POP
Antony & The Johnsons
The Crying Light (Rough Trade)
****
For some, Antony Hegarty's music is the breathtakingly beautiful future of popular music. For others it's contrived, self-indulgent twaddle. Finally rousing himself to follow the 2005 Mercury winner, I Am a Bird Now, Hegarty here gives both camps much to ponder, be it the silly adolescent melodrama of the punchable opener Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground, or the stomach-tightening majesty of the heartbreaking Another World. On balance, this third album, linked by Hegarty's strangely disconnected, other worldly warble, confirms him as an artist of genuine stature.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Secret Machines
World's Fair (Cooperative Music)
****
The third album from this trio of self-professed space rockers finds them with a new guitarist and a new record label but the same old dedication to the whipping up of sonic storms. Essentially, Secret Machines are a rock band — nothing too cosmic or trippy — based on the thundering drums of Josh Garza and restless, squalling guitars that are always willing to be reined in by the disciplines of melody. Songs such as Have I Run Out, Now You're Gone, The Walls Are Starting to Crack and I Never Thought to Ask have a sad and ethereal beauty hovering within them. Secret Machines are the Hubble Telescope of space rock.
PETE CLARK

J Tillman
Vacilando Territory Blues (Bella Union)
***
Given the substantial acclaim hurled at Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver last year, this album ought to be a surefire winner — it's the drummer of the former, singing hushed, wintry folk in the vein of the latter. Joshua Tillman achieves great things with the minimal on Vessels and Firstborn, just an acoustic guitar, his soft, mournful voice and some ghostly wordless backing vocals. His drums make a rare appearance on the more upbeat, hummable Steel on Steel, though he is less well suited to chugging rockers such as New Imperial Grand Blues. The whole is not as memorable as his main band but it's still worth clearing room for one more singer-songwriter in your life.
DAVID SMYTH

JAZZ
Joshua Redman
Compass (Nonesuch)
****
Joshua Redman, like Barack Obama, had a black father and white mother. They too separated in his infancy, and he too became an outstanding student and Harvard law graduate. Instead of law or politics, though, Joshua followed his tenorist father, Dewey, into jazz. Now in his prime (he'll be 40 on 1 February), this tenor and soprano sax virtuoso is updating the sax-bass-drums format. Using two bassists (Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers) and two drummers (Brian Blade and Greg Hutchinson), sometimes in tandem, his writing and playing is brilliantly lucid.
JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Jordi Savall etc
Jerusalem (AliaVox)
****
Recorded at Jordi Savall's festival in Cardona, Catalonia, this hefty book and two CDs feature Jewish, Christian and Islamic music dedicated to Jerusalem. It's subtitled The City of Two Peaces, which sounds better in French than in English and refers to Celestial and Earthly peace. Alongside Jordi Savall's early music group Hesperion XXI, Montserrat Figueras sings vocals and there are contributions from Palestinian Sufi group Al-Darwish, Israeli oud player Yair Dalal, performers from Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Morocco and Afghanistan. A lot of care has been taken in the historical shape, the repertoire and the artists — it's a territory where early music and world music meet to create beautiful and powerful performances.
SIMON BROUGHTON