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We got this album (compiled by John Peel) last weekend in the fabulous Fopp in Bristol. Peel has hugely varied taste in music, that the label “eclectic” doesn’t adequately cover, so we knew when we bought it that we would probably hate a third of the tracks with a passion. But it only cost us £10, so we thought it a reasonable gamble. We were right: we hate 9 of the 24 tracks, but the others are so gloriously brilliant and unexpected that £10 seems like a bargain.

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A Christmas present from my brother, this is a gritty album. It seemed to cause an afwul lot of controversy in the States when it came out, mainly because of the track, ‘John Walker’s Blues’. In this, Steve Earle tries get inside the mind of John Walker to understand why he turned to terrorism. Perhaps people got so upset because they thought that trying to understand a reason is tantamount to saying that he had a point. But that’s just not the case: everyone has a reason for what they do. It may not be a good reason, or one that makes any logical or moral sense to anyone else, but they do have a reason. It seems to me to be important to try to find the reason, or how can you prevent it happening again?

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This was a post-Christmas purchase, and a very good one, too. I have another of their albums, Spirit of the Century, and this is every bit as good. It’s a lovely mix of blues, gospel and spirituals, sung by some guys who have been singing together for 60 years, and assisted by Robert Randolph and Ben Harper. You can hear their experience in every song. Their voices are like beautiful, old wooden chairs - polished to a fine, warm patina by their lives.

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I’ll be forever grateful to Peter Gabriel’s RealWorld Studios for producing this album. Without it, I might never have come across the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat was a Sufi singer - a mystical sect of Islam, in which ecstatic music, singing and dancing is an important part of the devotions. In this collaboration, Nusrat’s remarkable voice is paired with the subtle trance-like music of Michael Brook.

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Three volumes of glorious song writing, containing almost every musical style known to man or woman, this album is the fruit of the genius Stephin Merritt. Few other musicians can make you laugh one minute and cry the next. The songs may all be about love (the bitter and the sweet of it), but they are never sentimental:

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This album was another of my brother’s recommendations (always a man of taste when it comes to music). They are a rather exotic set of people: an Italian vocalist/guitarist, an Icelandic guitarist and a drummer from, er, Weston-super-Mare.

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This is one of John Adams’ earliest pieces, and one of my favourites. Harmonium is a three part choral piece, set to poems by John Donne (Negative Love) and Emily Dickinson (Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Wild Nights). Even if you think you don’t like classical music, or contemporary classical music, do give this a try.

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Ah, there’s nothing like a bit of Jimi as the nights are drawing in. Remasterings don’t always work well, but this one has kept the spontaneity of the original, and everything (particularly the live material) sounds fresh and funky. If there’s any music that could tempt me to get my air guitar out of the cupboard, Crosstown Traffic or Foxey Lady is it. I still find it hard to believe that there’s only one person playing lead guitar…

I was really surprised by this one. My brother recommended it to me, but never having liked Beck much before, I wasn’t at all sure that I would like it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s a trippy, mellow album, with bitter-sweet lyrics and is surprisingly tuneful. There are also some very nice string arrangements which add some depth and complexity.