The Last Dinner Party’s second album, From the Pyre, is one of this year’s most enjoyable. Its lead single, “This is the Killer Speaking”, is a belter that’ll be around for years.

Axis: Bold As Love, the second album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, was released in the UK during the first week of December 1967. In America, it came out in January 1968. Now, it is the subject of a multi-disc box set titled Bold As Love.

When Yard Act headlined the O2 Academy in Glasgow back in 2023,

Even people who are unfamiliar with Kneecap’s sharp but raucous music may well be aware of the legal issues that have beset the Irish-English bilingual rappers over the last eighteen months. As support for the oppressed people of Palestine has caused them no end of grief in the UK, the USA and beyond.

“Mrs Bluebird” is one of the great singles. Released in May 1968, it is airy yet lush. The filigreed harmony vocals are like velvet, the rhythm is insistent but soft. Overall, there is a sense of distance; that what’s heard is not quite within reach. When a guitar solo comes, it is sharp but muted. This is archetypal American harmony pop – but with a distinct freeze-dried character.

It’s not often that a band manages to get a Birmingham crowd dancing from the front of the stage to the back of the hall. However, Lambrini Girls achieved this feat on Saturday evening – from the very first bars of their set until they finally exited the stage after an encore of the lairy “Big Dick Energy”.

Out of the hundreds of gigs, surprises and collaborations that make up the EFG London Jazz Festival (LJF), this review focuses on four concerts fusing jazz with world music.

Bliss it was to be a fan of Thin Lizzy 50 years ago, in November 1975. Phil Lynott referred to fans as “supporters”, an apt term given Lizzy were followed with a level of partisan fervour generally reserved for football teams. And they were on a sharp upward curve.

This week, UK electronica originals Cabaret Voltaire hit Birmingham on their penultimate tour before they finally put their synthesizers into storage and call it quits this time next year. For a band that have been going (on and off) since 1973, however, they were seriously on fire – with no suggestion that they should be considering permanent retirement any time soon.