At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before suggesting they sing along, she plunges straight in, a minute or so into chanting “a love supreme”, and gets everyone to join her in what can only be described as a communal act of devotion. This is a kind of high-wire daring, and it works, suggesting as well that she's assured of a large group of listeners for whom she can do no wrong.

Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release on the titular label. That record was a four-track, seven-inch EP by the rough, Rolling Stones-ish pub rockers The Count Bishops. It came out in November 1975.

Now in its third year, Edinburgh Psych Fest returned to multiple venues in the old town and the city’s southside for 2025; namely Summerhall, Queen’s Hall, The Mash House and Sneaky Pete’s. Offering a day long feast of psych-tinged sounds, Manchester-based promoters Now Wave brought a mix of bigger names and lesser-known bands to these various stages.

The annual Supersonic Festival is a major jewel in Birmingham’s musical crown – but not, it seems, one that is particularly valued by the city’s establishment and more powerful decision-makers. Based in the relatively bohemian area of Digbeth, and despite receiving international plaudits and recognition, time and again it is forced to fight for its very existence.

International is Saint Etienne’s 13th album. It is their last. According to the promotional material, it was written while recording their last album, 2021’s I’ve Been Trying To Tell You. The trio – Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs – must have known back then they were planning to bow out.

The Outer Limits were from Leeds. Active over 1965 to 1968, the soul-tinged mod-poppers didn’t chart, but their two regular singles are now pricey collector’s items. There was also, before the orthodox 45s, a track on a Leeds University charity fund-raising single.

During the opening seconds of Mirra, an unusual sound leaps out – a grunting. It’s integral to a shifting aural pallete which also features a bowed violin and chiming percussion along with a recurring grind like that of a rotating waterwheel. The mood is chilly, suggesting an environment where unalloyed nature has the upper hand, a place where the seasons define what comes to pass.

“What's the New Mary Jane” is a nursery rhyme-like song, one of John Lennon’s most peculiar offerings. It was recorded for late 1968’s double album The Beatles (i.e. the White Album) but, literally, did not make the cut. Nonetheless, John Lennon would not let it go.

You wait years for a guitar group with brothers to reunite and then two come along at once. The Maccabees return might have attracted far less attention compared to the Gallaghers hitting the road again as Oasis, but as they strolled onstage on a humid Glasgow night the ecstatic reaction from fans suggested it was a sight many had not expected to see again.

The long, hot summer of 2025 has been something else, right? Hate rallies, creeping authoritarianism, a weird reluctance to discuss the extremity of the weather even as everyone scrambles to buy air conditioners...

But also a slightly delirious sense of fun as people get out and about in the sun – exemplified by the eruptions of joy of DJ AG’s spontaneous pavement sets featuring unknowns and megastars, broadcast online as a super-democratic antidote to all those videos of DJs alone or surrounded by too-cool-for-school party people.