4: SOFIA TALVIK: BIG SKY COUNTRY (MAKAKI MUSIC) Sofia Talvik grew up in Sweden but a 16-month tour of America has inspired much of the music on her new album Big Sky Country. Dusty Heart, Empty Hand and Big Sky Country are two of the standout tracks but there is a consistency to the strong songwriting and sweet melodies throughout. Talvik also has a fine lilting voice, which she shows off to full effect on the only cover among 11 songs, an ethereal version of Buffy Saint-Marie's 1976 song Starwalker. 6: LAURIE LEWIS & THE RIGHT HANDS: THE HAZEL AND ALICE SESSIONS (SPRUCE AND MAPLE MUSIC) Laurie Lewis is a master of modern bluegrass and the fiddle player goes back to her own inspirations in this tribute album to Seventies pioneers Alice Gerrard and Hazel Dickens. The Earl Scruggs track Let the Liar Alone features some splendid banjo playing from Patrick Sauber and the album is infused with fine duet singing from Lewis and her musical partner Tom Ruzum. The sweet-voiced Aoife O’Donovan joins in on James Alley Blues and there is also a guest spot from the great Linda Ronstadt on a lovely closing a cappella song called Pretty Bird. It helps that the voices of Australian Emily Barker and her American friends Amy Speace and Amber Rubarth (all three successful, solo singer-songwriters) have been yoked together in Nashville’s Welcome to 1979 studio, where the engineers aim to bottle sound like fine whiskey with the “oak and charcoal” of their super cool analogue gear.

• Bonnie Raitt And Friends

Musically they keep everything simple: guitar, bass, banjo, piano and one naughty scuzz of rockabilly electric. Before studying the sleeve notes, I’d assumed the thirteen lovely songs were retro gems that Barker and co had unearthed. But it turns out they’ll all new songs penned by the singers with help from a few friends including Adam Levy (who’s written for Norah Jones and Tracy Chapman). The standout track is the gorgeous title song from which they also take their name: supported by the heel-dragging slide of Telisha Williams’ upright bass, it’s a slow, dreamy drift through an old-time landscape of dirt tracks, silver stars and tin roofs on which the three women’s voices twist and curl together like tumbling purple leaves they describe. They savour each note until it melts in the mouth.

With its easygoing, lost-classic charm, Applewood Road is probably destined to be the middle class dinner party album of 2016, but it deserves to be heard beyond the clatter of cutlery. ★★★★★ ( Helen Brown). Bringing her knowledgeable stew of funk, rock and breakup soul to a slow steady boil on a sequence of impeccably chosen covers, 2012’s Slipstream won a Grammy and gave a serious push start to a dawdling career. Her 20th album sees her maintain momentum, marrying the raw courage of trauma survival with the Harvard dropout’s enduring musical class and subtlety. Splitting the difference between “frisky” rockers and thoughtful ballads, it opens with a gutsy original composition called Unintended Consequences of Love, on which she tells an old lover that it’s time to: “resurrect our strut”. She’s also written a righteous rollick against trickle down economics and wrapped reflections on grief into closing piano lament for The Ones We Couldn’t Be. But its still her covers that cut deepest. She gives a mature smoulder to INXS’s Need You Tonight: her slide-guitar tracing the silhouette of the tune like a leather jacket.

She’s beautifully rueful on All Alone with Something to Say, by Nashville’s Gordon Kennedy and Steve Dale Jones, and heartbreaking on Bonnie Bishop’s Undone, allowing chords to come apart in her hands like a love affair. At 66 Raitt’s warm graze of a voice is better than ever, balancing the confidence of experienced with a more nuanced perspective. Inspirational. ★★★★☆ HB. 10: AMELIA WHITE: HOME SWEET HOTEL (WHITE-WOLF RECORDS) The touring life is the theme that runs through a strong album from Nashville's Amelia White. I liked the grungy strength of Right Back to My Arms, while the compelling guitar work complements the strong lyrics of the title song (“I’m like a riddle riding in the wind/Singing my songs for strangers in every town I’m in”).

White can do traditional country well, too, as she shows on In My Blood. It's an individual album of depth, produced by Marco Giovino and featuring multi-instrumentalist Sergio Webb. 11: LOCUST HONEY STRING BAND: NEVER LET ME CROSS YOUR MIND (LOCUSTHONEYSTRINGBAND.COM) This is vintage bluegrass from the North Carolina band. The harmonies work well, especially on the short and sweet covers of songs such as The Carter Family classic The Lonesome Song (which is just two minutes) and which showcases the real verve that Chloe Edmonstone brings to her fiddle playing. Her own composition When The Whiskey’s Gone (a really sad name for a song) stand up to such company. Edmonstone blends well with Meredith Watson (guitar and vocals) and Hilary Hawke (banjo), Ariel Dixon (banjo and vocals) and Andy Deaver Edmonstone (bass) all bring something to the party. 15: DONNIE FRITTS: OH MY GOODNESS (SINGLE LOCK RECORDS) Donnie Fritts (nicknamed Funky) is one of those very interesting musical figures who fly under some radars.

He's a talented musician – he started as a drummer and has been Kris Kristofferson's keyboardist for more than 40 years – who is also a fine veteran Muscle Shoals songwriter. His compositions have covered by Dolly Parton, Dusty Springfield (with her sultry version of Breakfast in Bed) and Chrissie Hynde. Fritts has also appeared in three Sam Peckinpah films. Now, at 73, he has released a solo album that is really rather sweet.

