“When I was singing at my best, I was the essence of English song. And that was all I ever really wanted.” It’s said without pride and in a matter-of-fact manner. The speaker is Shirley Collins in the documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins. Issued on DVD in a package with a CD collecting music which defines parts of her world, the film tracks a person balancing certainty about who she is and was with an enviable level-headedness.

An album that enchants and surprises in equal measure, Heritage sees US sax player and composer Owen Broder explore the full gamut of American roots music – from blues and Appalachian folk to bluegrass and spirituals – through the prism of modern jazz.

I first saw Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker at the Green Note in Camden just as they released 2013's Fire and Fortune album. The room was packed and they were brilliant, their own songs mixed with traditional pieces and choice covers. What was striking was that their own songs didn’t pale, lyrically or melodically, beside the others. Something good was going on here, embodied by Clarke’s limpid voice of longing, refute, realisation, and melancholia, alongside Walker’s brilliance as a guitarist and arranger. Since then, they’ve signed to Rough Trade from which came 2016’s stellar set of covers and originals, Overnight, last autumn’s gorgeous The Birds EP, and now Seedlings All, the duo’s first album of all-original songs.

And what songs. They have the heart and intensity of a lighthouse beam, warning travellers from the rocks and sandbanks of relationship, belonging, desire. And purpose, too, because the opening track, "Chicago", unpeels the humiliation familiar to many a rising artist in new territory – the gig where no one turns up. The musical settings range from artful, multi-layered art folk-pop through jazz. Kit Downes, with whom Clarke released another EP late last year, features on the album’s list of players, alongside Andy Cutting on melodeon, a cello trio and drummer James Maddren. And around them are Clarke’s voice and lyrics, both of which are singular in their effects.

Her voice, classically trained, is a superb instrument of emotional transmission, one that can encompass the wide-eyed and innocent, as well as the knowing and the hurt. Lyrically, she is on a different level to most of her songwriting peers in contemporary British folk. Songs such as "Bells Ring" take a metaphysical dive into what is, at first, a familiar bell-ringing image of love and union, but rapidly shapeshifts into something much more entwined, ambiguous and absorbing. Lyrically, hers is an intense set of interiors, backlit and spotlit by Walker’s settings, illuminating a heart’s abbatoir and boudoir side by side. Hers is a voice with a most human reach and resonance. Listen to these songs and you’ll find your own face there, reflecting the condition of your own interior.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Chicago" by Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker

The delicious flame-grilled burgers and the vast array of bourbons on offer at the Lexington, hard by yet another “King's Cross Quarter”, added atmosphere to the opening night of Diana Jones’s European tour. Finger licking is (quite rightly) not allowed during the music so those arriving early for a bite might have spotted Jones herself, refuelling with friends between sound-check and curtain-up.

Since forming in 2013, The Gloaming have set about transforming how Irish traditional music is heard, received and performed.

The similarity is intentional. The cover design of When the Day is Done – The Orchestrations of Robert Kirby nods explicitly to that of Nick Drake’s debut album Five Leaves Left. That wasn’t just the first record by the singer-songwriter, it was also first time most people heard Kirby’s string arrangements. He and Drake had been friends at Cambridge University. The album’s producer Joe Boyd commissioned arrangements by Richard Hewson but Drake rejected them and the call was made to Kirby, who had already worked with him live.

There was a hint of what was to come in Gwenno Saunders’ debut, Y Dydd Olaf. It was, for the most part, a Welsh-language affair, save for the closing track “Amser”, a song sung in Cornish and the album’s dizzying slow dazzle. For her follow-up, Le Kov, Gwenno has chosen to record an entire album in this Brythonic language that has, in recent times, gamely rallied itself from UNESCO-declared death.

Le Kov, then, exists as a document of a living language, albeit one that the majority of listeners will have no working knowledge of. In order to make real sense of the songs, we have to do the reading as well as the listening – we’ve been dropped off in the middle of nowhere and asked to find our way home with a book and a map rather than a Sat Nav app.

