The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R&B band The Syndicats, it attracted next-to no attention when it came out. The top side of the flop 45 was “On the Horizon,” a version of a Ben E. King B-side. After this, The Syndicats’ time seemed to have passed.

The body language fascinates. Mercury Rev’s frontman Jonathan Donahue could be playing a theramin. The arm movements fit the bill, yet the putative instrument is absent. At other points, his arms are outstretched, palms down. He might be projecting invisible rays in the manner of a silent-screen magician or, when he's in front of the band’s guitarist Grasshopper, absorbing invisible energies.

Lizz Wright’s exquisite singing breaks all boundaries between soul, gospel and jazz. In so doing she channels many interwoven strands of the African-American experience. Wright thrives on singing to an audience: her recorded output is wonderful enough, but, a child of the church, the sacred ceremony of raising the spirit in myriad ways is undeniably her home ground.

Wardruna are something of a modern musical phenomenon. Part Scandinavian folk revival, part prog rock epic and part pagan ritual, their wide-screen performances are a beautiful and mesmerising celebration of repurposed ancient traditions, the natural world and the power of singing together.

After scoring a hit in 1966 with the distinctive folk-pop of her jazz-inclined debut single "Walkin' my Cat Named Dog," US singer-songwriter Norma Tanega (1939–2019) seemed to melt away. Three follow-up 45s weren’t hits. Her album wasn’t a strong seller. Latterly, though, one of its tracks, “You're Dead,” has been heard as the theme of the TV and cinema versions of What We Do In The Shadows.

“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of resuscitating the past, the lyrics of “Ten Years,” the fourth song on The Loft’s first album, neatly sum-up the band’s current situation. The final line gives the 10-track set its title: “Everything changes, everything stays the same.”

What happens after the spotlight is directed towards another target? In the case of Liverpool and the Merseybeat boom – which, in terms of chart success, peaked in 1963 – the question is addressed by Liverpool Sunset: The City After Merseybeat 1964–1969. The city’s musicians carried on, despite record labels looking elsewhere for the next big thing, and despite the Liverpool tag no longer ensuring an automatic interest.

Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed Sheeran, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and The Ramones’ Leave Home album.

Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a downland commuter village near Brighton, still giving his all during two hours of humour and humane passion as if this is the biggest stage, and this crowd a community clearly worth serving.

“German space rock group is already shooting up the charts with their debut US LP. One of few continental groups able to make this musical mode attractive in the US.” That, in full, in its 1 March 1975 issue, was US music business paper Billboard’s review of the single of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn.”