The boys are wet wet wet down in Brighton. Fortunately, girl power raises the roof

They may present an image of faceless androids, but Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo are always about the interface between technology and emotion – and RAM is their most emotional record yet. Because though the vocodered vocals frequently put android futurism front and centre, it was recorded using more actual flesh-and-blood human beings than any previous Daft Punk release.

Recorded by the sea in Aldeburgh, Herbert's sort-of concept album is changeable as the ocean.

The National's quiet, steady ascent presents the Cincinnati band with a problem on their sixth album: how to crown their rise without losing the ATP/Pitchfork crowd which nurtured them.

Eisteddfod-reared singer-harpist Georgia Ruth Williams was raised bilingually in Aberystwyth, as far into Wales as you can get without falling off the edge.

A second album of proxy "blues'n' soul", by the LA belter and the Guitarist Who's Always Available for Work.

Multi-instumentalist, string arranger, model, senior editor of Love Is the Magazine and busker … the surprise here is only that the violinist/singer Toliver's debut LP is, on the surface, such a conventional, Radio 2-friendly affair.

Vinyl specialists Gearbox have done poet Michael Horovitz proud with this beautiful two-LP box-set of an epic live recording from 1962. English beats Horovitz and Pete Brown declaim verse to the often inspired – and very off the cuff – music of a band including Stan Tracey, Bobby Wellins and Jeff Clyne. A new LP and single of Horovitz with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Paul Weller have already sold out but may reprint.

This French singer-songwriter's second album embraces chanson, doo-wop and early rock'n'roll, so, appropriately enough, it was recorded using vintage mics straight to two-inch tape.

The roots of English bands who followed US funk and soul can't help but show through. Old tracks by Soul II Soul/Caron Wheeler now sound as "London" as Madness, and the solid yeoman-grooves of funk-plumbers the Heavies seem quaint and paisley-foppish on this first studio album for six years.

Audio CD and book of short stories

Returning after eight years away, Texas shoot straight to the top of 2013's Unnecessary Albums chart with The Conversation. It's not that it's actively bad – that would be interesting, at least – but that it lacks impetus, panache and compulsion, just for starters. The title track is OK, in an ersatz country-soul way, and the country-pop of “Dry Your Eyes” works well too.

Jamie Cullum's first album for Island may be his best. It certainly goes beyond his retro-jazz comfort zone, with piercing electric organ and electric piano lending a vibrant, visceral edge to several songs.

Album of the Week: Alt-rock's lurkers cement a stealthy rise to success

Aptly for a Bulgarian composer educated in England, the music of Dobrinka Tabakova pivots on the cusp of East and West European, as well as sounding both ancient and modern. As with many modern composers, there are echoes here of Arvo Pärt, both in the tintinnabuli effects occasionally discernible in the turbulent first movement of her “Concerto for Cello and Strings”, and in the ascetic but radiant tone of her string trio “Insight”.