The manner and the speed with which Sinéad O’Connor veers between impishly poking fun at herself and her material, and delivering it with scorching force, is bewildering. For instance, with the “The Healing Room”, a tender song about a spiritual quest for inner peace, she cracks jokes about Mr Blobby during the intro and then changes the opening line to “I have a universe inside me… and a cucumber.” What’s extraordinary is that despite often sending herself up in this way, she can immediately slip back into singing so fiercely and persuasively that everything flows.

Was there ever a band to generate such passionate fan adulation as Dropkick Murphys? Keeping up a chant of "Let's Go Murphys" for a good 10 minutes before there was any sign of the Boston seven-piece on the city's most famous stage, the Glasgow punks were in fine voice even before the raucous singalongs began.

On this debut album for Blue Note, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter José James effortlessly blends the beat-driven mien of hip-hop, the surprising transitions of jazz and the raw emotion of classic R&B to produce his strongest statement to date. Following three critically acclaimed albums for the Brownswood and Verve labels, James seems to have discovered the key to making the simple resonate.

Marianne Faithfull: Broken English

Santa has returned home, but he wasn’t the season’s only visitor from the Nordic lands. The crop of recent music in from the region embraces genre-crossing jazz, vintage-style rock, the expected electropop, cross-border collaborations and a seven-year-old Finn. Exploring all corners of Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk journeys where no one else does, landing in Norway first for some finely formed jazz.

Well, he was always ahead of the game. In a few years’ time 66 will become the new official pension age in his native United Kingdom, but David Bowie has chosen to celebrate his 66th birthday by coming out of what many perceived to be retirement. “Where Are We Now?” was launched without any previous fanfare earlier this morning, and you can listen to it and watch the video (directed by Tony Oursler) here.

Broadcast: Berberian Sound Studio Original Soundtrack

Can’s The Lost Tapes towers over any of the other reissues theartsdesk has covered this year. Although not strictly a reissue – it collected unheard recordings from tapes which had lain in the band’s archive – it rewrote the story of the seminal German band, offering a new perspective on their creative process and what they had issued. More than any of this, its three discs were a great listen and as essential as any of their albums - Soundtracks, Tago Mago and Future Days.

On Sailing to Byzantium Christine Tobin's utterly singular music fuses with the amaranthine force of WB Yeats's poetry to create one of the most transporting jazz releases in aeons. From the iridescent colours of “The Wild Swans at Coole” and the statuesque tranquility of the title track, to the subtly ornamented melodic line of “The Song of Wandering Aengus” and the deeply poignant “Long-legged Fly”, the album's unique sound-world and intense depth of feeling completely seduce the senses.

Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Begins – The Flying Dutchman Masters

Kieron Tyler