There are certain things that you approach a Brian Wilson album expecting. Melody and harmony of course, but also a certain kind of approach: a fearlessness to experiment. When he finally completed the famously unfinished Smile in 2004, it was a landmark moment (though not, if we’re honest, as satisfying as the old demo versions). Then, while 2008’s That Lucky Old Sun was never going to be Pet Sounds, there was, at least, enough that was engaging about a man revisiting the sounds of his youth to be glad that he’d made it.

Very often, the greatest impact comes without shouting. Subtlety can have a power lingering longer than the two-minute thrill of a yell. So it is with Bridges, the eighth album by Eivør. In the past, the Faroese singer-songwriter has collaborated with Canada’s Bill Bourne, the Danish Radio Big Band and Ireland’s Donal Lunny, and taken turns into country and jazz. Bridges builds on her last album though, 2012’s Room, as further evidence that she is now more focused than ever.

It’s been just over a year since Future Islands’ Samuel T Herring famously gyrated, and chest-thumped his way through the band's latest single on American TV. The show was Letterman and the singer looked like a stevedore undergoing primal scream therapy. Within days the footage had gone viral. People have been talking about it ever since. Not least in the bar before last night’s show – how could he, they asked, possibly keep that up for an hour and a half?

The Specials: Specials, More Specials; The Special AKA: In the Studio

Not unreasonably, anyone might imagine that a band might lose a bit of their usual vigour if they found themselves four albums into their career playing in a room not much bigger than a church hall, miles from home on a cold Monday evening. Not so the Subways. The Hertfordshire three-piece bounced onto the stage in the Temple room in Birmingham’s Institute and tore straight into the anthemic “We Don’t Need Money to Have a Good Time” and didn’t let up until they finally left the stage more than an hour later with sweat dripping down the walls in torrents.

Things do not start well. Ian McCulloch, in trademark shades, apparently not aged a jot since Echo & the Bunnymen’s 1980s glory days, hits the stage in an offensive strop. He is performing a solo acoustic set from a chair. Beside him on a table sit a glass of water, a glass of milk and another glass with – at a guess – vodka and cranberry juice. He has the demeanour of a diva who’s been having a “party” in their changing room. Milk is good for settling an acid stomach.

Various Artists: The Odyssey - A Northern Soul Time Capsule

Sam Lee launched his second album this week, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his Mercury-nominated debut, A Ground of it Own.

Even for a dancer of Akram Khan’s sublime gifts, “Now” is an evasive concept to convey. During last night’s Sadler’s Wells extravaganza of Azerbaijani jazz and contemporary dance, “The Pursuit of Now”, Khan and his co-performer, the German-Korean dancer Honji Wang, mesmerised in a series of vignettes, gorgeously choreographed and lit. Azeri pianist Shahin Novrasli, whose ensembles’ charismatic folk-jazz comprised far more of the programme than the dance, offered a compelling snapshot of the Azeri music scene, beautifully positioned between Eastern and Western traditions.

After waiting a quarter of a century for Blancmange’s last album, 2011’s Blanc Burn, this new offering, effectively a Neil Arthur solo project, almost feels like a rush release. There’s a much changed visual aesthetic – gone is the stylised, Fifties cover kitsch, replaced by something much more stark and impenetrable. Now, I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what about CDs?