The three-toed sloth moves at a maximum – that’s maximum – of 10 feet per minute. It’s thought to be the slowest animal in the world. While on a train hugging the north Kent coast however, I reckon I could give it a, figurative, run for its money. I’m on my way to a tiny venue in Ramsgate to see understated US rock band Sebadoh, whose album count is in double figures, on a tour that will see them joining Lemonheads in London for a high-profile gig. Well, at least that’s the plan.

Though packaged as a tale of an ageing rock star, Danny Collins is really an autumnal comedy-drama about regret, redemption and trying to seize life's second chances. As the title character, a cheesy AOR veteran pitched somewhere between Neil Diamond and Neil Sedaka, Al Pacino demonstrates why he and rock'n'roll have never been intimately linked – he can't sing, he can't dance, and he hasn't a clue what to do with a baying live audience.

The title of Don Henley's fifth solo album refers to the rural area of East Texas where he grew up, listening to country music stations like Shreveport's fabled Louisiana Hayride and absorbing the building blocks of the country-rock sound he forged with the Eagles. The Eagles went through many changes, but country remains close to Henley's heart, and Cass County sounds like the country albums that used to come out of the old Nashville in the 1950s and Sixties.

Faces: You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything… 1970–1975

It’s been worth the wait.

Growing up is a pain in the arse. Actually that’s not true, my arse has remained relatively unaffected by advancing years. In the last few months, however, I’ve managed to put my back out getting up off the sofa and inexplicably hurt my knee while trying to stand after retying a shoelace. I’ve also developed an acute fear of cholesterol, without really understanding what it is.

I was prepared to be fondly underwhelmed by Keith Richards' first album in 23 years: 15 loose-limbed tracks laid down with drummer Steve Jordan from 2011 on, with studio guests and old Xpensive Wino friends casually sitting in on keys, brass, strings, vocals. There's Bobby Keys with his last recorded blows of brass on “Blues in the Morning” and “Amnesia”; Norah Jones breathing sweetly over “Illusion”; Larry Campbell on fiddle and pedal steel on "Just a Gift" and "Robbed Blind".

It’s nearly 40 years since bassist Steve Harris formed Iron Maiden and much has changed since then. Singer Bruce Dickinson has learned to fence, fly and kick cancer in the cock, and the band have continued to release albums – albums which, though rarely hitting the high points of their Eighties heyday, have often been pretty decent and admirably ambitious in scope.

Turning autobiography into comedy gold is an alchemy that has often been tried. Among them Caitlin Moran’s Raised by Wolves, Kathy Burke’s superb Walking and Talking, and the mooted but, as yet uncommissioned story of Jeremy Clarkson’s childhood, provisionally titled For Whom the Bellend Trolls.

Some consider Heartless Bastards to be the best band you’ve probably never heard of – albeit blighted by an awful name. Others say the Texas-based four-piece are merely a jumped-up garage band. Wherever you stand, though, one thing is beyond dispute – the awesome power of Erika Wennerstrom’s voice. For much of last night she sounded like the love child of Robert Plant and Janis Joplin. And when the band hit its stride you could almost smell the oil and sweat of their Midwestern blue-collar origins.