Never underestimate the power of the iPod shuffle. When Miles Kane's album Colour of the Trap was released last year I liked it but still dismissed it as a fairly throwaway piece of stylishly dressed retro-fluff. Somehow though, tracks kept popping up and he eventually won me over. I wasn't alone. Songs started to appear on sports programmes and documentaries. Only moody mardy bums The xx cropped up more. In fact just before I left the house to see Miles Kane last night he popped up during the intro to C4's 100 Most Tedious Schedule Fillers, or some similarly titled show.

Carole King: The Legendary Demos

Lisa-Marie Ferla

As both a catalyst and a musician, Juan De Marcos Gonalez has had a massive impact on Cuban music in the last couple of decades. He formed the retro group Sierra Maestre 30 years ago, when to resurrect old-style Cuban music was considered decidedly odd; he had a million seller with the first Afro-Cuban All Stars album; and he not only arranged the Buena Vista Social Club but persuaded the great Ibrahim Ferrer and Rueben Gonzalez to come out of retirement for that album, which freakishly sold six or seven million copies. 

It became clear, midway through support act Toddla T that this was going to be a bit special. With a view from the front of the first tier balcony, I could see the melee below and the two balconies above. The Shepherd’s Bush Empire is a gorgeous 109 year old theatre that’s been a music hall and BBC studio in its time but no-one was sitting down tonight, far from it. Those on the upper tiers were leaning forward over the balconies, whooping and waving their arms, everyone everywhere seemed to be moving.

The fact of the matter is that this young, supremely talented Brazilian singer-songwriter is no great performer. But is this an issue when the music she makes is so immersive and seductive in its own right? On record, her songs are like ragged collages held together by scraps of tape. They sound like they might dissipate or disintegrate at any moment were it not for the calm authority of her voice holding everything together. This is music that exudes sophistication. But not the easily faked sophistication of smooth-as-cream bossa nova.

In a members-only bowling club, down a side street in a residential part of Glasgow I'd never visited before last night, Texan fiddle-player and songwriter Amanda Shires stood wearing the most magnificent pair of cowboy boots I had ever seen.

Funny how things turn out. As Damon Albarn has morphed from Blur’s Fred Perry-sporting jackanapes into the thinking man’s musical adventurer, flitting from opera to Malian music to cartoon conceptualist, Graham Coxon has opted to pursue the low key and lo-fi, seemingly happier hanging out on the margins than infiltrating the mainstream.

I don't have many feelings about the Titanic (any more than I do about any tragedies of the distant past). I know few of the facts, I can remember nothing of the film and I have been left almost completely untouched by the centenary. Yet I am enormously grateful to have caught a Barbican performance of The Sinking of the Titanic, Gavin Bryars' beautiful musical meditation on the event.  

Two things are certain with music coming from the north: there will be some wonderful surprises and some of it will sound like nothing else on earth. It’s even more enticing when the two merge. Making the peculiar accessible is a uniquely Scandinavian knack. There are more than a few examples of that – the creation of new micro-genres – in this round-up of current and new releases, but some straightforward albums are equally striking. First, however, we head for the offbeat end of the spectrum.

Lauryn Hill is back, and not just literally. Making her first UK appearance in five years, she silenced the doubters with a fully commanding and controlling show. A spellbound crowd watched as she wiped out the memory of years of disappointing concerts, reinvigorating her unmatchable prowess in a 100-minute set taking in songs from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, a selection of Fugees classics and some stunning Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley covers.