One of the best albums of 2005, a beautiful collection of songs.

When I first heard this, it hit me as one of the best albums I'd ever heard. The last three songs alone, are brilliance alone.

Antony Hegarty has such a searing, beautiful voice, which manages to break hearts and bring out such passion and emotion, especially in songs like Hope There's Someone, and it's soaring, powerful ending.

And with such collaborations with Rufus Wainwright, Boy George and Lou Reed, you get a mixture of vocals as well. Each song featuring these performers is a brilliant, unique song on the album, and the duet with Boy George is one of the best on the song. Lou Reed's spoken intro for Fistful of Love as well, a nice moment within the album that gets to you.

The high point, as I've mentioned, is the last three songs. Spiralling manages to be such a great song, followed by Free at Last, a (to me) powerful poem read by a Japanese woman at one of the band's gigs, followed by Bird Gerhl (or Guhl, spelling differs), such a brilliant song to end on, a beautiful piece of music.

This album certainly will last, and will be played by me for many, many years to come, for all the emotion and beauty it manages to capture in 35 minutes, and 10 songs. An album of 2005.