The progress of Kim Deal has been one of the great delights of modern music. Much as one wishes Pixies well, they have never been the same without her distinctive voice and presence, whereas her other band The Breeders have only gone from strength to strength – and she has clearly enjoyed the heck out of it, as recently shown on the Live at Big Sur video where the whole band radiate pleasure in playing. Oddly though, although she’s had a spattering of solo singles in the past decade or so, she’s never put her own name to an album until now, aged 63.

Hard to believe it’s coming up to 30 years since “Love and Affection” put Joan Armatrading in the top 10, a track from her third, self-titled, album which confirmed the arrival of a major talent. “Down to Zero” was another of the album’s enduring cuts – two timeless classics which the passing time hasn’t dimmed.

FaithNYC is a vehicle for the singer and songwriter Felice Rosser, an original rooted in reggae,soul, punk and the New York downtown avant-garde. She once played in an all-woman reggae band, Sistren, and was a close friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The word “mahashmashana” – महामशान in Sanskrit – translates as “great burying ground.” Co-opted as the title of Josh Tillman’s sixth album as Father John Misty, its use might reflect a concern that the contemporary world is facing its demise. Or it may be due to its onomatopoeic quality. Perhaps both.

Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Pharaoh (Faraon) is a state-funded superprodukcja, a 152-minute Polish epic, set, incongruously, in Ancient Egypt. First released in 1966, it wasn’t intended to be an Eastern Bloc copy of Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra; Pharaoh is an altogether darker, more sober work.

Rapper, actor and occasional media celebrity, Ice-T’s heavy metal band, Body Count have been around since the early ‘90s and have turned out some fine albums along the way – most notably their self-titled debut and 2014’s Manslaughter. Unfortunately, their latest offering, Merciless is unlikely to be viewed as a career high point, as it sees Ice and his buddies hit a musical dead end with some considerable force.

The return of Linkin Park has been a long, winding path. The seven years since Chester Bennington's passing have swirled with speculation over what the long term future for the California nu-metal icons would look like.

Beethoven’s renown in his own day was not just as a composer but also as an improvising pianist. He wrote in a letter in July 1819 that “freedom, and to move forward is the purpose of the world of art, as it is of the whole of creation.’

Conceived in 1998 by the renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma to remind the world of the benefits of globalisation in bringing people together, Silkroad is a non-profit organisation with a mission to create “music that engages difference, sparking radical cultural collaboration and passion-driven learning for a more hopeful and inclusive world”.

This is almost too much to bear. This sprawling 37-track collection begins with the sainted 78-year-old Dolly Parton providing a jaunty spoken narration of her family’s history in music and the church. It’s old-school Disney documentary in tone, but because it’s Dolly you listen, and with her endless countrified charm she tells a story of generations of banjo players and preachers of the Appalachians – and reminds us that these, her forebears, were immigrants.