Amidst whispered chimes and bowed cymbals, Jenny Hval delicately delivers the line ‘I arrived in town with an electric tooth brush pressed against my clitoris’. It is a typically provocative opening gambit from the Norwegian singer, in her first recording released under her own name and her first outing on the Rune Grammofon label. Earlier albums recorded under her Rockettothesky incarnation – 2006’s To Sing You Apple Trees and 2008’s Medea, a fantastical evocation of Euripidean pain – straddled timbral experimentation and potential leanings to the mainstream. Viscera is a very different beast and it does not make for easy listening.

Finding freedom in a more acoustically concerned setting, Hval obsesses about her vocal attack, carefully sculpting the front of notes. Her ability to dart from hushed voicing to open lyricism is astonishing. The fragile haze set up by Hval’s church organ and zither, drifting into periods of more pronounced percussion from drummer Kyrre Laastad, echoes Joanna Newsom’s darkest moments.

Above all, for Hval, it is music that plays with the primitive sensations of the human body. On Blood Fight, she swiftly articulates ‘I carefully rearranged my senses so they could have a conversation’ as guitarist Håvard Volden coaxes pulsating blocks of sound from his instrument. Moments of outstanding beauty come with pure textural manipulation – the electronic waves of sound dashed through with snatched voicing that could open ‘golden locks’.

This is an important record, one that establishes Jenny Hval as a significant force to watch alongside the likes of PJ Harvey and Björk. Viscera is certainly an uncompromising proposition. Its vocabulary runs through the female anatomy, spilling out in Hval’s vivid references to organs and primal senses: clitoris, cunt, pores, erections, blood, itching. It is feminist language that aims at a graphic anti-pornography, finding an erotic backdrop in her meandering night music.

Since the rapturous reception received by their eponymous debut album back in 2008, Seattle-based sextet Fleet Foxes have found themselves between something of a rock and a hard place. Garnering both widespread critical acclaim and commercial success, Fleet Foxes was an album so fully realised that it seemed to leave the band with little room for improvement. The remarkable thing about the band’s long awaited sophomore record, Helplessness Blues, is that Fleet Foxes have managed to maintain their musical identity without merely repeating themselves.

 The weightless vocal harmonies that steadily build and recede atop the finger-picked guitar on opener Montezuma would have sat happily alongside White Winter Hymnal or Quiet Houses on the band’s debut album. Indeed, all of the characteristics of Fleet Foxes’ previous music are abundant on Helplessness Blues, the songs unfolding organically like mini suites with warm, almost baroque arrangements of mandolins, acoustic guitars and woodwind. Despite its similarities to the band’s previous work however, listening more closely to Montezuma does reveal a tangible shift of focus from first album Fleet Foxes.

‘I wonder if I’ll see faces above me, or just cracks in the ceiling,’ ponders lead singer Robin Pecknold as he imagines his death bed, the emotionally direct lyrics in stark contrast to the pastoral meanderings that made up the majority of Fleet Foxes. Throughout Helplessness Blues the spotlight is placed firmly on Pecknold as he explores themes of loss and alienation, providing an emotional contact that was lacking from the band’s occasionally clinical debut. Whilst one could argue that many of the melodies on their debut were more instantly memorable than anything here, Helplessness Blues displays a new depth to Fleet Foxes’ music.

This is a welcome addition that keeps the album from sounding like a tired retread and instead transforms it into something entirely new.

With Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella in Oxford and the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s new version on DVD it seems that Ashton’s version, still performed in Covent Garden, is being left behind. However novelty isn’t everything and here in Oxford tradition is often something held dear to the heart. 

Bourne first transported Cinderella to wartime Britain, and more specifically the Blitz, in 1997, marking a great shift in the performance of the ballet and the fairytale itself – as the bombs fall Cinderella finds the Pilot of her dreams. A male Fairy Godmother is not as drastic a change as male swans but the production is suitably innovative for a choreographer and director often hailed as groundbreaking. 

Much more recent is David Bintley’s work in Birmingham – less obviously original to the layman and probably least surprising to someone who grew up with the Disney version of the plot – the neglectful father has been replaced with a Stepmother and the Ugly Sisters are danced by women, which makes them less pantomime and in many ways more comic,  because they are believable. 

However the canonical version has not been eclipsed. The inclusion of a father beloved by Cinderella and manipulated by the Ugly Sisters makes the First Act all the more tragic and the empty vastness of the stage makes Cinderella’s solos more evocative. The lack of artifice and high-concept allows the romanticism and lyricism of the music and choreography to shine through all the more. 

Something the Royal Ballet have always mastered is costumes, and the story of Cinderella requires some dramatic costume changes. The drabness of her initial tatters are more than made up for by Cinderella’s entrance at the ball with a lace cloak stretching across the entire stage – it’s a moment of extravagence which takes you back to childhood. For the boys there’s an abundance of role models with the cheeky Jester entirely stealing the show whenever he appears. Still, Bourne’s version does provide us with men in uniform and, having witnessed the royal wedding fever which swept the nation last Friday, I know they will be well received.

Of course the standard of dancing and choreography is brilliant across the board and each production has its merits. It is very in vogue at the moment to adapt well known fairytales and the reason these adaptations work is because of the intimate knowledge and love of the original shared by the audience and performers. Re-interpretation often serves as a mirror, highlighting and challenging previous assumptions,  but however much I look forward to an inventive retelling I tend to drift back to the original.  Call me sentimental but I still love a classic.