Album: Madeleine Peyroux, Bare Bones (Decca)

Peyroux specialises in torch songs, ragtime jazz and chanson, but while her period stylings elevate her above the average navel-gazing songstress, it's also a little too perfectlypitched at a certain kind of vintage aesthetic. Admittedly, you wouldn't get Sarah Vaughan singing a line like "I'll be screwed like a high-school cheerleader" (from one of two songs co-written with Steely Dan's Walter Becker). And, when it sounds as lovely as "Instead", you barely care when Bare Bones was made.

Pick of the Album: Stuck on repeat: 'To Love You All Over Again'