Given Dylan’s last album of originals was in 2012, and his standards phase had concluded with a slightly meandering three-disc set in Triplicate, expectations of anything other than an archival release or new tour announcement from Dylan in 2020 were low – until, that is, some weeks into the first lockdown, when his longest ever song dropped out of a clear blue sky.

There was always bound to be a hint of melancholy watching George Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Try as you might to focus on the film, you can never quite shake the fact that you’re watching the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, whose life was cut tragically short this year from bowel cancer. 

Tankus the Henge are one of Britain’s most energized, entertaining and spirit-raising live bands. If they were allowed to endlessly tour the nation, exempt from lockdown rules, they could eliminate the COVID blues, concert by ebullient concert. They have not, however, in their decade-plus history, achieved crossover success, despite their two previous albums being joyous festival-friendly romps. For those who enjoy their sing-along burlesque, their latest is a welcome addition to the canon.

The lockdown may be loosening but we’re no nearer to gigs and festivals occurring so, for the foreseeable, online is where it’s at. Here, then, is the latest selection of musical happenings that you can wrap your eyes and ears around during the coming week. Dive in!

Make Music Day

John Lee Hooker’s recording career began on Friday 3 September 1948. He’d attracted the attention of the Kiev-born Bernard Besman, who was in Detroit after his family moved there in 1926 following five years in London’s East End. By the 1940s Besman, who played piano, was a veteran of dance bands and also worked as a booker. In 1946 he began working with records.

Larkin Poe are an American blues-rock band fronted by the Lovell sisters, Rebecca and Megan, both mainstays of the US Americana scene since their teens, at the start of this century. Best known in Europe for their fired-up gigs and festival appearances, their fifth album starts off accessibly yet the immediate thought is that it’s overly derivative.

As news bulletins compare events in America to 1968, the mental jukebox spins almost inevitably to “Abraham, Martin and John”, first recorded by Dion – the price of a new record contract after he‘d got clean and split from The Belmonts. It’s not the best known version (that’s Marvin Gaye’s) but it made No 4 on the US charts and relaunched Dion’s career.

Welcome to the second of our lockdown specials. It’s a small but vital dip into what’s new on plastic. Other than that, theartsdesk on Vinyl wishes you well in these strange times. Stay at home, play records, turn up the volume.

Various Cadence Revolution 1973-1981: Disques International Vol. 2 (Strut)

ZZ Top always seemed like a Texan version of Status Quo. It turns out, from watching this entertaining but hardly revelatory documentary, that is kind of what they are.

Talk about a great big melting pot! The eighth studio album by the man born 36 ago as Andrew Heissler in Bloomington, Indiana, and known to the world as Pokey LaFarge digs deep into the bubbling cauldron of Americana, in its very broadest sense.