Album: Paolo Conte, Nelson (Wrasse Records)

You don't have to understand every language the 73-year-old Italian composer sings in here (French, Spanish, Neapolitan and English as well as Italian) to know that his single-malt voice is gruffly crooning about lost loves, lost time – perhaps even lost luggage – all adding up to a moving yet idiosyncratic reflection on his own mortality.

But, as ever, Conte's hauntingly askew perspective circumnavigates overt sentimentality with cosmopolitan panache. As good as anything he's done.