MADNESS/WHITE DENIM/EVAN DANDO - Various venues, Shoreditch, 21/5/09 “Thanks for coming to see a washed-up Eighties pop band,” deadpans Suggs as MADNESS take the stage. We’re in The Light Bar, a 300 capacity venue on Norton Folgate, a thin stretch of street that separates Shoreditch from the City. The band are here to celebrate their new album, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, which is currently sitting at No 5 in the midweek album charts. Not bad, certainly, for a washed-up Eighties pop band.

Tempered by T-Bone Burnett, Costello cuts a rootsy beauty

This is the Wirral: music and football meet up North, with grim results

Blur guitarist’s eccentric talents are a delight

A glorious, ramshackle rag-bag stuffed with good times, black humour and great swathes of accordion

On tour last year – a portrait of a band finding their peak

It remains to be seen whether the global credit gloom will have a negative effect on the parties, the glamour and the excessively large yachts that tend to provide entertaining if diversionary colour from the Cannes Film Festival. But, certainly, in terms of heavyweight talent on display at this year's festival, you might be hard pressed to think of a more Cannes-like line-up.

Some pretty big names in the mix this week, including a small rush of survivors from the American ‘80s underground: shame the Lemonheads’ covers album hasn’t arrived in time to complete the set.

A boldly brilliant work of protest and rage

In one of the best scenes in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke's Randy and Marisa Tomei's Cassidy are propping up a bar, discussing the generally woeful state of modern music. They concur that Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue and Def Leppard set the bar astronomically high back in the day and, grumpy spoilsport that he was, "that Cobain pussy" pretty much ruined it all. The Nineties "sucked". And the Eighties? "Man, best shit ever!"