Kevin Bryan delivers his verdict on some of this week's CD releases.

Rumer,"Nashville Tears" (Cooking Vinyl)- Rumer's fifth studio album finds the award winning British singer and songwriter exploring the creative output of highly regarded country tunesmith Hugh Prestwood. Rumer was first exposed to Prestwood's songs while living in the American South, and this polished exploration of the great man's illustrious back catalogue was recorded at Nashville's Star Struck Studios alongside an impressive array of the city's finest session men. Prestwood's often melancholy approach to love and domestic disharmony is well represented here by tuneful gems such as "Hard Times For Lovers," "The Fate of Fireflies" and "Bristlecone Pine."

The Mavericks,"En Espanol" (Mono Mundo/Thirty Tigers)- This eclectic Miami outfit have flirted with the delights of Hispanic music from time to time in the past, but they've now decided to celebrate frontman Raul Malo's Cuban roots in no uncertain fashion with the releaee of "En Espanol," the group's first album of entirely Spanish language material.The contents deliver a finely judged blend of freshly minted songs and nostalgic revamps of some of the tuneful ditties which peremeated Malo's Florida childhood, with instrumental support supplied by luminaries such as legendary accordion ace and one time Ry Cooder sidekick Flaco Jimenez.

David Blue,"These 23 Days in September/Stories/Nice Baby and the Angel/Cupid's Arrow" (Morello/Cherry Red) -The latest 2 CD retrospective from the good people at Cherry Red focusses attention on the criminally under-rated creative output of gifted Greenwich Village folkie David Blue. Best remembered these days for penning "Outlaw Man" for The Eagles' 1973 album,"Desperado", Blue's own recordings for the Reprise and Asylum labels during the sixties and early seventies still repay closer investigation, and four of his finest albums are gathered together here. Poetic introspection is very much the order of the day as Blue weaves his melancholy narratives aided and abetted by top notch sidemen such as Ry Cooder, David Lindley and Graham Nash.