Album

What a long strange trip it's been. Again

When Moby sampled Vera Ward Hall's "Trouble So Hard", he was merely the latest in a long line of musicians to use as a source the field recordings made in the Deep South between 1933 and 1959 by the folklorist Alan Lomax. The Popular Songbook collects together 22 such tracks and, perhaps to your surprise, you'll find you know almost every one of them—if not in these original versions then in covers by artists as diverse as Clapton, Miles Davis, Steve Miller, Dylan, Led Zep and The Grateful Dead. File alongside the Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music.

Limpid nocturnal longing on seventh album from shifting collective

The Tamworth shaman returns to the fray, heroically recharged

Important country-rock harbinger from Alabama siblings Vern and Rex

Stealthy romantics collate their non-hits

Debut album plus CD of previously unreleased demos from '70s Scots funkers

Soul legend's first recordings with Willie Mitchell in 17 years

Ambitious, accessible fusion of African music/sound art

Return to form from Maryland's answer to The Raspberries