You may expect a song called Loneliness, especially one released on Valentine's Day, to be an ultra-cynical marketing ploy, a tear-stained piano ballad to appeal to all the Bridget Jones out there with no bunches of flowers waiting outside their empty flats.

Not so. As the most upbeat song on Ed Harcourt's superlative album Strangers, this is a pounding, uplifting number sprinkled with a sparkling piano riff and distinuguished by some lyrics that are pure poetry, referring to empty cinemas, friends drifting apart and wandering round a house in the dark.

In fact it could almost be descrived as a love song to solitude - singletons who find themselves alone on 14th February should buy this, turn it up loud and punch the air. Ah, maybe it is all a marketing ploy in that case...