After only a couple of songs there are shouts from the audience to turn Mulatu up. But these people have missed the point. The clue is in the name of the instrument he's playing: the vibraphone, or vibes for short. The word "vibe" has long been slang for “a good feeling” or a mood, and that’s precisely what its role was in last night’s concert; to add some of that ambient mysteriousness intrinsic to the five-note Ethiopian scale.

I Am Kloot are a band it’s hard not to like in an almost personal way. The Manchester-based trio exude warmth, northern charm and a sense of self-contentment, seemingly impervious to the fact that they still haven’t made it as big as everyone thinks they should. Maybe that’s unsurprising. With the band’s leader in his forties, maybe it would be odder if they weren’t making music for reasons other than pampering egos. And it shows.

“Thank you for waiting. I know some of you have been waiting a long time – about seven years – but it takes me a while to get things done.” Thus did singer/songwriter Hayley Willis greet the audience at her return to active service. Two Willis albums have bookended that seven-year period: 2003's acclaimed Come Get Some, her debut for 679/XL, and its excellent follow-up, Uncle Treacle, released on 4 October on her own Cripple Creek label, for which last night's performance acted as a launch party.

My, haven’t they grown? In the several years (perhaps even a decade) since I last caught Placebo live, they’ve gone from being a scrawny three-piece with a somewhat thin sound – for much of the gig, I saw, they didn’t even have a bassist on stage – to become a properly equipped rock band with six on-stage members: here, on the first of two nights in south London, the band consisted of the regular trio, plus three side-persons on guitars, bass, keyboards and violin. They made quite a noise, blasting out satisfyingly slabby slices of sound.

Just before Edwyn Collins came on, the throbbing bassline of Chic's "Good Times" rumbled out across the packed South Bank auditorium. As a statement of intent it was pretty clear. Having suffered two debilitating brain haemorrhages followed by a bout of MRSA in 2005, Collins is understandably delighted to be gigging again. To paraphrase the old stand-up comedy opening salvo, he is probably delighted to be anywhere again. Some paralysis down his right side means he walks with a fetching silver-topped stick and does not play guitar onstage any more, but nothing held him back. His rapturously received, emotionally charged performance was captivating.

This was a warm and convivial evening in the company of the American folky-rootsy-rocky singer and songwriter Josh Ritter. His band made a rich noise, and his voice was keen and true, almost every lyric clearly audible. At the end of this, the last night of Ritter’s UK tour, the crowd – he seems to have a strong female following - were on their feet, and there were several calls of, “We love you, Josh!” from the stalls.

A soundtrack of "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe" and other eternal Jimi Hendrix hits, is currently drifting out of the Snap Gallery along the swanky Piccadilly Arcade in Mayfair. A boutique exhibition space, Snap sits incongruously amongst purveyors of "fine" jewellery and gentlemans’ tailoring and its front windows are transforming the chi-chi mall with Gered Mankowitz’s photographs of the Sixties guitar genius, Hendrix.

Rock music doesn’t get much better than this. For two hours, the raggedy Chicago band Wilco poured out song after song from a repertoire that stretches back 15 years, slipping effortlessly between gentle alt-country and avant-garde rock, between the whisperingly quiet and the crushingly loud. They were sensational, a band at the top of their game. And thanks to the immaculate sound system, and the acoustics of this fabulous hall, loudness never tipped over into distortion; everything was there, audible in the mix.

Some years ago I saw Muse playing at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. Towards the end of the show, at a climactic moment (I think it might have been during their proggy epic, “New Born”), singer and guitarist Matt Bellamy reached into a bag attached to his microphone stand, pulled out a handful of shiny golden confetti and flung it into the air. It fluttered downwards most attractively. It was a terrific show, with some truly powerful music, but as far as visuals were concerned, the confetti moment was about as good as it got.

Archaos were the mad, bad and dangerous troupe who revolutionised circus back in the Eighties and early Nineties – their antics with juggling chainsaws, raunchy Galllic attitude and mayhem with motorbikes is celebrated with a pop-up exhibition at the Bargehouse in the Oxo Tower Wharf on the South Bank for just three days ending on Sunday. It’s also a tribute to the genial genius behind the troupe, Pierre Bidon, who died earlier this year, at the age of 56.