Marling's fourth album is tall galoshes against the rising tide of the most irritating industry norm going, the one that requires female singer-songwriters to ingratiate themselves with the attractiveness of their personality.

Damien Hirst thought he had lost his £20,000 winnings from the Turner Prize when he couldn’t find the cheque on him the following morning – but it turned out he had put the whole lot behind the bar at a London members’ club, he revealed on Sunday.

Two conversations helped create the mindset with which Blake approached his second album.

A third Christmas live album by the Swedish trombonist, recorded in a Stockholm church.

Christmas songs tend to be either brash and tinselly or calm and still. This collection falls as delicately and lightly as snow into the latter category.

Tracey Thorn takes a wider brief than usual for her Christmas Album Tinsel & Lights, mostly avoiding the routine carols and standards in favour of left-field choices from writers like Stephin Merritt, Sufjan Stevens and Low, the wonderfully oblique melody of whose "Taking Down the Tree" affords a lovely duet with Green Gartside of Scritti Politti. Gartside's own "Snow in Sun" is another highlight, cleverly paired with Randy Newman's "Snow".

Never believe anything anyone tells you in January. The month of second-guessing and self-fulfilling prophecies, it's the period when the music industry and media send out suspiciously samey lists of Bright New Hopes for the year ahead, almost always as cautious as they are tedious. But just occasionally, like a broken clock, they get it right.

Toothsome English rose Anna (Felicity Jones) and earnest American furniture maker Jacob (Anton Yelchin) fall in love while she is studying in LA.

1. The London Olympics

They should have stuck a scratch'n'sniff card of rich Norwegian earth in with this intensely bucolic album fronted by composers Tore Brunborg on reeds and Rhodes, and vocalist Kirsti Huke.

Michele Stodart has decided to stepaway from a successful band to make a country-themed album. By Gillian Orr

With its 5000 capacity, Hammersmith Apollo is a large venue for any band to command, let alone a slight folk songstress with an acoustic guitar. Laura Marling more than rose to the challenge.

There is a rare sense of occasion in Camden tonight, a feeling that momentum has got right behind this quietly determined artist from deepest Warwickshire.

“I feel very hopeful for 2012, so thank you to the Occupiers,” maintains Ani DiFranco. “All working people are Occupiers, too… occupying this planet,” she adds.