A collection of EPs recorded at home, most Decembers since 2001, and given to friends as Christmas cards. Traditional carols and many originals, with stickers, stories, a songbook, and a bunch of stocking fillers.

Deliciously ethereal and dark folk from the duo of Oxford’s Sharron Kraus and Philly’s Tara Burke (aka Fursaxa).

The first in forty-seven years from this veteran American Primitive. Witty, stark, smouldering guitarism, as ever.

Superb first album from Andy Cabic, Devendra Banhart, Otto Hauser et al.

Electrifying extracts from a Sunday service in the last snake-handling church in the Appalachians: the trance-like rhythms of a demented kind of rockabilly punk, with duelling guitars, concussive trap drums, and possessed, howling vocals.

“I’d sworn to stay far away from the snakes at the service,” recalls the recording engineer, “but instead they were waved in my face as they coiled in the preachers’ hands, and I crouched down at the foot of the altar tending to the equipment. The pastor soon was bitten and blood splattered, pooling on the floor. The female parishioners hurriedly came to wipe up the mess, and it instantly became clear just what the rolls of paper towels stacked on the pulpit had been for. You can actually hear this moment transpire towards the end of the track ‘Don’t Worry It’s Just a Snakebite (What Has Happened to This Generation?)’. The congregation leapt to its feet and a mini mosh-pit formed. The tag-team preachers huffed handkerchiefs soaked in strychnine, as they circled like aggro frontmen and an elderly worshipper held the flame of a candle to her throat, closing her eyes and swaying. The church PA blew out from the screams as a bonnet-wearing senior whacked away at a trap kit that dwarfed her. It was the most metal thing I’d ever seen, rendering Slayer mere kids play.”

Wonderful, half-enraptured, half-stoned, full-blown re-imagination of vintage country soul sublimity. (He likes Washington Phillips; you can hear Curtis.) Five star reviews everywhere.

Mostly this is slow, stricken Lucinda, as moving and compelling as she gets, grieving for her mum and furious with an ex. Worth putting up with the Patti Smith impressions.