Freak Like Me! Girl-groupers are back together and better than ever

The story so far: man meets woman and the pair soon discover that their singing voices have more chemistry than a science lab.

Reviving the super-optimistic music of the 1980s has usually been the province of marginal indie types (Passion Pit), novelty oddballs (Maarty Broekman) or both (Andrew WK).

The name Asking Alexandria may conform to the emo cliché of present participle plus girl's name, but the York band technically qualify as metalcore.

Back after a hiatus, The Polyphonic Spree, the overpopulated Aquarian choir led by Tim DeLaughter, have undergone a subtle shift in direction.

The voice is scrunched a little tighter now, and frayed, and the tunes seem worn to the bone, but… Well, you can't keep a good man down.

Gilles Peterson's favourite Brazilian soul-boy goes all 1970s Steely Dan, with lugubrious horn harmonies and the smooth guitars of Larry Carlton or Jeff "Skunk" Baxter echoed here by Bluey from Incognito and fusion legend David T Walker (a session musician with Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye to name two).

"Less is more" is generally a good aesthetic whatever the creative endeavour, as is never looking back.

Free-jazz violinist Bang, who died in 2011, had a life of operatic intensity: school with Arlo Guthrie, active service in Vietnam, black revolutionary activity, drugs, guns and the avant-garde.

Katmen are Slim Jim Phantom, the snare-beating Stray Cat, and Darrel Higham, who twangs a fat Gretsch behind his wife, Imelda May, plus bassist Al Gare.

Warp's latest signing is the rapper/producer Jeremiah Jae. To mark the occasion, he's dropped a new mixtape which can be streamed/downloaded for free at snd.sc/1c6EBwH and ind.pn/163xb7p. The nine-track Bad Jokes mixtape trundles along in a haze of snippets, samples and Jae's tranquil, pop-culture-laden raps in one blunted, weed-infused sound, largely produced by the man himself. South Californian beat-scene influences abound throughout, as evinced by Flying Lotus showing up with production on one track.

Moderat is the collaborative project of Apparat (Sascha Ring) and Modeselektor (Gemot Bronson and Sebastian Szary), an alliance of Berlin electronicians drawing synergy from their complementary approaches. “Bad Kingdom” is typical, its dubstep buzz, brittle beat and synth pad carrying Apparat's yearning tenor vocal – a sleek, persuasive modern electropop which becomes more chilled in “Let In the Light”. The gassy bass pulse of “Gita” supports Apparat's silky testament to his beloved's “porcelain” quality, but elsewhere he delves into more visceral imagery, particularly over the sparse tonescape of “Damage Done”. The trio's manipulation of euphoric rave dynamics on tracks like “Therapy” brings a fresh approach to a tried-and-tested form.

Album of the Week: A toe-tapping mix of tortured grooves and Texas boogie

Bartók's two violin concertos were composed three decades apart, and Isabelle Faust here skilfully brings out the contrasts between youth and maturity, particularly in her detailed attention to the composer's instructions regarding phrasing and articulation in the “Violin Concerto No. 1”. Terms such as “utterly desolate”, “always volatile”, “dreamlike” and “exhausted” hint at the emotional tenor of a work written in romantic fever, which moves from the blissful serenity of the first movement to the more playful, teasing disposition of the second, which presages his later spikier, more angular style. The “Violin Concerto No. 2” is a masterpiece given its head by Faust, the captivating, rhapsodic opening passage heralding a remarkable performance.

A companion-piece to the earlier Sweet Inspiration anthology of songs by Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, A Road Leading Home features two dozen of Penn's songs co-written with other songwriters. They're responsible for several great songs here, including “You Left the Water Running” by Billy Young, and “Break Up the Party”, recorded by Jerry Lee's teenage sister Linda Gail Lewis. Penn's forte was Southern soul, and here his two most famous songs are covered in versions not totally shamed by the hits, Roy Hamilton's “Dark End of the Street” exuding tragic nobility, while Brenda Lee's “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” merits comparison with the Dusty of Dusty in Memphis.