Full marks for shoehorning-in the names of city’s two major football teams into the title of Manchester - A City United In Music. But this spiffy double-CD compendium roams further than the boundaries of the titular metropolis. Leigh, Salford, Stockport, Timperley and Warrington are in the mix too. “Manchester-area” or “Manchester-region” wouldn’t be such snappy designations but the point is made – Manchester is suffused in music.

Jimmy Hendix’s Greenwich Village studios are the venue for LCD Soundsystem’s third live album, which features the most recent touring line-up playing a set heavy with songs from 2017’s American Dream album along with a smattering of covers. 

The Specials were era-defining, making this a hugely anticipated album for many. On paper they’ve released a bunch of albums since the Eighties but their discography is misleading. Encore is their first major work in decades. It’s a big ask for it to match their iconic status, akin to when The Stooges and Kraftwerk reappeared with new music decades after their legendary prime.

“Don’t love me yet,” replies Patti Smith to the first of tonight’s many excitable shout-outs. “Who knows, after 20 minutes you might be gone!” An unlikely scenario, given that this show – part of the Roundhouse’s annual “In the Round” series, which also features Ronnie Spector and Shirley Collins – sold out in nanoseconds and is packed with rapt fans.

The cliché of hard times making for good culture is a distinctly dodgy, even dangerous, one.

It’s the season of giving so theartsdesk on Vinyl feels compelled to draw your attention to Unicef’s Blue Vinyl campaign. This sees 17 celebrated albums auctioned off in special editions on givergy.com with all proceeds going to Unicef’s Children's Emergency Relief Fund. Albums include classics by David Bowie, Kate Bush, Alicia Keys, Ozzie Osbourne, Jimi Hendrix and… The Spice Girls. Go and have a look.

“That’s what we fucking do!” So says Maxim at the concert’s very end, surveying the sweating, raving carnage of 4,500 souls before him. One of The Prodigy’s two frontman, he stands still finally, after spending the rest of the gig pacing and rushing up and down the lip of the stage like a caged panther. We all know what he means. He means that his band have wrung us out, taken us to a fervour of devil-may-care limb-swinging derangement.

Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.

Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brilliance

Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt. Yes, Mike “Wombles” Batt. Mike “Elkie Brooks” Batt. Mike “Katie Melua” Batt. Mike “Bright Eyes” Batt.

The long career of New York electronic duo Suicide finally came to an end upon the death of their vocalist Alan Vega in 2016. They had not, however - and to say the least – been very prolific in decades. Their reputation rests almost entirely on their first two albums, most especially their debut. But what albums those are. Their primitive synthesizer drone-rock’n’roll still casts a giant shadow 40 years on.