M. Ward takes Bowie’s banger Let’s Dance and wrings every ounce of emotion out of it in this intense acoustic interpretation.

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The Last Town Chorus cover David Bowie’s upbeat single Modern Love and improve it by turning it into a melancholy country ballad.

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Fifty years ago this week Gram Parsons died in Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn in California, filled with morphine, barbiturates and alcohol, at the age of only 26.

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This is very far from being my favourite Springsteen song; I don’t have much time for that Eighties period at all. But Nashville duo The Harmaleighs breathe new life into it.

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Here’s a recent tune by Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, the Mexican band I saw on the spur of the moment on Tuesday night. I’d never heard of them but it was a great decision to go, and now I’m discovering their records.

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Hank Williams would have been 100 years old on Sunday. Instead he died, on New Year’s Day 1953, at the age of 29.

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When The National first got popular, after several years on the fringes of success, their critics dismissed them as miserable middle-aged men making music for miserable middle-aged men. Well they’re my favourite band so I guess that’s me.

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You’ve got to feel sorry for Fred Neil. The obscure Canadian folkie recorded definitive versions of three great songs that went on to become standards – and all three were made famous in better versions by three other artists.

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Last night I went to see these guys, Dead Writers, at a goth-filled Camden pub with the apt name The Black Heart, on my way back from cricket at Lord’s. And I had a very good time.

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Last night I went to see Mick Harvey of the Bad Seeds unveil his latest collaboration – a collection of duets with Amanda Acevedo at the beautiful church of St John of Bethnal Green.

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