Three albums in, and Vampire Weekend were due a shake-up. Enter Father of the Bride, by far their most ambitious record to date. It’s an 18-track behemoth featuring 14 musicians and six different producers, spanning from folk to jazz. It may be a bit kitchen sink, but it’s also their most exciting release since their eponymous debut.

Editors’ last album, the electronic-infused Violence, was hailed as a big departure for the indie rock band on its release a little over a year ago.

Never quite the household names in Britain that they were in their native USA, Daryl Hall and John Oates can nonetheless claim to be the best-selling duo in the history of popular music. With 40 million records sold, six US chart-topping singles and a heap of gold and platinum albums, they come out ahead even of such luminaries as Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers.

Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he paces back to his bandmates, body taut, hair a-flop. He tells the audience he’s been involved in a long ongoing experiment; “standing in front of VOX AC30 amps for 30 years.” The resulting problem, he adds in a rising shout, “is that I can’t hear you.”

“Our attendees are a select group, but we have a connection,” remarked Damon Albarn at the end of The Good, the Bad & the Queen’s set. He’s not wrong – much of the band had outgrown Cardiff’s Great Hall 25 years ago, but it proved the perfect venue for this musical love-in.

If you were a fan of “Rock Island Line” when it became a pop hit, you’d have to be at least in your mid-70s now. In 1956, Paul McCartney heard Lonnie Donegan perform it live in Liverpool, and Paul’s rising 77.

Record Store Day is tomorrow which means that your local record shop will be packed with all sorts of exclusive, limited edition goodies as well as major label cash-ins. There are hundreds of releases but many aren't available before the day itself so below are the ones that theartsdesk on Vinyl got their hands on this year. Dive in.

theartsdesk on Vinyl's RSD Choice

Hot 8 Brass Band Working Together EP (Tru Thoughts)

Circa Waves, the guitar-band from Liverpool, go over a storm at festivals and large venues. With simplicity, tightness and concentrated energy, they know how to play with the tension that can build between soft and hard, the yin and the yang of rock forms that continue to sound fresh because they're delivered with a sense of fun and the joy of making party music with catchy lyrics.

Kettering might not be the first place you’d associate with spaced-out psych-rock, but neither are Croydon or Rugby and they gave us Loop and Spacemen 3 respectively. Maybe it’s something to do with the need for escape that can make such prosaic surroundings the backdrop for wide-screen exploratory escape. Perhaps there’s just sod-all else to do there. Whatever the reason, four-piece psychedelic rock band Thee Telepaths have a sound that, while not original, manages to dwarf expectation by virtue of being pretty much perfectly executed. 

While Oasis have so far resisted the temptation of the big pay-off that a Gallagher family reunion would ensure, plenty of other Britpoppers have been considerably less coy about getting back together since the heady days of the 1990s. We’ve already had reunions from Blur (albeit temporarily), Suede, Dodgy and even Shed Seven. Now though, it is the turn of Louise Wener’s four-piece, Sleeper.