We’re all used to getting leftovers around Christmas, but while this was once limited to turkey fritters on Boxing Day, the phenomenon seems to be spreading to the music industry. Got a few tracks left over from the album? Stick them out in time for the Christmas market. Last week, Coldplay released their Prospekts March EP, containing the leftovers from Viva la Vida; this week, on a slightly less world-conquering scale, comes Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan’s EP of leftovers from Sunday at Devil Dirt. In both cases, the results are a lot better than you might expect from a bunch of offcuts. Most of the six tracks here could have fitted quite happily on Sunday (which is saying something — it’s a brilliant album), and if the EP does have its own quality, then perhaps it’s just that little bit more laid-back: even less Saturday night, even more Sunday morning. That aside, we're in entirely familiar territory: Campbell and Lanegan cook up songs that could have been written by Hank Williams, or perhaps appeared somewhere in Bob Dylan’s country period (which was ridiculed at the time, though his decision to hire a pedal-steel player now seems almost as influential as his earlier decision to plug in an electric guitar). If you’re not already addicted to Lanegan’s growl and Campbell’s whisper, this is as good a place as any to get acquainted.

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