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His voice is gravelly and full of character and producer John Paul White, formerly half of The Civil Wars, brings out the best in quality songwriting, including some covers. 16: VARIOUS ARTISTS: GOD DON'T NEVER CHANGE – THE SONGS OF BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON (ALLIGATOR) There is a reason this tribute album to the great blues star Blind Willie Johnson (who died aged 48 in 1945) is in our country selection: some of the best cover versions are by country musicians. Lucinda Williams brings all her power and depth to a version of the title track and a stinging cover of It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine, which features some wonderful slide guitar by Doug Pettibone. The Cowboy Junkies use an original Johnson recording of Jesus is Coming Soon on their chilling version of Jesus is Coming Home.

Other great contributions come from (The Soul of a Man and John the Revelator), Maria McKee, Luther Dickinson and Sinead O’Connor. It would be hard to better Ry Cooder's Seventies take on the seminal Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground and perhaps an impossible task falls to to cover that one, although she has a spirited try. The album, which was funded by producer Jeffrey Gaskill through Kickstarter, is full of treats; and Johnson deserves 21st-century acknowledgement. ★★★★☆.

17: DAVID STARR: LOVE AND SABOTAGE (CEDAREDGE MUSIC) David Starr, who owns and runs a music shop called Starr's Guitars in Cedaredge, Colorado, is a talented multi-instrumentalist and there is a real authenticity to his enjoyable 15-song album Love and Sabotage. There are pacy country rock originals, as in the title song, and a fine slow cover version of Tumbleweed, featuring some deft fiddle from Jimmy Mattingly. Starr sings with feeling and is helped by guest appearances from John Oates, Richie Furay and Kenny Edwards. ★★★☆☆. 18: WILLIE NELSON: SUMMERTIME (SONY LEGACY) has always had an affinity for the songs of Gershwin and even though his voice is more fragile with age (he will be 83 on April 29, 2016) he brings feeling and charm to these 11 covers, especially his tender version of Someone to Watch Over Me.

There are a couple of nice duets – with Cyndi Lauper on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, and on Embraceable You with Sheryl Crow – and his long-term harmonica partner Mickey Raphael is his usual classy self. 19: ERIC BRACE & PETER COOPER: C&O CANAL (RED BEET RECORDS) Eric Brace and Peter Cooper always pick interesting projects and C&O Canal is a sparkling treat. They are paying tribute to the music and the songwriters that helped form them, based around the fabled Birchmere Nightclub in Alexandria, Virginia, in the Sixties and Seventies. So we get a sweet cover of Birchmore regular Mary Chapin Carpenter's John Wilkes Booth; alongside a substantial Boulder to Birmingham. The interesting sleeve notes give full due to Emmylou Harris's great co-writer Bill Danoff (who also co-wrote Country Roads with John Denver).

There are also songs by John Starling, including his gorgeous love song He Rode All the Way to Texas, and covers of Peggy Stanley and Alice Gerrard among the 10 tracks. Cooper and Brace (whose previous fine record was a tribute to Eric Taylor) sing with real feeling and they are joined by a stellar band that includes Andrea Zonn on violin, Jeff Taylor on accordion and producer Thomm Jutz on slide guitar. The album is pure country class. ★★★★★. 20: NATHAN BELL: I DON'T DO THIS FOR LOVE (STONE BARN RECORDS) Nathan Bell is 56 and has been around long enough to have played at gigs with Townes Van Zandt. His singing is gritty and authentic and his narrative songwriting affecting. Bell also plays harmonica.

Bonnie Raitt And Friends

This final album in a trilogy that began in 2011, I Don't Do This For Love, I do this for Love (Working and Hanging on in America) to give it the full title, features Claire Lynch on harmony vocal on Dust and his Bell's wife Leslie on harmony vocals on the excellent Jesus Of Gary, Indiana. That song is about a man whose life spirals into drinking after losing his job at a steel mill. The song Stan also features clever lines such about a man 'who paid himself in regret and beer'. ★★★☆☆. 21: MARK ERELLI: FOR A SONG (MARKERELLI.COM) always brings craft and class to his work but he has outdone himself on the wonderful For a Song.

The compositions are full of depth and emotion and his musicianship (guitar, vocals, harmonica) is top class. There's a wistful Paul Simon-like quality to his singing, supported at different times over 11 quality tracks by harmony from Deni Hlavinka and Paula Cole. For a Song captures the dilemma of a musician of seeking professional success and family happiness. Look Up is a song of potent mediation on religion and Moonlit Lullaby is just dreamy. This fine album is wrapped up by a terrific song about mortality, co-written with Jeffrey Foucoult, called French King. ★★★★★. 22: STURGILL SIMPSON: A SAILOR'S GUIDE TO EARTH (ATLANTIC) Drawing on his experiences in the Navy (and possibly more potently from his experiences of being away from his family as a travelling musician), Sturgill Simpson has recorded an interesting album about the lure of home. Musically, it's a bold step away from the excellent (there's more soul and brass in A Sailor's Guide to Earth) but the songwriting remains strong and beguiling.

And if his version of Nirvana's In Bloom is what country music sounds like in 2016, then it's no bad thing. The opening Welcome to Earth (Pollywog) captures the wonder of new parenthood and the anxiety that comes with it. Oh Sarah is simply a lovely ballad. The album's artwork, by Kilian Eng, is good, too, and the nine songs come in at under 40 minutes. ★★★★☆. 24: CORINNE WEST: STARLIGHT HIGHWAY (MAKE RECORDS) California-based singer-songwriter Corinne West has a sweet voice that brings out the full flavour of her evocative songs. The 10 songs are uniformly strong on this self-produced album, although I particularly enjoyed Sweet Rains Of Amber and the lovely finale song, Night Falls Away Singing.

Some of the compositions are West's and some are co-written with the excellent Kelly Joe Phelps (who also sings and plays guitar). They are joined by some fine musicians, including Henry Salvia (Hammond organ, piano, Wurlitzer and accordion) and Mike Marshall (mandolin). A personal and very personable album.