In a world overflowing with female singer-songwriters, Anna Calvi's exceptional guitar playing and raw, elemental style certainly mark her out as different from the herd.

A very unusual blues record that's also a very unusual Kid Koala record, putting aside his typical playfulness and reminding us that he can truly move us with his turntablism, as well as amuse.

The two hours of Exai is something else. This is Autechre operating at their highest level since 1998’s LP5.

With this collection of erratic egos, who knows; but the ebullient, daring Progress sounds more like a fresh start than a final destination.

This engrossing union of pianist Matthew Shipp and alto saxophonist Darius Jones is an important addition to the aforementioned and fascinates for its emotional and conceptual richness.

Honest lyrics backed by off-kilter and unexpected production from Kwes, Micachu and Joe Goddard of Hot Chip give this album this album a rough, unique edge. An impressive statement of a debut, Gob is just as good as the moment we first witnessed the fitness.

They now sound more like a band that has really found its own voice. Recording live in the studio in as few takes as possible also seems to have given them a new edge.

Combined with playing that soars so majestically from this band's fingers, the end result is a set that is both unusual yet immediate. If you only buy one album this month, in the opinion of these ears, this should be it.

Referring to Quakers as a collective is a touch disingenuous.... But, fresh and subtle spins on hip hop are sufficiently widespread throughout this set that it's just about the only complaint worth making.

Mehldau's method is so dominant that everything gravitates towards the trio's signature sound, lending cohesion to a variegated crop.

[Silver Age is] a man doing what he does best.

This is the most balanced album of Mason's career, or certainly the least precipitous. There is still a yawning void beneath him, but for once it doesn't sound as if he's about to fall into it, and you can't help but share his relief.

It meets expectations, and while surpassing them is something achieved only occasionally, this is a record that well complements a no-work state of mind.

The evocative lyrics sometimes suffer from overly mannered or just overdone phraseology.... But these are ultimately prices worth paying for the pleasingly poetic, adventurous and occasionally florid use of words that mark Villagers out as one of the more interesting, literate and imaginative storytellers of recent years.

A wonderful grab-bag of anomalous sounds that pilfers magpie-like from genre after genre as it charts its 41-minute course.

Heaven is a record with the power to grab your heart, like an ex-lover you just can't shake off--no matter how many years you've been without them.

A fans-pleasing eighth album from Britain's most consistently brilliant band.

The band either demonstrates a glorious and steadfast refusal to grow up, or become possessed by yelps that no amount of Auto-Tune could ever fix.

Twins is a pile-driving yet playful record that loudly proclaims is influences.

Angry and socially conscious he remains, though. Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time, a sprawling, beautiful, brain-belch of an album, is an hour-long testament to this.

The spacious production lends The Wonder Show… an appealing as-live feeling, an intimacy that Oldham has often turned to his advantage in the past and does so again here.

The Montreal-based artist has again delivered some fascinating and healthily progressive music on Visions, her third album.

The result is an album that is far less-crowded than previous works and one that, on the whole, feels suitably bucolic.

That voice, with its hint of Gene Pitney, is a piercing, precise tool which lifts him above the laddish milieu. Ubiquity may beckon.

Produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, The Invisible Way is warm and organic, melodic and fragile. Twenty years into their career, and Low have created one of their best albums yet.

The familiar nature of this material takes nothing away from Trilogy. This is a great commercially available introduction to a young RnB talent who's following Frank Ocean into the mainstream.

At times it can settle too readily into a kind of country chug, and one begins to feel stuck for too long in a dusty, last-breath pick-up on some interminable road trip. But when it is good, it is very, very good.

This is a fully realised tribute to early 80s pop-RnB music, filled with candy-sweet keyboard sounds and beats that could be the work of a battered old Casio drum machine.