An entirely electric leading performance from the fast-rising Ukweli Roach is the reason for being for revisiting Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, back in London for the first major production since the late Philip Seymour Hoffman brought his acclaimed Off Broadway premiere of it to the Donmar in 2002. Since then, author Stephen Adly Guirgis has to be honest written better plays, not least the thrilling The Motherf**er with the Hat which doesn't try so hard to flag its bravura at every turn.

Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an adventure for the ears. Dive in!

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Vula Viel Do Not Be Afraid (Vula Viel)

When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all about revelled in warmth, hedonism and groove, Ladytron embraced the android: crisp in appearance, dry and enigmatic of lyric, symmetrically stylish.

Imagine an orchestral concert made up exclusively of contemporary works by living composers: a programme in which every note was written within the last two decades. Imagine not only that this concert is sufficiently popular to fill a 2,000-seat hall with a noticeably youthful and diverse crowd, but that its format is already being replicated regularly by pretty much every major UK symphony orchestra. Now ask yourself how much critical attention such a concert would receive? You wouldn’t be able to pick up the Sunday review supplements for sheer weight of coverage, would you?

Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt. Yes, Mike “Wombles” Batt. Mike “Elkie Brooks” Batt. Mike “Katie Melua” Batt. Mike “Bright Eyes” Batt.

One of the biggest crowd roars of the night comes right at the start when Jake Shears runs onstage. He is wearing a grey top hat, a white tail-jacket with glittered lapel-edging, silver glittery trousers, a tight black sequinned vest top, and a bow tie on his bare neck. The 600 capacity Concorde 2, right on Brighton's seafront, is sold out.

There are two schools of thought on the Scissor Sisters. One was that they were vapid, over-cheery retro-pop of the worst order. The other is that they were an extension of New York’s ever-mischievous underground in all its underground LGBT+ disco glory. While they certainly leaned occasionally towards the former, I very much valued them as the latter. The first solo album from frontman Jake Shears provides the same quandary and its relentless Labrador bounciness won’t be for everyone.

Shears took time out when the Scissor Sisters went on hiatus in 2012 after their fourth album. Recently his autobiography was published, as candid as any, oozing with body fluids, and his new album also shoots from the hip, boasting a lyricism that’s proud, gay and vulnerable, albeit usually wrapped in multiple layers of sass and bravado. “Big Bushy Mustache”, for instance, about “porn star handlebars”, lathers its subject matter in joyous frivolity over a “Filthy/Gorgeous” funk-rock boogie, while “Sad Song Backwards”, a centrepiece of the album, has lyrics such as “Every god damn day since you left me/Hung me dry, betrayed and you effed me/I’m bereft, depressed and so confused” but still sounds ebullient over a Vaudevillian take on country stompin’.

Shears based his sound around Ray LaMontagne’s 2016 album Ouroboros, utilising its producer Kevin Ratterman and various musicians who worked on it. It’s not an album I know so cannot comment, but the overall sound of Jake Shears is an amped take on the Scissor Sisters first album, all that Elton/Queen vivaciousness filtered through an older, not always wiser Rufus Wainwright sensibility. There are places when the sense of listening to songs from a musical is overpowering – the single “Creep City” sounds like a catchy outtake from Little Shop of Horrors. But the album is at its best when sleazy funk takes over as on “S.O.B.” (“sex on the brain”!) or the slower “The Bruiser”, which borrows its drum track from Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing”.

Shears’ debut is a bit much, when consumed in one go, a feast that’s simply OTT in colours, spices, flavours and, especially, candy, but I’m betting it’s a grower. By the end of the year, its essence rather than its peacock surface display will have come to the fore, and some of these songs will be lodged in many of our brains.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Big Bushy Moustache" by Jake Shears