Linda Thompson finds her voice with a little help from her friends – plus the week’s best albums

• “Once I had a voice clear and true … but now that voice is gone,” is the arresting opening declaration of The Solitary Traveller, the first thing we hear on a surprising new album by Linda Thompson, the veteran English folkie once hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as “one of rock’n’roll’s finest voices.” The most surprising thing being that Linda Thompon doesn’t sing on it herself.