Nine hours after meeting up in a Shoreditch courtyard to discuss her new album Music for People in Trouble, Norway’s Susanne Sundfør is on stage elsewhere in the district at a theatre called The Courtyard. It’s a sell-out and the room she’s playing is over-full and over-hot. A few days before the album’s release, most of the new songs are unfamiliar to the audience. Yet connections are made instantly.

Alternative versions of familiar songs, it seems, have never been more popular. The better the composition, the more they reveal new depths. That was how fans and critics saw Richard Thompson's first volume of Acoustic Classics - a kind of unplugged retrospective of his unique song-craft. It was so well-received that Thompson has now produced a sequel, Acoustic Classics II, which casts an even wider net to include the Fairport Convention era.

Lyndon Morgans goes back a long way – in the 1980s he formed a band, Sad Among Strangers, instead of going to university. But then he turned to theatre, writing some award-winning plays which found an audience at the Royal Court.

Think of Randy Newman and the image conjured up may be of a lugubrious piano man with a sardonic streak. Or perhaps the composer responsible for countless Pixar soundtracks. But there is more to the bespectacled songsmith than just his witty songs and orchestral themes. There are also his theatrical flourishes. And Dark Matter, Newman's first singer-songwriter LP in a while, starts in just such a cabaret mood

If there’s a downside to the resurgence of vinyl, it’s that all that’s left in most charity shops these days is James Galway and his cursed flute and Max Bygraves medley albums. Then again, there’s always new stuff coming in so it’s down to everybody to get in there quick, before the local record shops hoover up all the gems. And there it is. Many small towns now have local record shops again. That’s surely something to celebrate.

To anyone other than Eighties and Nineties indie obsessives, the guitarist from The House of Love and Levitation and the singer from Adorable getting together in 2014 did not cause a stir. However, both had stylistically leapt away from their pasts, and the resulting album, Broken Heart Surgery, showcased rich, heart-worn songs, filtered through a sensibility somewhere between Lee Hazelwood and John Barry 1960s film scores. It brought them a new audience. Their second album is equally palatable.

Boasting great cover art by photographer Rosanne de Lange, featuring the now disappeared car graveyard in Chatillon, Belgium, We Are Millionaires is also appropriately rusted and battered-sounding, bringing to mind the broken junkie romanticism of Nikki Sudden or even late period Johnny Thunders (especially on the frail ballad “Over You”). Lyrically, it’s good, poetic stuff too. The lovely title song is a peach. “We both love downbeat movies,” it almost whispers, like a Byronic barfly at 3am, “Inhabit a monochrome world, where the beat-up hero never seems to get the girl,” before blossoming into a twinkling, longing Bickers guitar solo, with a hint of Dave Gilmour about its technical skill.

The finger-clickin’, Hispanic-flavoured “If the World Is All We Have” is a stoned, filmic rock’n’roll shuffle, a bit Chris Isaak, a bit Twin Peaks, while “Mary Celeste” is Lou Reed in melodically light “Stephanie Says” mode. Throughout the whole album, there’s a clear, world-weary thoughtfulness that’s most welcome in this age of heart-on-sleeve non-specific singer-songwriter vulnerability. There’s also a shining instrumental twang to it that lifts these nine songs, gives them added heft.

A life lived pursuing dreams on the fringes of the music business has given Pete Fij and Terry Bickers requisite experience to fill their work with a resigned charm, and also, more importantly, the ability to attach that feeling to songs of forlorn lusciousness. The pair may be heading into the most fruitful period of their career.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for Pete Fij & Terry BIckers's "Love's going to Get You"

In a 1967 headline, The Washington Post pegged Lynn Castle as a “Shapely Blonde in Blue Jeans, Popular Barber in Hollywood”. She had attracted attention as the hairdresser of choice for The Byrds, The Monkees, Del Shannon, Sonny & Cher and Stephen Stills. Known as “The Lady Barber”, she also cut the hair of music business movers and shakers Lee Hazlewood and Monkees’ songwriters Boyce and Hart.

Alison Moyet is one of Britain's best-loved singer-songwriters. Known for her deep, soulful voice and down-to-earth personality she has managed to combine commercial sensibility with artistic integrity for over 30 years. Today, 16 June, she releases her ninth solo album Other, recorded with long-time collaborator Guy Sigsworth.

Wow! An unconventional opening for a book review maybe, but ‘“wow!” nonetheless.

Initially released to coincide with Record Shop Day (we’re in the UK so yes, it’s a shop, thanks very much), we’re a little late out of the blocks with the Miracle Legion frontman’s latest solo venture, but then, The Possum in the Driveway is an album that benefits from a little time to bed in and take root.