Acoustic Heaven

No one knows for sure if heaven is unplugged, but if it is these are the tunes you're likely to hear when you press the buzzer on the pearly gates. Kick off with a celestial choir of artists who are better known for unleashing mighty storms of sound: Foo Fighters bring it right down with "Stranger Things Have Happened" and Springsteen weaves his gruff vocal 'round tambourines and mandolins on the title track for 2007's Magic.

There's more divine music for power-cuts, in Next Steps.

Sometimes in rock the guitar's the star, but here it's the barely noticed cameo, as Mark Knopfler sidelines his Fender for "In the Sky", the cloud-paced closing track on 2007's Kill to Get Crimson and Jackson Browne favours the melancholy of the piano for "Oh, My Love". And if you know Kiki Dee only for her rocking '70s duet with Elton John, you'll be amazed at her stunning hook-up with Carmelo Luggeri on Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)".

Your quest for acoustic nirvana will be completed by our Deep Cuts.

Here, our selection of sublime acoustic tracks takes a westward tilt, thanks to Calexico, who summon windswept deserts from the far side of the United States on "Wave", while the Clientele charts a journey back through the decades, to the utopian harmonies of the '60s, on "From Brighton Beach to Santa Monica". Canadian folkster David Francey somehow recaptures lost time in the acoustic web of "Annie's House".

It's often said that the true test of a great rock song is to strip it to the bare bones of vocal and acoustic guitar and see how it fares. By that token, Radiohead's unplugged version of "Fake Plastic Trees" passes with flying colours and joins other pared-down tracks, alongside a host of songs that exist only in the acoustic sphere, to form this superlative collection of contemplative classics. From the old guard (the Finn Brothers, Linda Thompson) to the young guns (Tunng, Editors, the Coral) these artists all succeed in proving that less volume often equals more power.