The Monday morning commute to work; the motorway any August Bank Holiday; the long long road home from the pub after breaking your permitted curfew...

But Chesterfield singer-songwriter John Pickering is keen to take audiences on a musical jouney of a very different sort with his album Writing On The Wall.

Opener Writing On The Wall sounds like a supergroup fantasty come true, with Springsteen fronting an Automatic-For-The-People era REM.

Peter Buck's jangling mandolin and The Boss' powerful voice make a surprisingly impressive combination, even more so when you realise both parts are actually by John himself.

Keep The Faith is a bluesy standard with a peppery swing, and If A Man Loses His Soul uses some tasty slide guitar for country authenticity.

John's rich vocals recall vintage Johnny Cash rounding up Ghost Riders In The Sky on the moving Golgotha's Hill and there's a more conventional folk approch to Universal Soldier.

The mere title Billy McCurrie conjures up a country 'n' western saga of the wild wild west but is, in fact, the tale of a convicted Loyalist gunman turned Christian minister. Even more implausibly, it's all true.
John then pulls off another neat trick by putting the lyrics of There Is A Green Hill to House of the Rising Sun.

The concept might sound like a karaoke car-crash, but it works brilliantly - especially with some tasty keyboards recalling the Animals' hit version.

And just when you begin to think the gentle acoustic feel for the songs is getting over-familiar, up pops the rocked-up gospel of Train For Heaven.

There's clearly a spiritual meaning behind all these songs, but John doesn't let the message drown out the musical material.
In fact, it's clear that this Train For Heaven runs on very finely-crafted tracks.
PHILFY PHIL

Train For Heaven is available from Hudson's Music, Chesterfield, priced £4.99.