End of the Road 2018

Annie Clark’s fifth studio album was undoubtedly one of 2017's finest - MASSEDUCTION found the Texan singer-songwriter musing on sex and power - and exploring the tensions between the two - over arrangements that extend from extroverted industrial-rock and glam synth-pop, to string-flecked balladry. Bring that to a live setting and you have a glossy Barbie-girl rock-pop show that's as dark as it is spectacular. Bright, brash and thrilling, this show should be spellbinding.

Formed in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1984, Yo La Tengo (Spanish for “I’ve got it!”) have been dubbed “the quintessential critics’ band”. Formed by rock journalist Ira Kaplan on guitar/vocals and his wife, Georgia Hubley, on drums/vocals, the band have incorporated indie-pop, shoegaze, detuned guitars, organ-driven Krautrock, electronic textures, drone, folk, jazz into their oeuvre over the years, and all in all they're something of a musical cult. Whether they're leaning into the heady shoegaze or the woozy lullabies, this should be special.

There was once a time when it was claimed rock'n'roll was dead - but gritty, bleak, The Fall-tinged band Fat White Family have been at the forefront of a weird British underground revival that proves scuzzy guitars and nonchalant struts might never go out of style. They're certainly not a group without their controversies (a song on their last album is called 'When Shipman Decides', a surreal lullaby about....Harold Shipman - and that's not even their most jarring track), but for the messy, visceral raucousness, they are very much a band worth seeing in the flesh.