Anvil

Elvis Costello has announced an extensive UK tour for next summer. The singer, who released his 24th studio album National Ransom in 2010, will play 16 dates across the UK in May and June next year. The tour will once again feature Costello and his band asking members of the audience to spin a huge wheel and select the next song in the set. Costello's original wheel tour took place in 1986, opening at the Los Angeles Beverly Theatre, before a three night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall. Elvis Costello will play:

The groaning noise behind me is coming from shelves that have recently started to buckle from the almost daily addition to them of new music books, the majority of them typified by their common bulk, a shared enormity of pages, as if no band’s career can be documented in less pages than might otherwise be devoted to the history of mankind itself, from the beginning, with footnotes, anecdotal asides and a brief biography of everyone who’s ever lived.

Singer-songwriter also lines up limited live box set in conjunction with jaunt

Country singer announces last UK dates before he retires from playing live

In 1995, Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson released a mostly-forgotten album together called "Orange Crate Art", and I found myself in LA interviewing the pair. It was a pretty unusual trip, ending in Wilson’s front room, where he claimed that his secret was “abstaining from orgasm”,performed “Satisfaction” and an updated version of “Surfer Girl” for me on his grand piano, then offered me $100 to get my ropey dictaphone recordings played on the radio.

Strange to think that, when the first UK White Denim single turned up, they seemed to be more or less like a garage rock band. I was just re-reading my blog on their UK debut, “Workout Holiday”, and was amused to see some discussion in the comments about their relationship or otherwise with The Hives. Not much chance of that happening nowadays, especially with “D”.

After whingeing about the last couple of playlists, I think there’s a lot more good stuff arrived for this week’s effort.

Leigh’s latest study of ordinary life is among his best...

Hear the guitarist take you from the middle ages to the present day

Full live performance of the classic 1968 album