Garbage have always been prime sci-fi enthusiasts, so it's apt this comeback album suggests a hiatus spent in a cryogenic freezer.

Whoever wins this afternoon, the Premier League title will stay in Manchester. Tim Rich reports

It was as if they’d never been away. Flame-haired Scottish siren Shirley Manson and her American band returned to glorious form tonight after a seven-year hiatus. Despite touring to promote a new album, Not Your Kind Of People, which hits record stores next week, the band rewarded their patient fanbase and the evening consisted of some serious old school Garbage.

Former Libertines frontman is auctioning his paintings and collected curiosities

Who lives in a house like this? There's dirty laundry all over the floor, piles of records strewn around, life drawings hanging in the bathroom and war medals displayed on the walls. Why, it's Pete Doherty, of course, the free-spirited scamp. In a video recorded for NME's website, the 33-year-old musician gives viewers a tour of his cramped Paris apartment.

Lady Gaga has announced two UK dates - when she will be supported by glam rockers The Darkness - as part of her world tour.

When a band reforms after a long hiatus, their comeback album can be seen as an afterthought amid the ensuing cash-in, so credit is due to Cast. After a 10-year break, the Scouse four-piece choose to perform three-quarters of their latest release rather than rely on back-catalogue safety.

It is one of the most distinctive album covers in British pop music history, featuring some of the most iconic faces of its day.

Anything but middle of the road

Buyers of homes worth more than £2m are going to be hit with a massive stamp duty rise from today, with a new 7 per cent stamp duty land tax charged. Until yesterday, only a 5 per cent charge was levied on homes sold for overa £1m.

The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, is fond of dismissing George Osborne as an "out of touch" public school toff whose primary interest is feathering the nests of the wealthy. But the Chancellor is a cannier politician than his opponents give credit for. It seems likely now that he will indeed cut the top rate of income tax from 50p on Wednesday; given the opportunity to scotch that incendiary rumour, yesterday he failed to do so. But just as anger mounts over what Labour, not to mention many Liberal Democrats, fear will be a Budget for the rich, he announces an intention to come down "like a ton of bricks" on tycoons avoiding stamp duty.

Greil Marcus records that, in 2010,listening to the radio on a regular car journey around San Francisco revealed that The Doors got more airplay than anyone else of their era, and with a greater number of songs - though they weren't a Bay Area band. As Marcus tells it, this drove him to re-assess their work and to reconsider the grotesque fetish status the 1960s have acquired as the enviable Neverland of stalled possibility, used to render impotent all that comes after.

Someone call social services, quick: these four young fellows have clearly been locked away in a darkened room for months with nothing but the first few Pixies albums for company.