Where the Dum Dum Girls' debut album I Will Be was an accomplished addition to the world of fuzzy, sugar-driven surf rock, their sophomore effort is a clear step up for the Californian all-female four-piece..

Sharon Finn brings out the quirky, playful musical side of Neil. They started having jams at Roundhead Studios on Friday nights, with Neil on drums and Sharon on bass, having a bit of fun with a glass of wine or two.

Quite when one might listen to Bjork's eighth album is hard to figure - apart from when you get the chance to lock yourself away in seclusion so you can appreciate Biophilia's mighty feat of sonic beauty and its many elaborate layers.

The vinyl reissue is something of a victory lap for contemporary musicians – and if there’s any artist from the last 10 years who could claim to having ‘won’ at music, Ariel Pink’s a likely contender.

Bo Diddley was the originator – without him there’d be no Beatles, Mick’n’Keef, no Pistols, no rap. Big call? Yes. Is it true? Absolutely.

You knew this was going to be fun. With 60 per cent of the band in dinner jackets and the salty whiff of yacht rock in the air, Fabulous/Arabia are jovially enjoying a glass of bubbly on stage before kicking things off.

It is on rare occasions like this that a quiet Auckland Wednesday night turns into an explosion of energetic noise.

This particular Bachelorette performance was always going to be weighted by sentimentality.

Christchurch-born, Britain-based Edlin's first novel, The Widow's Daughter, was a crammed narrative of World War II Auckland, and the reverberations of a sexual liaison across decades and oceans. It was commendably ambitious and inevitably uneven.

Linda Olsson's novels sell in mega-numbers overseas. There are many places in this tender, loving story where you can understand why.

When the stone deer was placed in position in the pool in front of the Chalabi home in Kazimiya, near Baghdad, locals immediately named the palatial home the Deer Palace.

First came Transformers, Tron, The A-Team, Clash of the Titans, and The Karate Kid, to name just a few, and now Hollywood has re-opened the 80s vault again with a remake of pop culture classic Footloose.

Thirty-five years on (or thereabouts), this is the sequel to Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare album, his first solo outing following a clutch of classic records with the original Alice Cooper band.

Rainer Maria Rilke has always commanded a devoted following among connoisseurs of fine literature but he is also widely read.

The Basement's reputation as a hot-house for new talent is emphatically confirmed by a blast of youthful energy that has teams of young actors, each with their own writer and director, devising three short plays.

With pedal steel, banjo and a melancholy delivery, some songs come close to classic country-influenced songs by Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clarke and Butch Hancock.

Alongside his Alzheimer's diagnosis and a farewell tour comes this self-announced "final studio album" by the 75-year-old legend Glen Campbell.

The tranquility and rejuvenating quality of Tinariwen's desert blues tunes is remarkable. That might sound a little hippie dippy - far-fetched, even - but the Tuareg Malian band's minimal music really does have that healing power.

The transition of the Twilight stars on to the next stage of their careers will prove interesting over the next few years; in Abduction we get to see Taylor Lautner make his first attempt.

And so ends the reign of one of the most fearsome, flamboyant and innovative metal bands ever to walk the earth.

Anna Faris has developed a distinctive ditzy blond routine that can be an acquired taste. Francesca Rudkin reports.

It was tempting to expect that the first truly Samoan feature film might have been a small and precious thing, worth praising more for the promises it made for the future than for its achievement in its own right.