Debut albums often set the bar high. How are you going to top a Psychocandy or a Piper At The Gates of Dawn? The answer is, not easily and, with rare exceptions, not at once. All those ideas that had been growing forever splurge out in those first excited studio sessions, years of passion and imagination explode into the open and the thrill carries to the listener.

Gonjasufi, AKA Sumach Ecks (b 1978) was raised in San Diego by a Mexican mother and an American-Ethiopian father. His musical ability first came to more than local prominence when he appeared on the Flying Lotus album Los Angeles in 2008. His own debut album, A Sufi and a Killer, produced by Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer and Mainframe, appeared in 2010.

This was the year I finally fell in love with Laura Marling’s music. I liked her first two albums well enough, but I couldn't quite shake the feeling that the endless chorus of critical hosannas was more about what people wanted her to be than what she actually was. Well, A Creature I Don’t Know certainly changed all that.

Recorded music has a lot to answer for. Until its arrival, most people made their own music – at home, using whatever resources were to hand. If you were lucky, you might have owned a piano. The less well-off might have had access to a ukulele. Tony Coleman and Margaret Meagher’s enchanting, lo-fi documentary stakes a bold claim for the ukulele’s pivotal role in 20th-century music history.

In the mid-Nineties, America had a bit of a moment with electronic dance music. The most emblematic sign of this was The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land topping the Billboard charts in 1997. The truth was, however, that despite inventing house music and techno, en masse nationally they didn’t really get rave culture. The US liked their electronic dance stylistically performed as close to a KISS concert as possible. They liked it, in other words, to be rock’n’roll.

Ah, the Duke of York’s Picture House, the oldest consistently operating purpose-built cinema in the country. It’s a beautiful venue, just over a century old, and almost too comfortable. It’s been jazzed up a few times over the decades and, tonight, bathed in red light, wears its history with lazy insouciance, merging it with the current interior design’s burlesque Art Deco spin. My seat is at the back of the balcony, plush and comfortable, with a little shelf where I place my salted popcorn and horrible pear cider (the latter, a mistake).

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, all women were dressed by Frederick's of Hollywood and all men were a cross between David Lee Roth and Jon Bon Jovi. The Eighties-set Rock of Ages is so outlandish, it might as well be set on another planet. Instead, the all-singing, all-dancing action centres on a bar along LA’s Sunset Boulevard.

Summertime and the living is easy. Gershwin wrote it but it could almost be written by that apostle of California sun, Brian Wilson, who sung it with his band last night. Wilson wouldn’t have come up with a line like “your daddy’s rich, and your mama’s good-looking” - a bit too knowing. Wilson’s music was focused on surf, girls and cars, but had elements in common with Gershwin – working with brothers and burning out early, among other things.

No real surprises on John Hiatt's 20th album, except that he can still find ways to put together a fresh, punchy set of songs using much the same ingredients as he's been using for the past 40 years. The songs, as ever, are rooted in rock, blues, country, Southern soul and old-fashioned R&B, though producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamassa etc) has brought focus and weight to the sound. 

No real surprises on John Hiatt's 20th album, except that he can still find ways to put together a fresh, punchy set of songs using much the same ingredients as he's been using for the past 40 years. The songs, as ever, are rooted in rock, blues, country, Southern soul and old-fashioned R&B, though producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamassa etc) has brought focus and weight to the sound.