It’s been a couple of years since Peter Perrett, the former frontman and creative force behind the much loved but commercially under-performing Only Ones decided that he’d had enough of being a mere legend and got back into the musical ring. He had made a brief reappearance in the mid-1990s under the guise of The One, but that was all very fleeting, and Perrett’s infamous bad habits soon reasserted themselves until a short Only Ones’ reformation tour 10 years ago.

Nothing brings home the difference between sequencing an album and sequencing a live show like going to see a classic album played in its entirety. And Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours – described by frontman James Dean Bradfield in Edinburgh as “a curious mixture of dancing and thinking” – is a stranger choice than most for the live treatment.

The sheer scale of the Mariah Carey phenomenon is truly astounding. Since the release of her first album in 1990, she has now clocked up worldwide album sales of over 200 million, and had 18 US Number One singles. Also – and far less frequently mentioned – she is actually third in the list of songwriters with the most chart-topping singles, and sixth in the list of producers.

Back in 2001, after the release of their debut album This Is It, The Strokes weren’t just the most fashionable band in the world, they were also regarded as the group that could “save rock”. That was asking quite a lot.

Debates about whether 1964’s Marnie presaged Alfred Hitchcock’s downslide as a force will run and run. It is however certain that it was the director’s last film scored by Bernard Herrmann, who had worked on 1963’s The Birds, 1960’s Psycho, 1959’s North by Northwest and, before that, a run of Hitchcock’s films back to 1955.

Blessed with a red sunset and an adoring crowd, Noel Gallagher brought life to the ruins of Cardiff Castle. With support from fellow 90s alumnus Gaz Coombes, and Wales’s next-gen prodigies Boy Azooga and Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, the evening provided a winning mini-festival affair.

They’re back and they’re looking and sounding good – and Spice Girls mania took over Dublin’s city centre for several hours before their concert yesterday. Hotels were booked out, every other woman I passed in the street was wearing a Spice Girls T-shirt or hat, and by mid-afternoon the whole city appeared to be moving as one towards Croke Park. 

Was it imagination or did The Waterboys’ audience at London’s Roundhouse, invited to sing along to “The Nearest Thing to Hip”, really sing extra-loud and lustily on the line “in this shithole”?

Oh Sees have long been touted of as the perfect festival band. Their racuous, high-tempo rock'n'roll always riles up the drunken swathes, even if no-one recognises the song. However, going to a headline show is a different prospect - these swathes are the loyalists, not ready to accept anything less than carnage. After witnessing a relentless sold out show in Cardiff, maybe it's time to remove "festival" from that opening statement.

Rokia Traoré’s passage through this year’s Brighton Festival has been central, binding it to her Malian identity in a series of gigs. This hands-on Guest Director’s pulsing Afro-rock Opening Night was followed by the first Dream Mandé show’s recasting of traditional sounds. A Malian Dance Night added FGM protest, Seventies s.f.-soundtracked myth and cheeky wit from young choreographers. But this show is surely Traoré’s cornerstone, supporting all the rest, as she takes on the role of griot to recast Mali as democracy’s secret rock.