Our critics round-up this week's biggest music releases...

BEVERLEY KNIGHT
Soul UK
(Hurricane)
★★★✩✩
If Beverley Knight's career remains a frustrating combination of "not quites" and "almosts", she remains Britain's leading soul madam - and who can blame a woman with a substantial, almost wholly self-penned six-album back catalogue for buying time with a covers album?

Wisely, she has stuck to what she knows and grew up with, hence a vague theme featuring British soul classics from 1977 (Heatwave's smoocher Always and Forever) to 1996's Damn from Barnet's Lewis Taylor, the great lost British soul enigma.

As is the nature of the covers albums beast, it's more of a curate's egg than anything a hen owned by Rowan Williams might produce. Junior Giscombe's rip-roaring Mama Used to Say seems ideal for Knight but she makes a terrible hash of it, adding nothing while losing the song's essential sweet nature.

Elsewhere, she has included a lacklustre trot through Soul II Soul's Fairplay, seemingly to
allow Jazzie B to introduce it, and she turns Princess's sparkling Say I'm Your Number One into a dreary dirge.

Yet she's too much of a quality artist not to bring something to the party. She nails the finger-clicking strut of Young Disciples's Apparently Nothin', while she hurls herself into Roachford's Cuddly Toy with such elan, you wonder just how impressive a rock vocalist she could be.

Best of all though is Knight's lengthy gospel-tinged overhaul of George Michael's epic One More Time, where she offers hope without forgetting the pain. It's a stunning vocal performance, rendered no less soul-stirring by the mystery of why it's the only time when she really lets herself go.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

G LOVE
Fixin' to Die
(Brushfire)
★★★★✩
The one-time trilby-wearing weed enthusiast and exponent of the hip-hop blues has changed direction. With new pals and collaborators Scott and Seth Avett, G Love (aka Garrett Dutton) has taken the dirty road to backyard blues. The production on this album is appropriately unvarnished, so the strong, mostly acoustic picking barrels through. The opener is a thumping take on Bukka White's Fixin' to Die, while there are Love originals celebrating his late grandmother, fiancée and deceased dog. Taking a break from the downhome stuff, Love gives Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover a seeing to, and also turns in a heartfelt performance on the Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes. Strong stuff, stirringly delivered.
PETE CLARK

ALICE GOLD
Seven Rainbows
(Fiction)
★★★★✩
Alice Gold is London's own Lissie: a flaxen-haired singer-songwriter who's putting a modern twist on Sixties Americana. Produced by Dan Carey, the man behind the intelligent pop of Franz Ferdinand, Lily Allen and Hot Chip, her debut is a delight - 11 feisty tracks that pair sweet melodies with muscular backing. Orbiter is elemental rock 'n' roll from the White Stripes school of songwriting; Cry Cry Cry is a summery ode to the cathartic benefits of blubbing and Conversations of Love adds a soupçon of psychedelia to the mix, with Gold proving she can croon as well as cry. Free of filler and full of invention, this is the sound of a bold new artist with talent to burn. And big things beckon.
RICK PEARSON

GYPSY &
THE CAT
Gilgamesh
(Sony)
★★★★✩
July is upon us and it's about time somebody released some barbecue music. DJs Xavier Bacash and Lionel Towers hail from Melbourne, where they know a thing or two about sunshine. On their debut album they may have bottled that elusive thing - the sound of the summer. Gilgamesh was a Top 20 hit last year in Australia, where the duo have just supported Kylie on tour. Now it's getting a welcome push over here. Its shimmering, Eighties-tinged keyboard pop will appeal to fans of their countrymen Empire of the Sun, or MGMT before they went all inaccessible. Time to Wander and
Jona Vark couldn't be catchier, and if they occasionally slip towards schmaltz, they could leave the most cynical soul smiling.
DAVID SMYTH

LIANE CARROLL
Up and Down
(Quietmoney Records)
★★★★✩
Widely admired for her soulful vocals and skilful piano, Liane Carroll is a world-class Brit in search of an album that matches her live impact. This well-balanced set of originals, jazz standards and modern classics might just be the one. Recorded in London, Hastings, Brighton, Prague and Memphis, Tennessee, it finds Carroll emotionally charged and ready to reach for the highs and lows of the album's title. Guest artists include saxmen Kirk Whalum and Julian Siegel, producer James McMillan on flugelhorn, pianists Mark Edwards and Simon Purcell and trumpet icon Kenny Wheeler, whose ballad solo on Bill Evans's Turn out the Stars is the standout moment.
JACK MASSARIK

KHYAM ALLAMI
Resonance/Dissonance
(Nawa Recordings)
★★★★✩
Khyam Allami is a London-based musician of Iraqi descent. Last year he was the chosen musician of BBC Radio 3's World Routes Academy, which enabled him to travel back to the Middle East and perform at the Proms. This is his debut album and it shows Allami to be a master of the Arabic oud (lute), with a slow magisterial opening, full of rich sonorities. The CD is entirely solo oud, with An Apex, its most avant-garde track, at its centre. Using traditional Arabic scales, Allami shows how innovative the music can be. An accompanying DVD has an atmospheric performance of him performing the same repertoire with percussionist Vasilis Sarikis. A musician worth catching live.
SIMON BROUGHTON