'People might think it's a maternal connection, but I see her in a more romantic way'

R.E.M's 15th album could trade places with almost any of the previous 14.

Art, artists, and the early years of the 'Godmother of Punk'

Singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt breaks a six-year silence to tell Elisa Bray about a new album that draws on unusual instruments purchased on the internet and the contrasting lessons of failure and new fatherhood

Under-age, under-dressed, and over-the-top, The Runaways were the first girl rock group to make a global impact. Now their story is a movie. Chris Salewicz recalls his times with Joan Jett, Cherie Currie and their band

Ambling onstage in sparkly silver suit and lime-green shirt, Ornette Coleman displays the disregard for prevailing tastes and fashions that has shocked jazz fans for half a century and more. Okay, inventing Free Jazz was one thing – but lime green and silver? What kind of way is this for a man on the cusp of 80 to dress?

Composed and recorded in London, Toronto, Prague and Abilene (Texas), with the involvement of a small host of worthy musos, most of whom have form with Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, British Sea Power and Patti Smith.

Not only do the cast and setting of James Graham's play seem familiar; the characters, too, know they've been around a while. When a guitar-playing student baulks at entering his Northern family's trucking business, his dad quips, "It's all very DH Lawrence, innit?"

Kevin Shields' first sustained original work since My Bloody Valentine's last record, 1991's Loveless, is entirely in the service of Patti Smith's long poem in memory of her early lover, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of Aids.

She fell silent when her husband died. But at 61, Patti Smith is back – in an intimate documentary about her remarkable life.

The stuff comes out of her without filter, not so much stream of consciousness as unconscionable torrent: crossness, self-pity, indignation, wit, vision, witchy vituperation, vivid regret, terror.

Dead Air is the nom de disque of Rainy Orteca, the guitarist whose stints with the likes of Lou Reed, Joan Osborne and Antony & The Johnsons led to her current position as Joan Wasser's right-hand gal in Joan As Policewoman.

Mockingbird, New Line