Papa Mali's second album, Do Your Thing starts with the freaky psych-funk vibe of the spooky title track, which wouldn't sound out of place on Funkadelic's Maggot Brain. That druggy vibe continues on the Hendrixian "Early in the Morning," a veiled rewrite of "Hey Joe," and the grinding, fuzz bass-powered "I Had the Dream." Throughout the album, deep soul and blues elements like the Delta slide guitar on "Little Moses" and the playful shuffle beat of "I'm Getting over It" clash intriguingly with distorted vocals, jagged feedback explosions, oddball lyrics and other indie rock accoutrements. It makes for a more interesting and entertaining listen than the usual Chicago blues clichés from guys…

Beth Hart first teamed up with guitarist Joe Bonamassa in 2011 and the partnership proved to be mutually beneficial. Hart gave the rock-edged Bonamassa some blues bona fides while the guitarist brought the vocalist to a wider audience. Plus, it was evident from their two studio albums and live set that the two had an easy chemistry: They shared a similar vernacular in Chicago blues and classic soul. The pair rely on that effortless interplay on Black Coffee, their third studio collaboration. Working with producer Kevin Shirley – a veteran of Black Crowes records who has been in the Bonamassa orbit since 2006 – the pair eschew straight traditionalism for a clean, colorful, retro vibe. Sometimes, the duo make choices that are perhaps a little too obvious – the covers of LaVern Baker's "Saved" and Howlin' Wolf's "Sittin' on Top of the World" are a bit on the nose – but they also know how to kick up the intensity on these chestnuts while avoiding sounding like they're on steroids.

Tenor saxophonist Houston Person teams up with pianist Bill Charlap on this ten-track collection of standards, You Taught My Heart to Sing. Both musicians have released individual albums paying homage to the great songwriters of the '30s and '40s – George Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin – but this is the first time they teamed up in the studio together. Along with such tried and true chestnuts as "S'Wonderful," "Sweet Lorraine," and "Namely You," the duo brings a few originals into the musical fold as well as contemporary romantic standards such as "Where Is the Love." Recorded in the cozy confines of Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood, NJ, the mood is relaxed yet not moribund, nor does the duo succumb to adding weepy strings or sappy horn arrangements. Person and Charlap don't break any new ground with this recording; rather they continue to showcase their combined enduring passion for ballads.

More or less contemporary with Mozart, Grétry wrote more than fifty quintessentially Classical operas which enjoyed phenomenal success during his lifetime (this one was produced as far afield as New York in 1787). On the basis of this recording, made in 1974 in Brussels (Grétry was born in Liège but was dead by the time the state of Belgium was created, making him an honorary, if not actual, famous Belgian), it seems a shame that his work – or this comic reworking of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at any rate – has latterly been overlooked. The music, brightly performed by the Belgian Radio and Television Chamber Orchestra, is attractively melodic, if hardly profound, and the drama affords fantastical possibilities for an imaginative producer: a table decked with food appearing from nowhere, a magic moving picture in which the heroine watches her family after she has left them; and the transformation of the monstrous hero into a handsome young man.

‘Unsung Prophets and Dead Messiahs’ is an album that truly opens up a dialogue about the way we should treat each other and to stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again. A remarkable album and one that will open 2018 with a loud subversive bang…

The listener wishing to get acquainted with Astor Piazzolla's tangos has many options to choose from: the composer's own recordings, adaptations for classical ensembles, and various more arcane versions. This release features a young Armenian group of classically trained musicians, but the performances don't quite fit under the classical umbrella. Instead they offer a way of playing tango music that would have been familiar three-quarters of a century ago, but isn't heard much these days: you might call it sentimental salon tango…