Welcome to Joe Lington, a charming soul singer whose singing can turn any room into a party in an instant. Lington's journey is the stuff of stories. It started with piano classes with Lisa Gold Gervais and ended with him singing solo in a church group. Not long after Lington started to write songs about singers like Sisqo and Keith Sweat, he started to explore...

There's a curious jolt in hearing a title like "Us Against The World" from an act called The Cockney Cowboy. The name itself is a glorious contradiction, a pairing of gritty East London reality with the wide-open romance of Nashville. You half expect a joke, but what Justin Vella delivers is a dead-serious, straight-shooting country ballad that smells less of hay bales and more...