Liv og leven – Jackie Leven «Night Lilies» (Cooking Vinyl/MNW)

Very positive review: smell can evoke time and place even more strongly than music; Leven let himself be inspired by the scent of the night lilies, which by his own account shaped his life. The album is hardly weaker than its predecessor, one of the highlights of 1997: unusually strong, painfully personal stories about the difficult relationship between women and men, melodies that seem familiar yet are entirely his own, an earthy Celtic mood and tasteful playing; at times he appears as “the Roy Orbison of our time”. Leven became big in small circles in Norway – that the previous album reached number 40 on a Norwegian sales list caused a stir in the British rock press – but remains one of the most underrated rock singers in the world. Caption: concert in Oslo on 29 October.