Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams has always had a literary bent. This doesn’t just manifest in overt ways, like writing a concept album about Sylvia Plath in 2015’s Hypoxia, but in perfectly potted narratives, microscopically brilliant turns of phrase, and even titles that make you double-take going all the way back to 1999’s “Dog Without Wings”. 

At the beginning of November 1964, a form of changing of the guard was evident in the UK’s singles chart. The Dave Clark Five sat at number 25 with “Anyway You Want it,” the highest placing for their follow-up to “Thinking of You Baby.” Although they were four places lower at 29, The Pretty Things would have been happy as “Don’t Bring me Down,” their second single, was rising up the charts.

According to local press, Yungblud’s fans had been queuing up outside the Barrowland throughout the day before each gig in his two-night Glasgow stint. If that was one indication of the reverence his following hold him in, another came early in this performance, when he briefly delayed “I Love You, Will You Marry Me” to allow an actual proposal to go ahead down at the front. If your songs are considered suitable for popping the question to, then you know you are connecting with people.

Irrespective of its seasonal nature, the thread running throughout O Come All Ye Faithful is a mood of contemplation which could colour any of Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M. C. Taylor’s albums.

Madness frontman Suggs is asking the capacity crowd at the Brighton Centre if any of them are in school-age education. Quite a few are. There are actual young people here! Some are with parents (even, possibly, grandparents), but gaggles of teenagers are also in evidence on their own. They shout out.

Neil Young’s ornery spontaneity has resulted in a remarkable number of mediocre songs. His sketchy 21st century has conjured audacious sonic conceits – the jazzy sparseness of Peace Trail, or the plastic-sounding live album Earth, both 2016 – without the writing to match.

Christmas albums can traditionally be slippery beasts with a whole host of quality control issues. This is not unlike the compilation albums that also make an appearance at this time of year, with one or maybe two previously unreleased tracks, which are targeted to separate long-term fans from their cash.

Just as love's downward spiral can deconstruct a lover's sense of self, so SJS's plangent post-modern prog deconstructs itself as it ebbs and flows toward gorgeous but muted crescendos.

On the band's second album The Unlikely Event, lovely melodies stop dead and mutate. Electronic interjections – like leaks from a nerve centre or a super-computer – fizz, throb and splutter out. A searing guitar solo, bent on rockist glory, suddenly falters, chokes and has to regather itself. Uncertainty and impermanence rule.

The picture seen above doesn’t have quite the same resonance as Art Kane’s 1958 shot A Great Day in Harlem which brought 57 American jazz musicians in front of his lens, but it is nonetheless significant. Here, in 1971, is an evocative, unique record of a moment in West Midlands music history. The shot was taken at the opening of Heavy Head Records, a Sparkhill record shop run by Move/Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan. The shop was formerly a toy store run by his mother.