Album: Emeli Sandé, Our Version of Events (Virgin)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
She's a strange one, Emeli Sandé: a back-to-front pop star for back-to-front times.
Album: Various artists, Spiritual Jazz Vol 2 (Jazzman)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
Indie-label Jazzman has become the leading imprint for lovingly annotated compilations of bygone jazz exotica.
Album: Speech Debelle, Freedom of Speech (Big Dada)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
Speech Debelle was already being written off as a bad joke within hours of winning the Mercury Prize, filed alongside Gomez, Roni Size and Antony and the Johnsons as an example of the career-ending curse of that particular gong.
Album: Sweet Sweet Lies, The Hare, the Hound & the Tortoise (Something Nothing)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
Vengeance is an art form, and Sweet Sweet Lies – a bittersweet Brightonian sextet who specialise in folk-pop noir – are masters of it.
Album: Anaïs Mitchell, Young Man in America (Wilderland)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
There comes a point when even American folk culture ceases to be local and goes mythological.
Album: Gotye, Making Mirrors (Communion / Island)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
Anyone coming to Gotye's third album via twinkling torch-song-cum-YouTube-phenomenon "Somebody That I Used to Know" may be surprised, then disappointed.
Album: Tania Maria, Tempo (Naive)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
This is one of those sparse, beautifully recorded albums that can also work as an ambient mood-enhancer.
Album: Field Music, Plumb (Memphis Industries)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
Still based in the North-east of England, brothers David and Peter Brewis are on album number four now while still denying that Field Music is a band at all.
Album: Punch Brothers, Who's Feeling Young Now? (Warner Bros)
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
A follow-up to the oddly compelling Antifogmatic, in which a string quintet (mandolin, banjo, fiddle, bass, guitar) attempt to plot another course betwixt the markers defining classical, folk, pop, bluegrass and jazz: a sort of virtuosic spindrift of ideas which defines itself by the things it entangles in its jetstream of time signatures and dynamic adjustments.
Azealia Banks, The Plug, Sheffield
The Black Keys, Alexandra Palace, London
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
The rapper who topped the 'NME' Cool List last year is fierce, fast-tongued and full of herself
Album: Alberteen, Metal Book (Rhythm & Noir)
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
Their name's sideways nod to The Slits' Viv Albertine is just one of a welter of new-wave influences coursing through Alberteen's Metal Book.
Album: The Future Kings of England, Who Is This Who Is Coming? (Backwater)
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
Suffolk-based rustic psych-rockers The Future Kings Of England offer on their fourth album the soundtrack for a creepy ghost story written in 1904 by M R James, in which a sceptical professor has his certainties rattled when he finds a Bronze Age whistle and with it summons up... who knows what?
Album: Emeli Sande, Our Version of Events (Virgin)
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
There's plenty to admire about Emeli Sandé's debut album, but the most immediately striking thing, for me, is just how brazenly naked is the use of the "Funky Drummer" beat on the opening track and breakthrough single, "Heaven".
Album: Gotye, Making Mirrors (Island)
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
Belgian/Australian singer Gotye's music has the dense, occasionally cluttered manner of the obsessive bedroom producer – or in his case, the barn-based musical obsessive, the album having been put together in an isolated outbuilding.
Album: Phantom Limb, The Pines (Naim Edge)
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
Four years on from their excellent debut album, Phantom Limb have refined their sound further to more clearly occupy the kind of country-soul territory once inhabited by the likes of Dobie Gray and The Staple Singers.
Free trial of new Independent iPad app
Get your daily dose of the best of British journalism, sponsored by American Airlines
Win a three-week coastal jaunt
Spend three weeks exploring every nook and cranny of gorgeous Atlantic Canada.
Amazing restaurant offers
Three glasses of free champagne and a special menu at 46 top London restaurants.
Latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
