U2

Carol Clerk, who covered Live Aid for Melody Maker, on the newly released DVD of the global rock spectacular

Remastered, repackaged and reissued. Beloved of Trent Reznor, Billy Corgan and Michael Stipe

Five-disc box of demos, sessions and lost album

Another lengthy hiatus, another Blue Nile album. Here Paul Buchanan revisits the same spot on the hillside overlooking the evening city lights, is still filled with the same surging, oblique melancholy and longing that has sustained The Blue Nile since 1984, is still crafting singularly mature MOR in a darker shade of turquoise all his own. This time, however, the overall return feels diminished in effect—"I Would Never", for instance, trespasses dangerously close to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

First new material in eight years from heartland rockers

Self-styled Chauncey Gardiner of cute implies a lot but says little

Raucous Californians give their punk-funk stew a London airing, with a little help from the Godfather

Treasures unearthed from '80s Beeb archives

Tenth anniversary "upgrade" with six bonus tracks from the undervalued Ben Stiller film which caught the narcissism of Generation X nicely. These include New Order's "Confusion" and The Trammps' "Disco Inferno", with which there's no arguing. Also, less happily, songs from Ethan Hawke and Lisa Loeb, whose "Stay", from here, was one of the biggest US hits of the mid-'90s. Fine flurries, too, from The Posies, Dinosaur Jr, U2 and Crowded House, plus The Knack's utterly brilliant (you know it) "My Sharona".

Two-disc set celebrating Manchesters baggy-trousered dance-rock primates