I’m not sure how keen I am on the current trend for groups to reform, especially when, as is the case with, say, The Police and Genesis, I have actually much preferred them in their absence. I mean, I was getting on with my life in what you might call an undisturbed fashion, happy enough in most respects, when Sting decides to bring a certain amount of gloom to it by deciding that years after they acrimoniously split, the moment appeared to him, if certainly not me, to be right to bury the hatchet with Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland and reform the band for what you would be a fool to think was just for musical reasons as much as the money they will trouser from their world tour. On Saturday night, I was on my way to the pub from where I live in twickenham and could hear in the distance some infernal din that I then ralised was The Police at Twickenham Stadium, playing from what I could hear some horrible jazz-rock mash-up that if you were writing about it, you’d be inclined to describe with looming dread as “an extended jam”. It was enough to make you yearn for another album of lute music from Sting, anything but this racket. By chance, the previous night I had been at Brixton Academy, to see The Jesus And Mary Chain, whose own reunion this year, with notable appearances at the Coachella Festival and the Royal Festival hall, as part of Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown, has not been attended by the clamorous hype surrounding most of the year’s other reunions. Like you, I was not particularly aware of the nation’s frantic need for the Mary Chain to get back together, but on the evidence of tonight’s largely brilliant show, you can only be glad they are. You can also be thankful that they haven’t – yet, anyway – used the occasion to exclusively air new material, with the exception of something called “All Things Must Pass” – or to present their old stuff in radically altered arrangements and padded out with fancy instrumental work. No, what we had here and were ultimately absolutely grateful for was virtually agreatest hits set, the best of a surprisingly resilient back catalogue played with broody venom, Jim Reid a cadaverous presence, brother William a burlier figure on torrential guitar. The opening trio of songs – “Never Understand”, “Head On” and “Far Gone And Out” – was simply a blast, and there were further terrific outlings for “Sidealking”, “Happy When It rains”, sublime versions “Some Candy Talking” and “Just Like honey”, “You Trip Me Up”, “Darklands” and, as a ferocious closer, “Reverence” was an aptly acrid parting shot. A big shout out here, meanwhile, to Uncut picture researcher Phil King, who in his other life plays bass with the Mary Chain. It had been good earlier to see Evan Dando, making a welcome appearance on a London stage. Evan looked somewhat disshevelled and even more baffled, as if he wasn’t quite sure where he was or what he was meant to be doing. He sounded great, though, on a wry version of “Outdoor Type”, while “My Drug Buddy” was prefaced by a snatch of Lou Reed’s “Coney Island Baby” that I was disappointed he didn’t play in a fuller version. Why can’t all reunion shows be this much fun?

There are times when I receive a reissue of a record that I've never heard of, and begin to wonder whether some massive and elaborate hoax is being perpetrated. I had that feeling about 45 minutes ago, when I put on "Iron Curtain Innocence" by Bobb Trimble for the first time. Trimble, it seems, is a psychedelic singer-songwriter from Worcester, Massachusetts. In the early '80s, he released this album and another one, "Harvest Of Dreams", which is also being reissued by Secretly Canadian and which I intend to play in a few minutes. The sleeve of "Iron Curtain Innocence" features Trimble sat on a stool in front of the sort of mottled background beloved of provincial portrait photographers. He sits amiably behind a microphone, an electric guitar lying across his lap. In his right hand, though, he’s hoisting a machine gun. "Dear John, Paul, George And Ringo," read the sleevenotes, "if I’m a good boy and work real hard, may I please be the 5th Beatle someday?" It’s hard to tell whether it’s deranged or knowing, but the whole package is entirely compelling, not least because Trimble’s music is so good. "Glass Menagerie Fantasies" and "Night At The Asylum" are two of the most pungent songs I’ve heard in an age, glassy and dappled psychedelic homebrew fantasias in which you can spot trace elements of Pink Floyd, maybe a folkish backwoods Bowie, maybe even a lo-fi Yes. The acknowledgements on the sleeve give thanks, perhaps inevitably, to Thurston Moore, but the name of LA Animal Collective protégé Ariel Pink there is perhaps more revealing. Like Trimble, Pink’s records sound like the work of quite a strange man trying to reconstruct fairly straightforward ‘70s and ‘80s rock, only refracted through a substantively bent aesthetic. It’s like an eerie broadcast on a fractionally detuned FM radio, and I must admit I’m hooked. The thorough and fascinating sleevenotes claim only 300 copies of "Iron Curtain Innocence" were originally pressed, though there was a compilation CD that came out in the mid-‘90s. "Harvest Of Dreams" looks, intriguingly, even weirder. It seems to feature one track where Trimble is backed by The Kidds, a local gang of 12-year-olds. On the front cover this time, he’s posing with a one-horned sheeplike thing that we’re encouraged to believe is a unicorn. Jandek and Daniel Johnston are mentioned in the sleevenotes, but while Trimble certainly radiates a certain otherness, there’s a lo-fi lavishness to this odd and lovely music ("Harvest" has just started up on the stereo now and it sounds great, too, infinitesimally more conventional perhaps); it reaches out to listeners, however awkwardly, rather than chooses to assert its fundamental dysfunctions. Trimble, we learn, would play gigs dressed in a top hat, bunny ears and bunny tail. You’d be stretched to make up a character so rich and strange. And if you had, I wouldn’t care. Authentic or hoax, Bobb Trimble is a real find.

Recently, there seems to have been something of a Krautrock revival, comparable to that time in the early ‘90s when Stereolab, Tortoise and sundry putative post-rockers were assiduously cribbing their old Neu! albums. The appearance of a neat Harmonia live CD, that I blogged about some weeks ago, has been followed by a bunch of very nice records in much the same burbling, kosmische vein. Apart from the Robert Plant & Alison Krauss CD, I think the album we’ve played most this week has been the debut from Arp, "In Light". Arp seems to be one guy from San Francisco called Alexis Georgopoulos. In the very thorough press notes that came with the promo, there are wise and scholarly references to excellent artists like Dan Flavin and architects like Superstudio, plus a dense notation of musical influences that stretches from Alice Coltrane and early Eno, through Franco Battiato and Takehisa Kosugi. Terry Riley is also cited, and you can definitely hear traces of luminous work like "A Rainbow In Curved Air" in some of Arp’s work, at once ecstatic and tranquil. The key names, though, are Cluster, Harmonia and "Ralf & Florian"-era Kraftwerk. Georgopoulos is quite brilliant at recreating that hermetic, pulsating sound, oscillating gently between the playful and the peaceful. And like those artists, while Arp comes dressed with so many intimidating avant-garde references, it’d be a mistake to see "In Light" as forbidding. In fact, it’s a very welcoming and accessible collection. As is "LP" by Holy Fuck, though for rather different reasons. Holy Fuck are apparently a band of two or so people from Toronto, and judging by their debut, they make hyper-kinetic analogue synth rock that betrays a keen interest in the ur-punk tracks on "Neu! 75". It’s very good fun, too. Holy Fuck seem to be being marketed as part of the whole nu-rave phenomenon, as a sort of dance band for people who are turned off by the prospect of watching stern men with laptops. They remind me a bit of that Japanese act, Zongamin, who had a bit of hipster traction a few years ago. We were also trying to think of which ‘90s band of the post-rock diaspora they resembled. Trans Am were mentioned, but I think it might be Salaryman, the jerky synth alter-ego of a mediocre guitar band whose name escapes me (I know I should google it, I know. . .). Anyway, even if it gets a bit old after a while, "LP" is good, bracing stuff. It’s light years away from Arp in terms of aesthetics, but beneath all the ramshackle skronk and fulsome rock posturing, there still beats a heart that’s pure motorik.