Iron & Wine review – shadow puppets and folk-pop combine in singular gig

Emmy award-winning puppeteers Manual Cinema occasionally pull focus from Sam Beam’s rich songwriting, but mostly enhance it with eerie and intricate staging

Sum 41 review – hugs and lasers as emotional pop-punks go out with a bang

Gleefully raucous anthems give way to heartfelt goodbyes on the Canadian band’s triumphant farewell tour

The Cure: Songs of a Lost World review – as promised, ‘very, very doom and gloom’

The band’s first album in 16 years finds Robert Smith and co on reliably melancholy form – with the exception of one out-and-out pop banger

Lady Gaga: Disease review – a return to form, and to her classic sound

After a run of power ballads and jazz standards – plus the mega-flop Joker sequel – this synthpop single is a reminder of the Gaga of old, while still fitting into Brat-era pop

Kate Bush: Little Shrew review – this devastating film will make you weep at war’s violence against children

Written, directed and soundtracked by Bush, built up from sketches she drew herself, this four-minute animation is suffused with both love and horror

Laura Marling: Patterns in Repeat review – a tender love letter to motherhood

Domestic contentment radiates through the singer-songwriter’s eighth album celebrating the circle of life

Fievel Is Glauque: Rong Weicknes review – teetering song-towers that never quite topple

Brilliant melodies, poetic lyrics and quick-change time signatures elevate this quirky jazz-pop release to a level all its own

The Cult review – hard rock survivors blast through a beefy 40th birthday party

Displaying the lean mean belligerence of artists half their age the band bring a brutish level of distortion and energy to a tight 90 minute set of classics

Joni Mitchell review – a triumphant star-studded Hollywood show

The star delivered a transcendent, career-spanning retrospective, surrounded by famous faces including Elton John and Meryl Streep

Kylie: Tension II review – more of the same is much, much less

Kylie Minogue’s follow-up to 2023’s euphoric Tension – and smash hit Padam Padam – fluctuates between sparkle and self-doubt, generic pap and two stone-cold bangers

Thelma Plum: I’m Sorry, Now Say It Back review – anthems of care and conviction

The Gamilaraay musician’s second album is filled with light and shade, resilience and humour – though it doesn’t quite match the highs of her debut

The Cure: Songs of a Lost World review – dark, personal and their best since Disintegration

The band are at an artistic peak on their first album in 16 years: movingly melancholic, with a punchy sound to match the lyrics’ emotional impact

Blossoms review – funky indie-pop singalongs (and a 6ft gorilla) send the crowd wild

Blossomsmania is in full force at this cheery, beery gig, which has something of the atmosphere of an indie Last Night of the Proms

Porridge Radio: Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me review – exquisite euphoria through repetition

Emotions run high on the Brighton band’s fourth album as frontwoman Dana Margolin exorcises past relationships

Dua Lipa review – orchestral special boasts Elton John but tips into old-fashioned Eurovision

Accompanied by a 53-piece orchestra and 14-strong choir, the pop superstar forsakes many of her biggest hits to perform the entirety of her coolly received new album