Album: Neneh Cherry & The Thing, The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)

Cherry's version of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" is an unmissable marvel and one of the performances of the year, the Swedish free-jazz band's thrumming bass riff and squalling sax (by leader Mats Gustafsson), creating a hypnotic gloss on an already hypnotic tune.

Elsewhere, it's not the freedom of the backing that's the problem so much as the randomness of the material, with several songs feeling as if they were chosen to look hip rather than sound interesting.