Linda Thompson
Versatile Heart, (Rounder/Universal) £12.99
No one does rueful like Linda Thompson. Her firm voice is best remembered for snarling her ex-husband Richard's words as their relationship unravelled in the Eighties. This album's superb title track and 'Go Home' are full of Thompson's trademark barbed stoicism at the vagaries of men. A vocal cord disorder has kept her from singing regularly for many years, but Versatile Heart finds her swapping effortlessly from country to folk and points beyond, as though enjoying putting her voice through its paces. Antony Hegarty helps out on 'Beauty', written by Rufus Wainwright - just two of the illustrious guests fleshing out Thompson's confident, elegant set.
Kitty Empire
Talib Kweli
Ear Drum, (Warners) £12.99
He was one of the brightest sparks of late-Nineties hip hop, but Kweli has been struggling to figure himself out in recent years. On his third solo album, he's still vacillating between underground and mainstream, collaborating with Kanye West one moment, objecting to major labels the next. Yet Ear Drum is something of a return to form and though Kweli is not as challenging as he thinks (his rhyming structures are very conventional), there are some really strong tracks. 'Hostile Gospel Pt 1' does great things with a gospel choir and Norah Jones is used to lovely effect on 'Soon the New Day'.
Killian Fox
St Vincent
Marry Me, (Beggars Banquet) £11.99
Annie 'St Vincent' Clark's first album was never going to be an exercise in restraint. After cutting her teeth with extravagant pop troupe the Polyphonic Spree and donning giant wings to perform with Sufjan Stevens, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter has no qualms about giving her imagination free rein here, pitching harps, children's choirs and celestial kitchen sinks into the mix. It could be unbearable - kookiness on an epic scale - but Clark pulls off the grand gesture with a lightness of touch. The waltzing melodrama of 'Paris Is Burning' and the lovely, woozy 'Land Mines' are among the highlights of this excellent debut.
Ally Carnwath
Mekons
Natural, (Touch & Go) £11.99
Celebrating an unlikely 30th anniversary, the Leeds tricksters eschew urban pleasures for nature's delights. The result is an English counterpart to the gothic country of the Handsome Family. Ramshackle backdrops of fiddle and echoing guitar are the setting for tales of demented midsummer celebration, dark woods where 'twisted trees sing' and foxy goings-on behind a 'white stone door'. The playful mood occasionally gives way to a darker hue - on 'Burning in the Desert' 'martyrs queue up for heaven, children queue for hell'. Otherwise, this is Hank Williams meets The Wicker Man , clever and entertaining. A Mekons record, in fact.
Neil Spencer
Oscar Peterson & Friends
JATP Lausanne 1953, (TCB) £12.99
After languishing for half a century in the archives of Radio Suisse Romande, this remarkable concert sounds as fresh and lively as the night it was recorded. Not so much a band as an ever-changing repertory company of great musicians, Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) toured the world in the Fifties. This edition included Peterson, guitarist Barney Kessel, trumpeter Charlie Shavers and, in particular, tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who produces a fragile, heartbreaking version of 'I Cover the Waterfront'. Nowadays, such a star-studded bill would be impossible, since each one would want a concert to himself.
Dave Gelly
