ROCK & POP

Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago (4AD, TS £11.99)

Wintery soul-searching from the woods of Wisconsin: out of time, and out of this world.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!! ! (Mute, TS £12.99)

The 10 worst Christmas music videos

After a terrifying journey through Christmas videos past, Veronica Schmidt picks the most cheesy, cringe-inducing clips

• The 100 Best Films of 2008

• Best Christmas gifts for music lovers

• Pantomimes and festive plays 2007/2008

BACKGROUND

• The 20 biggest CDs for Christmas 2008

• The 10 best presents for men

• The ten best gadget gifts this Christmas

• The 10 best Christmas gifts for women this year

Cave and his compadres roam through a fierce, funny and disturbing netherworld of sound and visions.

White Denim: Workout Holiday (Full Time Hobby, TS £10.99)

For playful inventiveness nothing outdid these Texans' miraculously unpretentious psychedelic, art-rocking, jazz- punk album.

The Dirtbombs: We have you Surrounded (In the Red, TS £11.99)

This magnificent, undeservedly overlooked set offered urban paranoia and soulful disco-rock.

Glasvegas: Glasvegas (Columbia, TS £12.99)

If he wanted, James Allan could write Oasis-sized rifferama anthems about “having it”. Fortunately, he was smart enough to realise that ground was already claimed and chose to write songs that are just as big yet chronicle the lives of those who “lost it” instead.

Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend (XI, TS £11.99)

Four Ivy League graduates fused classical strings with vibrant Afropop and punky drums to great effect.

Dr Dog: Fate (Park the Vn, TS £10.99)

The waggy-tailed US combo Dr Dog hail from Philadelphia, and mix Beach Boys-style harmonies and Beatles-style guitar licks with something singularly scruffy. A really charming record.

MGMT: Oracular Spectacular (Sony, TS £10.99)

An almost perfect mix of psychedelics and Prince-style funk. Contains at least two songs of the year - Time to Pretend and Kids.

Hercules and Love Affair: Hercules and Love Affair (EMI, TS £10.99)

Like Andy Warhol's Factory re-imagined for the glitterball generation. Andrew Butler's exhaustive dip into the history of dance music is also notable for some brilliant vocal work, with Antony Hegarty doing his best Alison Moyet impression.

The Replacements: Let it Be: Remastered (Rhino, TS £9.99)

Their entire chaotic, heartbreaking oeuvre has been reissued with many excellent extras.

James Blackshaw: Litany of Echoes (Tompkins Square, TS £10.99)

A young London guitarist who mixes American folk, ambience and classical forms to come up with a new music of almost sacred heft.

Brightblack Morning Light: Motion to Rejoin (Matador, TS £11.99)

Almost certainly the best album recorded this year by solar power in the New Mexican desert: languid hippy funk that sounds like a sticky cousin of Spiritualized.

Hot Chip: Made in the Dark (EMI, TS £9.99)

The finest marriage of pure pop songwriting and dancefloor electronics since New Order's heyday.

Guillemots: Red (Universal, TS £12.99)

Big ideas, a big sound, and a huge stylistic palette that includes shiny R'n'B, fuzzy rock and smoky soul.

Los Campesinos! Hold on Now, Youngster... (Wichita, TS £10.99)

A restless, jingly, funny debut from a group that will restore your faith in indie music.

JAZZ

Est: Leucocyte (ACT, TS £12.99)

The last word from Europe's most exciting and innovative piano trio before the tragic death of Esbjorn Svenssön finds them in questing, experimental territory somewhere between jazz, electronica and abstraction.

Bill Frisell: History, Mystery (Nonesuch, TS £14.99)

No other artist in jazz can make music that is deeply serious and yet playful at the same time quite like this shy guitar virtuoso. An elegant set of surreal, gently off-kilter pieces for octet.

WORLD

Seun Kuti and Fela's Egypt 80: Many Things (Tôt Ou Tard, TS £12.99)

Sticking to the Afrobeat template that made his father's mid-1970s albums so thrilling, the youngest son blazes through furiously funky, horn-driven diatribes against the corruption that has left his continent on its knees.

Suarasama: Fajar Di Atas Awan (Drag City, TS £11.99)

A belated Western reissue for this exotic gem from 1998, wherein a troupe of Sumatran ethnomusicologists come up with ethereal devotional music pitched somewhere between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and psychedelic folk.

CLASSICAL

Jonas Kaufmann: Romantic Arias (Decca, TS £12.99)

Of the three young tenors who have broken away from the pack - Juan Diego Flórez, Rolando Villazón and the swarthy Kaufmann - my money's on this guy. His first big-label release is a stunningly versatile tribute to the tenor's art.

Belcea Quartet: Bartók String Quartets (EMI Classics, TS £17.99)

One of the year's earliest wows, and still at the top for the potent blend of passion, precision and folk inflections bestowed by the young Belcea Quartet upon Bartók's six quartets.

Hilary Hahn: Schoenberg/Sibelius Violin Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon, TS £12.99)

More 20th-century classics delivered with an intelligent ardour by Hahn. Within the serial fireworks she rediscovers Schoenberg the romantic, while the Sibelius has rarely sounded as clear, necessary or Scandinavian.

The King's Consort: Parnasso in Festa (Hyperion, TS £22.99)

Lucky the Christmas stocking that contains this: a sizeable and delicious Handel serenata, boisterously presented by the King's Consort and Matthew Halls. Much music is filched from Handel's oratorio Athalia, but everything suits, and the new material sparkles. Splendid and individual soloists, with no dud notes anywhere.

Stephen Layton/Holst Singers: Tormis (Hyperion, TS £12.99)

Layton conducts his superlative choir in secular choral works by the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis. The singers make a fabulous sound on the rich chords of Tormis's harmony, and their phrasing is so expressive that you don't need to speak Estonian to understand what they are singing about.

Maxwell Davies/Maggini Quartet: Naxos String Quartets (Naxos, TS £5.99)

The Maggini Quartet complete the cycle of ten works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on the label that commissioned them. The last is deliberately incomplete, ending mid-air after a patchwork of wild and sweaty flings. The Ninth contains raw echoes of the composer's Manchester childhood. A landmark series.

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