If music be the food of love, Kelis has cooked up something tasty enough to satisfy all but the hungriest of hearts.

It's seldom terrible. And seldom does much to persuade you that it wouldn't be a better idea to cut out the middle man and listen to Gillespie's old LPs instead.

Funny, warm, eloquent, dynamic, oddly soulful and technically delicious. An unremitting joy.

It's rather fine.

The impeccably hip credentials of HN's Roberto Carlos Lange are rather at odds with the wonderfully gloopy Latin-cheese of this Spanish language, old school synth-session's best tracks.

There is in these performances a slightly mannered theatricalism which you will need to reconcile with any desire you may harbour for either simple affect or no affect at all.

So far, so Mogwai. However, a few surprises have been chucked in, too.

Somewhere between Ladyhawke and M83, it's 1980's fetishism all the better for the apparent lack of irony.

While it may, at times, sound a little too familiar--A&F is almost good enough to banish the memory of the dozen or so albums--influenced by grams not Parsons--since.

All diva froideur and drum machine snap, it nevertheless transcends pastiche via a pervasive air of murky ambiguity.

A chastened affair: instrumentally pared-back, vocally wan and full of unremarkable Brill-Building-meets-Belle-and-Sebastian ditties.

Krall's smoky contralto lacks the pungency of Wilson's, but compensates with greater mobility.

It's a bright, optimistic, emotive world, Heidi's, and well suited to the neutral "roots" pop sound which frames it.

An example of its genre it most certainly is.

The Vega songwriting style is hardwearing.

Unless I'm going insane, On a Mission sounds like a modern pop classic.

Fans of Raising Sand and O Brother...will find much to love. As – more surprising this – will fans of classic-era Fleetwood Mac.

In short, if Land of CanAan were a Stevie Wonder album, it would be Hotter than July rather than Innervisions.

Their self-titled debut, aptly enough, is one of the most bitterly anti-romantic albums this side of the third PiL offering.

Very enjoyable package.

Essential for fans, of course. It is left to the rest of us to look on from a safe distance with our hard hats on and to marvel at the most self-regarding singing voice in post-war popular music.

The music is softly strummed, and Bird’s voice is a high, lonesome thing like the wind on a prairie. Sort of.

If the Mayans were right and the world really is going to end this December, you won't hear many better soundtracks than this.

It sounds like a soundtrack for the end of the world, or the birth of new worlds. Extraordinary.

Isbell is an accomplished and serious songwriter and what keeps Here We Rest from being the stonker it so nearly is is not the writing but the slightness of his voice – and his band.

Never, whose song titles are nearly all one word, isn't as daunting as the avant-garde approach might suggest.

Set your sights high, by all means, but when each track sounds like an attempt to emulate a specific great (Bruce, Bob, Leonard, the Band etc) the confused listener can't help but be left thinking "Will the real Low Anthem please stand up?"

Tough, soulful, rockin' songs.