Loudon Wainwright III, a going concern as a singer-songwriter since the start of the Seventies, has long since been occluded by the commercial success of his brood, Martha and Rufus. Their old man is still enough of a draw to pack out the Palladium with just a guitar, a banjo and a back catalogue of cranky songs only he could have composed.

Dont Look Back is the Ur-rockumentary, the template for hundreds of hand-held rock tour films, a source of inspiration as well as a model to aspire to.

Readers of a certain type of lifestyle blog will be familiar with the concept of hygge. The Danish word, which refers to a state of cosiness and good cheer in which to survive the winter months, is nothing new – but this year, it’s popping up everywhere badged as a lifestyle trend. Hygge in 2016 is grey-knit blankets that look homemade, but which retail for £100; it’s steaming, monogrammed mugs of hot chocolate and rose-gold pillows.

The human voice is as individual as a fingerprint: the emotional, melancholic pull of Billie Holiday; the slightly nasal, always ironic quality of Donald Fagen; the overheated melismas of Mariah Carey; and Michael Bolton, the aural equivalent of the Krakatoa eruption. Listening to “Carry On”, the lead single from her sixth solo album Day Breaks, Norah Jones's voice is characterised not only by its great tonal warmth but also by its conversational intimacy.

In 1983, on the raucous punk-a-billy number “A13, Trunk Road to the Sea”, Billy Bragg affectionately sent up the parochial nature of Britain as compared to the USA (“If you ever have to go to Shoeburyness/Take the A-road, the okay road, that’s the best”). He’s always had a thing for the wide open spaces of America that inspired the blues, country and, eventually rock’n’roll. Now, in an almost documentary fashion, his latest pays tribute to the way trains once brought a nation together, albeit very far from “Pitsea, Thundersley, Hadleigh, Leigh-on-Sea”.

Johnny Lynch – the artist otherwise known as Pictish Trail – is one of the country’s most intriguing musicians. In 2010, he upped sticks and moved into a caravan on the remote island of Eigg, ensuring every appraisal of his work evermore would refer to him as a “hermit” or a “recluse”.

While there will, if there is any justice, be plenty written about King Creosote’s Astronaut Meets Appleman, few will probably state what to me is obvious: this is a really, really sexy record. Now, being Scottish, I’m perhaps predisposed to believe that about anything that features what I can only describe as techno bagpipes - but I defy you to listen, really listen, to the sprawling seven-minute album opener “You Just Want” and not feel at least a little shiver.

In 1969, a tranche of American musicians looked back to the country’s past for inspiration. Bob Dylan followed John Wesley Harding with Nashville Skyline. The Band’s eponymous second album hit the shops. The Flying Burrito Brothers debuted with The Gilded Palace of Sin. The rootsy was a default. But choosing to draw on country and Appalachian traditions did not have to mean playing it straight. On the amazing Farewell Aldebaren, Judy Henske and Jerry Yester used banjo and hammered dulcimer.

Water has featured prominently in Lisa Hannigan’s work since striking out solo on 2008’s Mercury-nominated Sea Sew: water that caresses and relaxes; water that turns deadly and drowns. The water in At Swim is the water that the singer finds herself adrift in; the water that she had to cross between her home in Dublin and a new love in London as she pulled her third album together; and - yes, let’s go there - the water, murky and all-consuming, that typifies Aaron Dessner of The National’s production, and makes him Hannigan’s perfect foil.

Honestly, you wait years for a lengthy project to come to fruition, then two turn up at once. However, while The Avalanches had to contend with people tapping their watches and sighing wearily, The Earlies’ John Mark Lapham had only his own clock to watch. The measured pace and unhurried approach are reflected in the languorous song spectres he presents here.