Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here

Spare, haunted and hard-won, I'm New Here was Gil Scott-Heron's late return in 2010, the voice behind The Revolution Will Not Be Televised sounding weathered, wise and utterly unafraid.

It was his first album of new material in 16 years, following a long stretch of addiction and legal trouble, and it would be his final studio album. XL Recordings boss Richard Russell produced it in London, wrapping that deep, cracked baritone in sparse beats, booming low end and the odd lonely piano, inspired in part by the minimalism of The xx.

"Me and the Devil" reworks Robert Johnson's blues into a menacing, bass-heavy crawl. The title track borrows a Bill Callahan song and makes it sound like autobiography, while "I'll Take Care of You" turns the Brook Benton song into a fragile, piano-led confession. "New York Is Killing Me" claps and stomps with gospel grit as he aches for somewhere quieter.

Short spoken passages about family and the women who raised him thread through the record, giving it the feel of a memoir told in fragments.

It is brief but heavy, and it inspired Jamie xx's remix album a year later. Few comebacks in music have felt this honest, this bare or this necessary.