Dylan’s Gospel years inspired and rankled in unequal measure – with the critical brickbats and audience boos often drowning out the strength and beauty of the impassioned musical ministries delivered by Dylan between 1979 and 1981, gathering around him his five-strong chorus of gospel singers, and a crack band that included Little Feet guitarist Fred Tackett, bassist Tim Drummond, Muscle Shoals keyboardist Spoon

The queen of R&B is no stranger to struggle – the Staples Singers, led by Pops, played a key role in the 1960s civil rights movement, emerging from the gospel circuit as so many great black singers did. Mavis’ first paid gig was with her family in in 1948.

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

After more than 35 years of subterranean bootleg life, Bob Dylan’s incendiary gospel shows and sessions from 1979 to 1981 are seeing the light of day as volume 13 of the Official Bootleg Series.

Anyone who finds Eric Clapton and The Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb stepping up to offer their services as their producer is obviously special. It’s a view reinforced by knowing Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham and Small Faces were already their champions. Only one person fits this unique bill.

As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los Angeles, where it was recorded over seven days, with guest appearances from guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist and band leader Jools Holland, on whose TV shows May has guested several times.

Eno pioneered ambient music way back in the 1970s, in collaborations with Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, and on his own label. His new album continues this adventure in search of stillness, at a time when we are more than ever shaped by muddled layers of high-speed narratives, fuelled by instant communication and hell-bent on denying the presence of the here and now.

There are singers who can dazzle with their technical mastery, those who welcome you into their musical world through a special communicative gift, and those who can traverse genres with absolutely no artifice. Rarest of all are those singers who combine all of the above with a timbral quality that can touch your very soul. Lizz Wright is one such singer.

It's a happy coincidence that John Fullbright hails from Woody Guthrie's home town of Okemah, Oklahoma, but his debut album presents an artist who is far from being a mere clone of the fabled balladeer. A spin through the dozen tracks on From the Ground Up reveals traces of blues, country, gospel, folk and rock, all handled with rough-hewn earthiness.

Gregory Porter's Blue Note debut provides one of the biggest sugar rushes of auditory pleasure you'll hear this year. Grounded in jazz but heavily seasoned with the blues, gospel and soul, it's a superbly paced album, ranging from the poetic tableaux of ballad “When Love Was King” to the unstoppable, hand clapping moto perpetuo of the title track.