Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdue

★★★★★ EVERYTHING: THE REAL THING STORY, BBC FOUR The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time

The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time

This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and fallings-out, coping with huge success and its aftermath – not to mention sex, drugs, mental illness and death.

Album: Taylor Swift - folklore

★★★★★ TAYLOR SWIFT - FOLKLORE Lowkey lockdown storytelling to save your summer

Lowkey lockdown storytelling to save your summer from one of pop's brightest stars

When she announced her “surprise” 8th album on social media this week, Taylor Swift described its subject matter as a combination of “fantasy, history and memory” told with “love, wonder and whimsy”. For the listener, this hits home around track three. “The Last Great American Dynasty” tells the story of Rebekah, a “middle-class divorcée” who marries a heir to the Standard Oil fortune and spends her widowhood - and inheritance - on boys, ballet and annoying the neighbours of her Rhode Island mansion. And then?

Album: The Chicks - Gaslighter

★★★★ THE CHICKS - GASLIGHTER The Chicks have ditched the Dixie but kept the country

The Chicks have ditched the Dixie but kept the country

I have had an obsessive-loop Dixie Chicks tune for every eventuality of my life so far – “Ready To Run” for a big break up; “Wide Open Spaces” for road tripping; “Cowboy Take Me Away” for whimsical love affairs; “Not Ready To Make Nice” for general rage and “Travelin’ Soldier” for a good old cry.

Album: Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow the Rules

★★★★ RUFUS WAINWRIGHT - UNFOLLOW THE RULES A self-described second act

A self-described second act by an artist who's already been through several

After Unfollow the Rules: The Paramour Session and the #Quarantunes “robe recitals” comes the album: Unfollow the Rules, no longer stripped back (though everything's relative) but in all its pomp and glory. It’s Rufus Wainwright's ninth collection of originals but his first pop outing since Out of the Game (2012), which was promoted by a music video starring Helena Bonham Carter.

Album: Michael Franti & Spearhead - Work Hard & Be Nice

Ex-Beatnig and Disposable Hero of Hiphoprisy lurches towards the middle of the road

It’s over 30 years since Michael Franti entered the public arena, howling “Television – drug of the nation” backed by harsh, industrial sounds and explosive beats, as frontman for the Beatnigs. He then produced the Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales album with William Burroughs, as part of the visionary hip hop duo the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, before embracing funk, soul and reggae sounds, both as a solo artist and while fronting Spearhead.

Theatre Lockdown Special 8: A film star plays tough, and several familiar titles are examined anew

THEATRE LOCKDOWN SPECIAL 8: Tom Hiddleston reminds us of his stage roots, as does Christopher Walken as Captain Hook

Tom Hiddleston reminds us of his stage roots, as does Christopher Walken as Captain Hook

As we continue into a third month in lockdown, the arts continue to suggest ever-changing worlds beyond. The invaluable National Theatre at Home this week looks across the Thames to a smaller venue's large-scale Coriolanus, starring a certain superhero movie icon, whilst the equally cherished Graeae streams their lively musical theatre tribute to the late Ian Dury.

Album: Westerman - Your Hero is not Dead

★★★★ WESTERMAN - YOUR HERO IS NOT DEAD High-gloss Eighties sonics conceal chasmic emotional depths

High-gloss Eighties sonics conceal chasmic emotional depths

Will Westerman is not afraid of sounding retro. It's clear his influences are diverse, from jazz fusion to the bedroom proto-house experiments of Arthur Russell. But in their final form, his high gloss production, highly literate songs and fretless bass sound like something out of a creatively leftfield but megabucks studio-produced mid Eighties record: the likes of Talk Talk, Kate Bush, Roxy Music's Avalon and above all The Blue Nile loom large.

The Songs of Coronavirus and Lockdown Life

THE SONGS OF CORONAVIRUS AND LOCKDOWN LIFE The pandemic has given a worldwide cross section of quarantined musicians plenty to write about

The pandemic has given a worldwide cross section of quarantined musicians plenty to write about

At the start of March an obscure alt-metal outfit called Cegvera released a concept album titled The Sixth Glare. The physical album featured the headline “DISEASE” alongside a photograph of a woman in a protective facemask, and the sleeve notes expand on the idea that, if we don’t tend to our environment, an illness will arrive to which the world doesn’t have immunity. It opens with a cut called “Infection”. Looked at now, it’s bizarrely prescient.

Album: The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form

Lockdown blues as a permanent condition, answered with a helpless shrug

The 1975’s career is about navigating ambition, and finding ways to be an interesting, worthwhile big band after the music industry and rock music got small. This fourth album rambles and sprawls through 22 tracks, a double-album in no hurry to settle down.