“We will be taking you on a journey,” promises Caro Emerald at the start of tonight’s return to the Royal Albert Hall, which she last played back in April 2017 – and for the next 90 minutes, that’s what jazz-pop queen Emerald and her slick seven-piece band, the Grandmono Orchestra, do.

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.

Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brilliance

There’s been a lot of conjecture over the last couple of years about HD Vinyl. It is, we’re told, a more precise and rounded analogue experience, taking record-listening to the next level. The company’s Austrian MD Guenter Loibl has explained that the process uses “a laser-cut ceramic instead of electroplated metal stampers” to achieve results that add 30% more audio information to a record. Sounds great. Bring it on. Just don’t go all CD on us and charge the earth.

Gary Burton fans with an eye for detail will know that “Fly Time Fly (Sigh)” from his second album, 1962’s Who Is Gary Burton?, had a writer credit of “Gibbs”. The American vibes-ace’s next album, 1963’s 3 in Jazz, a collaboration with Sonny Rollins and Clark Terry included another song by Gibbs. Burton’s follow-up solo album, Something's Coming! (1964), featured two Gibbs compositions.

Norwegian-Danish singer Live Foyn Friis (for English-speaking readers, Live is her first name) has released six albums, and leads several different ensembles, scattered intriguingly across the divide between jazz and pop. Her voice is recognisably Nordic, with an ethereal quality that expresses yearning, in particular.

Back in 2014, Kandace Springs was the upcoming star of modern soul, mentored by Prince: she closed his 30th anniversary Purple Rain concert. Then, with her first album Soul Eyes, she was heralded as an important jazz vocalist. The release talks of Indigo as “marrying all the different things”. It’s what the rest of us call a mishmash.

Paul Simon is currently traversing the globe on his Farewell Tour. His new album clearly accompanies that. It’s a thoughtful look backwards wherein Simon has plucked numbers from his catalogue he feels deserve another go-round, recording them with guest artists, often from the world of jazz (notably Wynton Marsalis). It is, by its nature, somewhat self-indulgent, for there are none of his most famous songs here. These are numbers he wants to bring out of the shadows; that he reckons are worth further attention. On occasion, he’s absolutely right.

The album opens with "One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor", originally a chugging rock’n’roll frolic on 1973’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. It has become a faintly Christmassy piano jazz shuffle that recalls Cab Calloway. It’s not unpleasant, not better, just different. The singer is famed for the pithy wit of his songwriting and, at the album’s best, he grabs the listener by the mind and heartstrings. A good case in point is “Darling Lorraine” from 2000’s You’re the One (from which four of this 10-song set are drawn). The poignancy was arguably submerged on the original’s twangy “adult contemporary” arrangement but here, in more pared-back form, the song is affecting.

Elsewhere New York chamber sextet yMusic get involved on "Can’t Run But" and "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War". The latter is a particularly literary song and the delicate orchestrations forefront the ache at its heart. Something about it recalls Al Stewart.

I suppose your preference regarding these versions and their originals depends on your relationship with Paul Simon. I possess none of his records and his existence generally passes me by. Music journalists should occasionally make such matters clear with artists who have long, storied careers. It tempers the relevance of what they have to say. From where I’m standing, then, In The Blue Light is an album that, in some places, has a delicate beauty, but in others, overeggs the pudding towards sentimentalism.

• More new music reviews on theartsdesk

Peyroux made her name by channelling the sultry sensuality and soul of Billie Holiday and breathing new life into well-known songs written by others - notably Elliott Smith and Leonard Cohen.She still brings enchantment to covers, but has increasingly found her own distinctive voice, without losing that element of sensual magic - those long drawn-out notes - inherited from the great Lady Day.

Initially, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl began with the sentence after this one, but it's so dry readers might drowse off, so I started with this one instead and would advise moving through the next one, just picking up the gist quickly... Discogs, a key hub for global record sales in physical formats, recently presented its Midyear Marketplace Analysis and Database Highlights for 2018, which reckons vinyl sales are up another 15% over the last year. Very boringly stated but good news, right?

Last month, theartsdesk reviewed Skadedyr’s Musikk!, an eccentric album which skipped “through jazz, traditional music, atonal scrapings and wind instrument burblings.” Twelve Norwegian musicians were heard.