it practically apologises for coming out of the speakers. What Adams could do with a little of Casal's unassuming nature; what Casal could do with a little of Adams's swagger. Roots intact, then, but could have done with some more wings.

Pick of the album: The tremulously Roy Orbison-like 'Hereby the Sea'

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