Robert Cooke

In music, context is key. Every album, song and man-made sound has the potential to be better understood in the right environment, under the right circumstances. This doesn’t just apply to that snooty sort of music composed for a specific location – in most cases the variables that dictate a listener’s enjoyment are far more subtle. It’s the innate understanding that The Velvet Underground & Nico is a great album, but not one you’d necessarily have on when your nana comes round for tea. It’s realising that a funeral soundtracked by Arcade Fire’s Funeralwould become a pretty strange service by the time you get to ‘Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)’. It’s appreciating that The New Brigade by Iceage isn’t the best album to have on during half-time at a Premiership football match – although that would be kind of amazing.

When an entire generation is railing against the government, political songwriters should be truly inspiring. Sam Duckworth’s problem is that he still sounds like that irritatingly idealistic activist caricature you knew at college.

We wouldn’t recommend listening to I Like Trains at bedtime – their creepy compositions won’t make for many sweet dreams.

Colette Thurlow blunders onstage like she’s just fled the local asylum. Wearing a clinical white gown, she pouts perversely at the crowd, stomps her feet and flaps her arms. It’s like she’s deranged, or performing some abstract piece of physical theatre.

Any musician whose success has been aided by their association with a better-known singer will always struggle to step out of their famous friend’s shadow. That’s why you’ll rarely read an article about Cate le Bon (and clearly this one is no exception) that doesn’t mention the fact that she’s toured and collaborated with psychedelic indie wizard Gruff Rhys. On this album, le Bon’s second, the links between the two Welsh songwriters are as close as ever  –  CYRK is being released on Gruff Rhys’ label Onvi and during its recording le Bon was able to take advantage of Super Furry Animals’ compendium of synthesisers, effects pedals and guitars – but that doesn’t stop le Bon from making a record that’s unmistakably her own.

For some people, the biggest event in Sheffield’s social calendar starts this week, when the World Snooker Championship begins another year at the Crucible Theatre. For the rest of us though, there’s Tramlines. The first bands for this year’s festival have been announced and the list, as ever, includes tons of DiS-friendly acts such as Field Music, 65daysofstatic, Alt-J, Beth Jeans Houghton, Clock Opera, Esben And The Witch, Frankie Rose, Future Of The Left, Mazes, Peace, Rolo Tomassi and Toy, with shitloads more to come.

Here’s a cold, hard fact: musicians don’t get points for effort. If that was the case, Battles would be bigger than Oasis ever were, Chinese Democracy would have been frickin’ amazing and the charts would be dominated, not by singers who made it through a few rounds of a TV talent show, but by bands who’ve, say, written some songs and played some gigs. If we lived in that world, this would be a very different article, because Maps & Atlases have clearly spent countless hours sweating over samplers and effects boards to make this, their second album. And in an ideal world they’d be given credit for the time they’ve spent and the energy they’ve exerted making Beware And Be Grateful, but here’s another cold, hard fact: it’s just not that enjoyable a listen.

Brad Oberhofer got dumped and wrote an album about it. So far, so singer-songwriter.

It’s been 35 years since the Sex Pistols proved that a band’s most important attribute wasn’t how well they played their instruments. After all, Sid Vicious didn’t let his inability to play the bass prevent him from becoming an icon, but the image of four blokes with guitars has changed a lot since then. It’s no longer an emblem of how anyone with a decent set of songs can be a star; it’s shorthand for landfill indie, and these days it can be pretty boring. Fair play to The Futureheads then, for ditching that tried and tested formula.