This is, in some ways, a more assured album than its predecessor

That’s not to say that Le Kov is hard work – far from it. The sonic landscapes that these story songs inhabit are accessible: new, but posessed of a faint familiarity. It all makes sense when one realizes that the translation of the album’s title is “the place of memory”.

This is, in some ways, a more assured album than its predecessor. While there are still shared reference points with the likes of Broadcast and the Soundcarriers, there is also rare sophistication and scope at play. Opener “Hi a Skoellyas Liv a Dhagrow” (“She Shed a Flood of Tears”) boasts the sort of perfectly picked bass playing and soaring strings that one would expect of a vintage Vannier/Gainsbourg production, while the subtle shifts in “Herdhya” (“Pushing”) posses a delicate, electronic refinement.

The more propulsive moments are equally as impressive. “Eus Keus?” is glorious pop, with chiming, chourused guitars and a joyus refrain, while the melody of “Tir Ha Mor” (“Land And Sea”) positively surges, rising and falling with palpable emotional weight. “Daromres y’n Howl” (“Traffic In The Sun”), which sees Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys joining for vocal duties, is another quirky pop masterpiece: mid-paced, but as far from middle-of-the-road as it’s possible to be.

At a time when we’re headed towards post-Brexit cultural hegemony, Le Kov is a wonderful celebration of a rich and diverse culture. Gwenno carefully frames the unfamiliar and, in doing so, shows us how stories can be told in different tongues, and yet be steeped in a shared language.

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@jahshabby

Overleaf: watch the video for "Tir Ha Mor"

“Chestnut-brown canary, ruby-throated sparrow” sang Stephen Stills in his “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, a song from CSNY’s 1969 debut album to Judy Collins, with whom he was ending a two-year affair. Collins’s big baby-blue eyes haven’t faded with time. Nor has her voice – indeed, it is far more secure now than it was 40 years ago, when she was battling pills and booze, a fight she’s documented in a number of books.

Collins was a star in 1969; CSNY were making their celebrated Woodstock debut and that iconic first album had harmonies that were spine-chillingly beautiful and pitch-perfect. The tie-dye and patchouli may have dated but the CSNY sound has not. Collins’s career has ebbed and flowed, though she is still a significant draw in the US, and there’s no denying her musicianship (she was destined to become a classical pianist before she discovered folk music) or her ear for a good song. Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, whose 1988 song from I’m Your Man gives this collection its title, were both her discoveries.

Everybody Knows marks a 50-year relationship between Collins and Stills, who fell in love as Collins was recording Who Knows Where the Time Goes – Stills played on the Sandy Denny title track. They’ve lately been on the road together and this album makes you hope they cross the Atlantic and tour the UK.

They tackle some terrific songs, and the opening cover of the Traveling Wilburys' hit "Handle With Care" draws you immediately in – it's not quite Roy, Bob and company, but it's a wonderfully energising, spirited cover. Sandy Denny’s aforementioned classic is revisited: Collins's voice is straight out of ‘68, and Stills noodles beautifully over her Martin 12-string while Russell Walden provides piano in-fills. From Stills's Just Roll Tape, recorded in NYC in 1968, comes “Judy”. For her part, Collins offers a new song, “River of Gold”, alongside Stills’s “So Begins the Task”, and "Houses" from Judith, in which Collins reflects on her (then recent) relationship with Stills. “Reasons to Believe” is a reminder of Tim Hardin, and their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country”, all jangling acoustics, is affecting. “Questions” has a real CSN&Y feel to it.

As a celebration of a half-decade musical friendship, it’s a great outing. As Collins says, “When people hear us together they’re reminded not only of our story but of their own. People return to their youthful love affairs. It spins out like a double helix with many purposes.”

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Overleaf: Watch the album trailer for Stephen Stills & Judy Collins's Everybody Knows