Despite having been a rock star since the late Seventies, Chrissie Hynde seems to be an introverted, elusive sort of person. If this Arena profile was anything to go by, she lives as a virtual recluse, positively revelling in solitariness. Like the film, her last album was called Alone.

Another peripatetic global music update from theartsdesk's Peter Culshaw, hosted by Music Box Radio. This edition features forthcoming album releases from hard salsa revivalists La Mambanegra, a remix from heroic desert rockers Tinariwen and electro Tunisian stars Bargou 08.

It’s been 12 months since the news guy wept and told us: David Bowie, ever out in front, became the first to depart in the year of musical mortality 2016. After the initial lamentations, the memorial tributes have been a mixed bag. Best was the life story stitched together for Radio 4 from a vast back catalogue of audio interviews. Less impactfully there was also the well-meaning misfire at the Proms, plus a messy Dadaist meta-biog rushed out by Paul Morley.

Context in rock is everything. Popular music is, after all, essentially a reaction to a moment in time. So, whilst in another year, an album like A Moon Shaped Pool may just have lurked in my top five, political circumstances propelled it straight to number one. It wasn't just that the piece was thick with feverishness and alienation. What really made it embody 2016 was the unmistakable whiff of fear. 

A 90-minute biographical documentary about Bruce Springsteen, you may think, is for Springsteen fans only. But really anyone who is interested in fame, friendship, family relationships and the creative process will have enjoyed this – a revealing mix of personal testimony, The Boss reading from his recently released autobiography of the same title, Springsteen family home movies, and rarely seen footage of his early career.

“One thing there's not is the big Metallica ballad – it's all pretty uppity,” said Lars Ulrich of Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, Metallica’s first album for the best part of a decade. If we ignore, for a moment, the Trump-esque grasp of language and assume he meant uptempo rather than arrogant, the drummer appears to be a master of understatement as soon as opener “Hardwired” tears out of the gate, all rabid intent and sweary barking.

It’s a tempo that you’d imagine would be difficult to keep up for a group that’s made up of, in the main, men in their 50s, and you’d be right. So, after the rugged riffing and impeccable precision of “Atlas, Rise!”, things slow down and get even heavier – much like men in their 50s. The impressive, progressive slow chug of “Now That We’re Dead”, however, proves to be little more than a pit-stop as “Moth into Flame” goes through the gears with little consideration for the clutch, pausing only to allow a surprisingly considered vocal melody a chance to jump in.

The riffs throughout the first CD are inspired

The playing is perfect – precise and on point. Not that you’d expect anything else from Metallica who, even when they’re off their game (2008’s Death Magnetic, for instance), still eclipse most other metal bands. The riffs throughout the first CD are inspired and as dense and dark as you could hope for.

The second disc, however, is where things start to unravel slightly – much like men in their 50s. Simply stated, there’s a marked dip in quality as promising intros give way to disappointing songs; it’s like being given the keys to the city and then finding out that the city in question is Milton Keynes. The furious thrash of “Spit out the Bone” excepted, there could – and should – have been much more considered editing here.

That’s not to say Hardwired… isn’t good. In fact, if the best of what’s here had been presented on one disc, it could lay claim to be the best material the band has put out in a quarter of a century. As it is, it needs to lose some ballast… much like men in their 50s. 

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@jahshabby

Overleaf: watch the video to "Moth into Flame"

Good grief, was Out of Time really 25 years ago? This was the seventh studio album from the li'l ole band from Athens, Georgia, and the one with which they finally cracked open the mainstream international market. This was when people still used to buy CDs, and a time when it was still possible for bands to sustain slow-growing careers which built steadily from the ground upwards.  

The last time Genesis Breyer P Orridge was in the UK, it was to touch down and talk about life, art, magic and strange encounters as part of COUM, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and PTV3 at the October Gallery's William Burroughs centenary show back in 2015.

It’s 58 years since “Britain’s answer to Elvis Presley” had his first top 10 hit and now he’s back, and back to his roots, with a new CD, Just… Fabulous Rock ‘n’ Roll, released by Sony with whom, at the grand old age of 76, he has signed a lucrative new contract. And don’t mock. It’s a terrific album: 15 classic songs including a “duet” with Elvis Presley, without whom.