Mavis Staples, the woman to whom a young Bob Dylan proposed marriage when they met at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival and whose voice he has described as his “favourite voice”. Mavis Staples, who announced her retirement in 2023 and then realised she still had “work” to do, even after more than 75 years on the road.

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Martel Zaire (Evil Ideas)

Opening acts don’t always enjoy a full house, but at at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of a UK tour in support of Suzanne Vega and her acclaimed new album Flying with Angels, there was a warm and generous welcome for singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy’s opening five-song set, drawn from her first two albums, The Eternal Rocks Beneath and The Pendulum Swing, and featuring a preview from the third, These Frightening Machines, due in March.

It’s weird, right? We’ve somehow stumbled into a world where, for all we’re told that algorithms homogenise music, actually more people than ever are exposed to very, very odd and abstract soundmaking.

After cancelling his Birmingham gig an hour before curtain-up due to illness, the anticipatory hype around whether Benson Boone’s London show at The O2 would actually go ahead was almost as electric as his infamous song. But a reassuring ping from the ’gram confirmed: it’s on. And indeed, it was.

“Climb upon a bridge to far, go anywhere your heart desires.” The key phrase from the title track of Midlake’s sixth studio album conveys the perception that anything is within reach should an appropriate mind-set be attained. However, later on the album there are references to a “lion’s den” and “war within the valley of roselesss thorns,” a setting where “power and glory were in store.”

During a false start to “Billy Don’t Fall”, on Sunday night at Birmingham’s iconic Town Hall, Sananda Maitreya took the opportunity to address the packed house before him. He noted that there’s now a King on the throne of England, an American Pope and that “all the white ladies have got big lips and big asses – so, it’s a long time since we were here last.”

Three of last year’s finest singles were by Luvcat, a classy-but-naughty Eartha Kitt-style bad girl steeped in burlesque-rock’n’roll spirit. In fact, she’s the wanton basque’n’fishnets persona that, during a decadent sojourn in Paris, possessed the soul of Liverpudlian singer Sophie Morgan.

The question is, can she engagingly maintain this wordy, filmic conceit for a whole album? The answer is… yes.

If you were looking for the most perfectly brooding autumnal album this year, Florence Welch and her Machine may have been one of the least likely places you would have expected. However, motivated by deeply personal tumult of the past few years, Welch and co return with an ominous, hauntingly beautiful sixth album, Everybody Scream.