Dancer in the Fire – A Paul Brady AnthologyProper Records ****

Recent years have seen Paul Brady reconcile the disparate aspects of his musicianship with a new-found ease. This double CD is a highly personal selection of outtakes from his own songbook, alongside a cracking cover of Hank Williams's You Win Again and a number of traditional songs. Amid the reunion (Crazy Dreams shimmies with further energy here), there are some surprising inclusions, including his Ronan Keating co-write, The Long Goodbye. Some of Brady's back catalogue is firmly (and unapologetically) lodged in MOR territory, but the greatest impact of hearing such a spectrum of songs is the realisation that, left to their own devices, artists inhabit the same contradictory world of multiple personalities that the rest of us do. Brady has long resisted lazy classification, and here he reaps the benefits of his freelance spirit with brio. paulbrady.com

Download tracks: The Road to the Promised Land