On the first day God created Adam and Eve. On the second day He created dinosaurs, and on the third day He made donuts and that inquisitive tootsie-pop owl that became so very famous in the seventies.

And the fourth day, the fourth day may very well have been the most important day of all, because that was the day He helped …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead record their latest album So Divided. Or at least that’s what we got out of Genesis.

So few bands know how to infuse the raucus with melody that when one happens upon us, we stand before it dumbfounded and smiling. So it is with …Trail Of Dead and their album So Divided (out today). On the next page we’ll give you a valuable play by play detailing all the album’s highlights.

But you’d have figured those out for yourself now, wouldn’t you have?

Hype’s a bastards sometimes – you can never live up to it. Pretty much everything we’ve ever looked forward to has disappointed us; Be Here Now, The Phantom Menace, any international football competition that England takes part in.

A year ago we were sent a painfully hip compilation album that sounded as if it was entirely created by a squad of self-regarding Nathan Barleys who somehow managed to turn on the ‘electroclash’ preset button on their Bontempi synthesisers despite their heads being firmly lodged up their arseholes – except one song; Giddy Stratospheres by The Long Blondes. Since then we’ve been anticipating the debut album by The Long Blondes with a sort of terrified excitement; obviously we wanted to hear more but surely – surely – they wouldn’t be able to live up to the hype or be able to reach the same heights as Giddy Stratospheres. Well, Someone To Drive You Home – the long-awaited album by The Long Blondes is out on Monday and it’s full of songs that blow Giddy Stratospheres clean out of the water. Excited yet?

Usually when we go to gigs and review them we like to give a good detailed account of what happened, so you can get a pretty good feel about the event. However, just this once we’re going to bypass all that and just sum up the entire Lily Allen live experience in one word:

Shit.

Old men and rock is a lethal combination like mixing together water and electricity or women and technology. Most of the time, while the old folks are obliviously rocking out, a gang of ASBO-ridden kids will try to slip in and attempt to listen to their hardcore gangsta rap.

Usually, anyone over the age of 40 who decides to perform in front of a crowd are semi-drunk club singers or Phil Collins. But no! Tonight is a different story – we are witnessing a bunch of merry old men who have been rocking out across the world during the eighties, nineties and the noughties. They’re pretty much the only respectable of blokes over the age of 40 who still produce decent music. It’s New Order.