"When life becomes impossible we want to be handled softly, kissed and told that we're worth something", sang Pat Fish on "Goodnight Sweetheart", the closing song on what proved to be the final new LP The Jazz Butcher recorded before his death, at 63, in October.

Beset by health worries in recent years, mortality was on the mind of Northampton's answer to Robyn Hitchcock, "Time" stating baldly: "My hair's all wrong, my time ain't long". However, the bleak but beautiful moments here represent a suave, dignified coda for an artist whose work never quite got the hugs it deserved.

7/10

The Highest in the Land

It's not often that an artist gets to do a Bowie by consciously carving their personal epitaph into the grooves of their final LP. The Highest in the Land is that rarity of an album, and it could not have been made by a more brilliantly poetic and fearlessly sarcastic writer than Pat Fish, also known as The Jazz Butcher.

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