Joan Wasser – aka Joan as Police Woman – is known as a sophisticated songwriter and a pretty groovy person. But most of all it’s her gorgeously warm voice that's earned her a cult following. Over seven albums her angst-ridden vocals have explored heartache and compulsion with a blend of soul and indie-rock.

It was 2011 when Gregory Porter made his first London appearances at Pizza Express in Dean Street. That club has a capacity just over 100, and yet it only seems like yesterday.

Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (respectively an Assistant Editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer) in New York; the middle section comprises a series of reflections narrated by Amar, an American-Iraqi while he is held in detention at Heathrow en route to see his brother in Iraqi Kurdistan.

 “That colourful character Zoot Money has recently been writing at length in support of psychedelic music. Now, what’s the score Zoot, has it got a contribution to make to the scene?” It’s 14 January 1967 and BBC presenter Brian Matthew is putting his guest on the spot.

For Britain, 1965 began with The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” at the top of the single’s chart. In December, the year bowed out with their double A-side “Day Tripper” / “We can Work it Out” in the same position. But 1965 was not just about The Beatles.

“I’ve been labelled as an angry young man / Because I don’t fit into the master plan / Under society’s microscope / I look funny but it’s no joke.

I’m a social end product so don’t blame me / I’m a social end product of society / It’s not my fault that I don’t belong / It’s the world around me that’s gone all wrong.”

The title Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities Volume 6 suggests this 24-track compilation might be a rag-bag; a collection of random musical floor-sweepings which couldn’t be collected under any other heading. Not a bit of it. Instead, every contribution is a gem. Anyone into soul – Northern, or any of its forms – will get a buzz from this collection.

French stylist Gaspard Royant has recorded at London’s garage-rock-central studio Toe Rag and been produced by Edwyn Collins. Both fit a worldview which encompasses collaborating with Eli Paperboy Reed, who crops up here on “Christmas Time Again”, a cover of Reuben Anderson’s wonderful, soulful 1966 ska single. Drawing a line between garage rock, Sixties urban R&B and soul with dashes of blues and nods to Lee Hazlewood, Royant is a Gallic cousin to Richard Hawley. Unsurprisingly, his first Christmas album is a knowing affair.

Scooping up tracks from Royant’s seasonal singles and marrying them to newly recorded cuts, Wishing You a Merry Christmas is cool, hip and opens with a swinging cover of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” drawn from Phil Spector’s 1963 A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records album. After this, the self-composed (“C'mon Baby) It's Christmas Time!” sets the tone for a ten-tracker which swims in less-obvious waters, even when a song is over familiar.

Royant’s take on John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” sticks to the template vocally but otherwise injects a gentle dose of Sigur Rós' textural blur. Eels’ “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” is rendered straightforwardly, but Wham’s “Last Christmas” is given a Roy Orbison-esque makeover. The album ends with a fine, moody, Chris Isaak-indebted run through U2’s “New Year’s Day”.

Tastefulness is a rare commodity with Christmas albums, but Wishing You a Merry Christmas has it in spades. As a similarly classy but new contribution to an easily maligned genre, file it alongside Paul Revere & the Raiders’ bizarre A Christmas Present...and Past, Psychic TV’s Pagan Day, Etiquette Records’ Merry Christmas album, Les Disques Du Crépuscule’s Chantons Noël - Ghosts of Christmas Past and the Ze label’s A Christmas Record.

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Overleaf: watch the video for “(C'mon Baby) It's Christmas Time!” from Gaspard Royant’s Wishing You a Merry Christmas

Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.

SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017

Alan Broadbent: Developing Story ★★★★★  The pianist's orchestral magnum opus is packed with extraordinary things

A strange and wonderful moment: the standing area at the rear of The Lantern, the smaller venue at Bristol’s Colston Hall, is suddenly transformed into a corner of Southern Albania.