Pop

Laura Marling

Short Movie

(Virgin EMI)

★★★★

Described as “remarkably mature” since releasing her debut album at 18, could Laura Marling be having her mid-life crisis at 25? The Hampshire singer-songwriter has spent time finding herself in LA, while composing her fifth long player, scrapping an earlier version made with Ethan Johns before returning to London to self-produce for the first time. It sees her in spiky form, loose-lipped with F-words and preferring the electric guitar over the acoustic. She’s now more Patti Smith than Joni Mitchell, especially on False Hope, which sees her detailing her experience of Hurricane Sandy on New York’s Upper West Side with stormy strumming. The icy folkiness of Easy will please fans of old, but mostly Short Movie is a move forwards for an artist determined not to become complacent.

David Smyth

Courtney Barnett

Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

(House Anxiety/Marathon Artists)

★★★★

Courtney Barnett first got noticed thanks to a song about suffering an asthma attack while gardening. Her debut features more cranky confessionals, though it would be a mistake to pigeonhole this Australian newcomer as just another slacker songwriter. As well as setting up her own label, she’s honed her conversational lyrics to create compelling short stories set to grunge, garage and indie rock. Aqua Profunda! combines rudimentary riffs with a comical scene in a swimming pool, while the woozy Depreston is a sad yet funny account of house hunting in a Melbourne suburb (“It’s going pretty cheap you say? Well, it’s a deceased estate”). Part of her charm comes from self-deprecating tunes like Pedestrian at Best. But Barnett will have to get used to the critical acclaim coming her way.

Andre Paine

The Staves

If I Was

(Atlantic)

★★★

The sisters may hail from Watford, but their 2012 debut album, Dead & Born & Grown caught the ear of Bon Iver leader Justin Vernon, who invited Emily, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor to tour with his band, before whisking them over to his Wisconsin studio to produce this second. Unsurprisingly, the results are mid-Atlantic: their harmonies are as divinely dazzling as fellow sisters The Pierces, but there’s also an undertow of Americana — not least on the distinctly Bon Iver-ish epic Damn It All. The performances sometimes eclipse the actual songs, and they seem unsure as to whether to be plain black-and-white folk revivalists or something altogether more adventurous and colourful. Needless to say, the more chances they take, the better they are.

John Aizlewood

James Bay

Chaos and the Calm

(Universal)

★★

James Bay of Hertfordshire is the latest recipient of the Brits Critics’ Choice award. It’s not so much because critics endorse his unscary country-tinged rock ballads (one reviewer called him “the sound of UK pop culture grinding to a halt”), more because they reckon he’ll sell lots of records. And, partly thanks to this self-reinforcing logic, he will. Chaos and the Calm has enough Jeff Buckley-purloined reverb and Americana strumming to feel mildly fresh, and his competence is never in doubt. When he sings: “I’m craving something I can feel” he makes the lack of any real emotion a little too evident. The perfect soundtrack to a lazy Sunday afternoon selecting jeans in Gap.

Richard Godwin

Jazz

Courtney Pine

Song (The Ballad Book)

(Destin-E Records)

★★★★★

It’s a match made in jazz heaven: Courtney Pine OBE, Britain’s most famous reed player, and the award-winning pianist and composer Zoe Rahman, who has been a feature of Pine’s band for several years now. Both are long known for communicating excitement and thrills in their live and recorded works, but here they take their feet off the gas a little, to perform a set of duets so intimate and reflective they feel almost Zen-like. Ten classic and contemporary ballads, including Amazing Grace and the Brian McKnight number One Last Cry, are lent poignancy and gentle swing. Pine’s prowess on the bass clarinet, which he plays throughout, is breathtaking, whether exploring the instrument’s deepest registers or improvising melodic phrases on the likes of A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square. Solos are impressive, even masterly, but it’s the musical dialogue that lingers.

Jane Cornwell

World

Buena Vista

Social Club

Lost & Found

(World Circuit)

★★★★

The original Buena Vista Social Club album has sold nine million copies and generated an industry of tours and spin-offs, with artists such as Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer and Orlando “Cachaíto” López. Now these artists are no longer with us, there’s the inevitable fear that, after nearly 20 years, this album of unreleased tracks is going to be the sound of barrel-scraping. But there are gems, and a reminder of how good those recordings really were. There are two tracks from the 1996 sessions, including the fizzing Macusa with Compay Segundo and Eliades Ochoa; others from later recordings, such as the percussive Black Chicken 37 with bassist Cachaíto and conga player Miguel “Angá” Díaz; and live performances from Ferrer and González.

Simon Broughton