British cinema has done so badly by Christmas that the revival of a film that parses the nature of the festival while mining its potential for sparking family strife is cause for celebration.

In a season awash with limp carols, dodgy glam-rock and schmaltzy jazz, all credit to Los Lobos for coming up with something different. LLegó Navidad (Christmas is Here) contains 12 festive folk songs, mostly hailing from Latin America. There's not a sprig of tinsel or ho ho ho in sight.

If there’s one man who has got the chutzpah to sing songs about the Baby Jesus while flashing the Devil’s horns, it’s Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford. In fact, on the CD cover to his latest solo album, this is exactly what he’s doing – for Celestial is Rob Halford’s Christmas album.

Liam Payne is a Simon Cowell-manufactured pop star worth tens of millions off the back of music that’ll be regarded in a few years’ time much as the Bay City Rollers or Curiosity Killed The Cat are regarded now.

Before the days of stardom on Jay-Z and Kanye’s scale, before Brooklyn became a millionaire’s playground, Gang Starr were deeply influential in hip hop and became pioneers of jazz rap.

From the off, with a bellicose Daltrey declaring “I don’t care, I know you’re going to hate this song,” on the opener “This Music Must Fade” to the ferocious vocal hitched up to a careering chariot of a riff that drives “Ball and Chain”, and the look-back-in-anger ravings of “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise”, WHO sets its stall as The Who thriving on the kind of energy that fuelled this band in the Sixties and Sevent

Moonrise Kingdom is stuffed with director Wes Anderson’s familiar tropes. Elaborate sets, artfully designed props and Bill Murray all feature, the usual eccentricities tempered by genuine affection for the film’s young heroes. Anderson’s eighth feature film, released in 2012, is about many things: youthful love, isolated rural life and family dysfunction among them.

Despite their name, U-Bahn are from Melbourne. Instead of looking to Germany for their musical inspiration, their minds are on a vintage band from Ohio. “Beta Boyz”, the first track on their eponymous debut album, reassembles the key elements of Devo’s version of “(I Can’t Get no) Satisfaction”. The chicka-chicka tick-tock guitar is present. So too are the throat-swallowing Mark Mothersbaugh vocals, the rotating tin-can drums and primitive synth.

It’s seven years since Portugal’s muscular psychedelicists, 10.000 Russos got together and five since they released their barnstorming, self-titled EP. In that time, they’ve put out numerous other EPs, singles, appearances on compilation discs and three albums, including a collaboration with Dutch industrialists, RMFTM. However, their latest long-player, Kompromat could just end up being their defining piece of work.

There couldn't be much that's more techno than for a musician to have had a quarter-century career, only just be releasing his second solo album, and making it a quadruple.