The one time I met Jeffrey Lewis, he was folded into the cramped backstage area of a Manchester venue, waiting to go on stage in support of 2009’s ‘Em Are I. It was a brilliant break-up album, barely held together by single “Broken Broken Broken Heart”. He introduced himself, and then his “ex-girlfriend” sat next to him; she was on keyboards and backing vocals for the tour. Of course she was. It was the kind of romantically hapless moment that a previous generation would associate with Woody Allen, and a later one with Michael Cera.

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Tom Robinson has kept busy. Since bursting into public consciousness with his band’s 1977 Top of the Pops debut, showcasing the irresistible “2-4-6-8 Motorway”, the Cambridge musician has continued to write and record albums throughout the intervening decades. He’s also developed an impressive career in broadcasting, having hosted shows on Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 live, and 6 Music, where he continues to champion new bands to listeners around the country today. Did we mention his work with Rock Against Racism, the political campaigning, the support for LGBTQ and mental health charities? Honestly, some days we feel tired just thinking about the man.

Back with a new album and tour, we caught up with the musical icon to discuss punk authenticity, 70s revivals, dealing with depression, and why he’s had disagreements with Billy Bragg over the power of political music.

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There’s a scene in Family Guy, that cultural behemoth of our times, where Peter Griffin addresses the camera directly in a TV segment he’s hosting called What Really Grinds My Gears. On this occasion, the issue is Lindsay Lohan’s sexualised body: “You’re out there jumping around, and I’m just sitting here with my beer. So, what am I supposed to do? What do you want? Are we gonna go out?” Peter’s frustration isn’t caused by what’s being projected out to him; it’s working out what he’s supposed to do with something he can’t touch or affect in any way.

Watching Sufjan Stevens perform Carrie & Lowell in its entirety at Bristol’s Colston Hall last month, I found myself wondering what we’re supposed to do with the album and, by extension, the performance. It’s a wonderful record, and it’s obviously been hugely therapeutic for Stevens, but what about the audience? What are we getting out of this?

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Form is a wonderful thing to behold. At the peak of its powers, it renders talent both divine and audacious, producing the seemingly impossible from the apparently effortless. It’s a cross-court drop shot that clings to the net. It’s every speculative gesture amounting to ecstasy. About twenty minutes into Have You in My Wilderness, it’s the sound of Julia Holter offering up whistling and sax solos back to back.

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“No it’s not,” cries a man in the audience, and for a moment, Sufjan Stevens is completely thrown off track. After a little audience dialogue, the artist’s previous assertion that this was his first time in Bristol does indeed unravel, a lapse attributed to “a lot of drugs.” The audience laugh along, and it’s a welcome note of levity on an evening dominated by Carrie & Lowell, Stevens’ seventh studio album and tribute to his late mother.

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When Chris Baio announced his plans to release a debut album back in April, we were promised “Bowie and Ferry-influenced pop songs and dumbsmart arena techno.” The former seemed feasible; the latter sounded like a night out with Nathan Barley. What none of it sounded much like was Baio’s main band, Vampire Weekend. The New York four-piece have certainly worn their influences on their sleeves, spending formative years cherry-picking from Afrobeat as much as European indie rock, while managing to carve out a unique sound of their own. What remained to be seen was how the bassist would marry his own diverse musical passions.

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Ex-girlfriends. Celebrities. Cute shop assistants. Olivia Williams in Rushmore. Sometimes that special person in your life just takes a bit of… research. And what better way to break the ice than with some personal information romantically gleaned from the beloved’s recycling?

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Now operational for longer than some of their baldest fans have been alive, Yo La Tengo continue to thump the jukebox of 20th century guitar music on Stuff Like That There, a collection of covers as well as revisions from their own back catalogue. That the band have managed to remain both hip and lovable over the years is perhaps no surprise. The New Jersey trio often feel like two different bands from one track to the next: huge, winding, drone-rock workouts sit happily next to the type of countrified acoustic whispering that peppered all those mixtapes your first boyfriend at university kept producing in earnest.

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For a night that lays claim to “balladeers, hauntologists, super-8 soundtracks, audio-archaeologists, occult circuit-benders” and more, the Heretics’ Folk Club certainly delivers on the unusual. That’s part of the thrill as we fold ourselves into the nooks and crannies of Cafe #9. Aside from a few rather opaque genre signposts, no one really knows what to expect.

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What was most remarkable about Spaces, Nils Frahm’s last LP, was that it sounded like a studio album, right up to the moment that the audience broke into rapturous applause. It remains a strangely disconcerting experience to feel as though the solitude that an ambient or modern classical piece invariably accompanies has been a shared experience after all.

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