Best Coast, O2 ABC2, Glasgow

BEST COAST: A fuzz-pop trip to the Golden State warms up the drizzliest of Glasgow evenings

A fuzz-pop trip to the Golden State to warm up the drizzliest of evenings

Best Coast has always been the quintessential California band, an identity the duo has embraced so fully that the artwork for their latest album features the bear that is the state’s mascot.

CD: The Beach Boys – That’s Why God Made the Radio

Despite its missteps, this joyless reunion yields a few gems

“We’re back together, easy money”. For anyone feeling a wee bit cynical about The Beach Boys' reunion, that lyric – from “Spring Vacation” – is likely to push them towards full-blown contempt. Although That’s Why God Made the Radio is defined by missteps, it’s worth persevering to the end.

Korn, Brixton Academy

The Californian four-piece bring the dubstep... and a large sack of riffs

To dubstep or not to dubstep, that was the question perplexing the nearly 5000 metalheads jammed into the Brixton Academy to see Korn.

Dustin Hoffman rides his Luck on Sky Atlantic

Thoroughbred cast and brilliant on-track action in complex horse opera

Further advancing the theory that television is the place for pedigree actors to be seen nowadays, Dustin Hoffman makes his TV debut in HBO's Luck, which kicks off on Saturday 18 February on Sky Atlantic.

CD: Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth

The world's favourite hair-metal band proves a little too old for this kind of thing

Not many realise it, but Diamond Dave and the Van Halen brothers have actually been back together since 2007. It’s true they only actually managed one tour before Eddie was back in rehab. But, boy, by all accounts, what form they were in. So, now they’ve recorded a new album together, is it worth getting? The bad news is that no amount of wishful thinking can alter that, now in their fifties, these guys no longer really convince with their inimitable, high-octane slacker-rock.

Bombay Beach

Alma Har'el's indelible documentary reports from a faded Californian utopia

I can’t help thinking of Mad Men when watching the opening sequence of Alma Har’el’s marvellous documentary Bombay Beach. Newsreel footage from the 1950s excitedly trumpets the “miracle in the desert” of the Salton Sea, formed by accident when the Colorado River ran wild, and the heart of a development scheme that was to turn the area into “the recreational capital of the world”. 

CD: Gonjasufi - Mu.zz.le

It cannot match his debut's quantum leap sideways into strangeness, but retains the interest nonetheless

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.

theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Gonjasufi

THEARTSDESK Q&A: MUSICIAN GONJASUFI: Hirsute electronica singer-songwriter mulls music, marijuana, mysticism and his jailed brother

The hirsute electronica singer-songwriter mulls music, marijuana, Islamic mysticism and the fate of his brother

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.

CD of the Year: Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

Still only 21, the much vaunted singer-songwriter matches up to the greats

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.