Fairytales is lovely. It opens with a subtle version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which merges Radka Toneff’s emotive and intimate vocal with Steve Dobrogosz’s sparse piano lines. The ingredients are minimal, there is no embellishment yet the performance is powerful.

Can you find a more extensive and comprehensive rundown of monthly vinyl releases than theartsdesk on Vinyl? We can’t. But then we would say that. Don’t believe us, though; below we surf punk, techno, film soundtracks, folk, major label boxset retrospectives, avant-garde electronica, pop, R&B and tons more. Dive in!

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Belako Render Me Numb, Trivial Violence (Belako)

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.

The press ad for Spirit’s debut album wasn’t shy. “Five came together for a purpose: to blow the sum of man’s musical experience apart and bring it together in more universal forms. They became a single musical being: Spirit. It happens in the first album.” Of the band’s bassist Mark Andes, it declared “the strings are his nerve endings”. Drummer Ed Cassidy apparently “hears tomorrow and he plays it now”.

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.

While some albums cram in more fillers than a Christmas stocking, Thought You Knew, the second recording from the London-based group led by the 2016 Jazz FM Vocalist of the Year Lauren Kinsella and multi-instrumentalist Chris Hyson, is all about restraint and depth of feeling.

“The Therapist” ushers you gently into the album’s delicate sound-world, underpinned by guitarist Nick Costley-White’s rippling chordal work. “Under the Tree” acts like an instrumental postscript – a dancing, minimalist contrapuntal web which skilfully interweaves layers of percussion, acoustic guitar and sumptuous synth washes.

“Water Baby” begins with icy string tremolandos courtesy of violinist Alice Zawadzki and cellist Francesca Ter-Berg before settling into a gentle cradle song rhythm. Pre-recorded sounds of birds, snippets of speech and someone taking a walk call to mind John Cage’s Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake.

With a larger textural palette and slightly harder edge, “Love Again” features seraphic layered vocals from Kinsella and some great, in-the-pocket playing by Hyson, Costley-White, pianist Matthew Robinson, drummer Dave Hamblett and saxist Josh Arcoleo.Two contrasting covers form the album’s centrepiece, the a cappella delight of Gillian Welch’s “Dear Someone” followed by Emiliana Torrini’s doleful, string-laden “Snow”.

In terms of telling detail, the album reaches its acme with “Pixel”, in which a constant vibration between major and minor is finally resolved in a pristine, glowing C major, while the stream-of-consciousness “It’s Already Better Than OK” contains a nod to Samuel Beckett’s Worstward Ho (“I’m constantly failing but I’m failing better”) and, by its very title, a poignant look back to the final line of the album opener (“I spoke to myself and I told her it’s going to be OK”).

An album that evokes memory, loss, hope and more, and one that never fails to leave its alluring melodic mark, Thought You Knew is a beautiful statement of the heart.

• Read more CD review on theartsdesk

@MrPeterQuinn

Overleaf: Watch a clip of ‘The Therapist’