Artists who borrow from multiple genres inevitably end up mastering none, and instead appear to be demonstrating a desperation to revitalise a directionless career, by becoming even less focussed. Consider Nelly Furtado: when you can write songs as sublime as Turn off the Light, why work with Timbaland – who did his best work with Missy Elliott on 1997’s Supa Dupa Fly anyway? Not that it matters, of course, ‘cos it worked.

Fellow Canadian Kinnie Starr has, by artistic definition, built a career around an effortless blending of genres. Her fourth album, Anything, is her best yet. Rock The Boat is everything that Nikka Costa’s Everybody Got Their Something should have been, but wasn’t (at least, not to me), condensed into four minutes of flaunt.

[Amazon UK]