In February 1965, Melody Maker asked John Lennon about his personal enthusiasm for Bob Dylan material and Dylan interpretations. “I just felt like going that way,” he said about the new acoustic guitar-based material The Beatles were then recording at Abbey Road.

Every 21st birthday deserves a party, and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester celebrated the anniversary of its opening with a weekend of fun and "access" events, ending with a recital by four pianists on its four Steinway pianos – playing them all at once, in eight-hand arrangements.

Once heard, 1969’s Spirit of the Golden Juice is not forgotten. F. J. McMahon’s sole album is imbued with the heavy air of desolation. Its nine country tinged songs are also melodic and as good as those by Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, with whom McMahon is most often compared. Unlike them, McMahon had not steered a path through the folk circuit to achieve recognition.

This is, in many ways, an underwhelming evening, but the fault does not primarily lie with The Psychedelic Furs. Things start well with support act Lene Lovich who gives a lively performance, in a black’n’red ensemble with striped sleeves and a gigantic, beribboned, plaited wig/hair/hat confabulation which has something of Big Chief Sitting Bull about it. Despite not playing her only Top 10 hit, 1979’s “Lucky Number”, she whoops and theatricalises while her band delivers a suitably punchy new wave racket.

The Psychedelic Furs aren’t going to get away with not playing the hits, especially as this round of gigs is entitled the Singles Tour. The curious thing is that they didn’t really have any big hits. Despite a hefty and deserved reputation, based on their grittily swooning first three albums, and moments from the fourth, they only had two bona fide Top 40 singles. One of these, “Pretty in Pink”, they dispose of early in the set, almost throwing it away. Like Simple Minds with “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, they allegedly have a tricky relationship with the song, due to its Hollywood recontextualisation by writer/director John Hughes (in the 1986 film of the same name: at least The Psychedelic Furs wrote their most famous song; Simple Minds, whose song was used in Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, did not).

All but one band member wear shades throughout - it was ever thus

Ostensibly reformed since the Millennium, this band has not been very active, until now. In concert, they're a six-piece, very much fronted by the two brothers, Richard and Tim Butler, who kickstarted the group during the Seventies punk era, although Sax player Mars Williams is also a big presence, showboating hither and yon. Most members wear hussar-style military coats with lines of closely set brass buttons, although Richard Butler, the frontman, soon takes his off to reveal what appears to be a dotted black pyjama top with white piping around the lapels. All but one band member wear shades throughout. It was ever thus.

Their set runs in the approximate chronological order of their single releases. This is not necessarily a good thing, as they begin with their richest material, cuts such as “Danger”, “Mr Jones” and, especially, “Love My Way”, which closed with a wolfish howl from its singer; then things slowly bog down in later, lesser fare, although they save their other hit, “Heaven”, until the end, before an encore of first album gold. The big problem, though, is the sound.

The Psychedelic Furs’ music is nuanced. It always had a heartfelt, frowning subtlety, with its rock sensibility more in line with Roxy Music or David Bowie than, say, The Damned, and yet the sound from the stage tonight is a smudged, indistinct blur of distortion, with the singing inaudibly fudged way down in the mix. It’s crappy. Putting all my cards on the table, I should mention there are also a few very irritating gig-goers who somewhat spoil my enjoyment. I grow heartily sick of precious, stock still, middle-aged once-were's who regard rock gigs as standardised church ceremonies they’re super-entitled to watch, unhindered by anything lively, social or rock’n’roll.

The Psychedelic Furs appear to be having a ball. Their set-list could do with tweaking but if you say you’re going to play the singles then you have to play the singles! There are rumours of a new album, their first in over a quarter of century, and the band seem invigorated. It bodes well. As for tonight, the difference between what they played and what we heard very much undermined this show.

• More New Music reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: watch The Psychedelic Furs perform "Love My Way"

We’ve been here before. Not to exactly the same territory, but to a neighbouring space in the same time frame. Last year, theartsdesk looked at a reissue of 2007’s Room to Expand, the first widely available album by the minimalist pianist Hauschka. The album’s reappearance was a moment to reflect on Nils Frahm, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Christian Wallumrød, some of Hauschka’s fellow travellers in the inelegantly tagged post-classical groundswell, all of whom first attracted widespread attention a decade ago.

TV Tube Heart, the debut album from The Radiators From Space, was issued on 21 October 1977, a week before the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks. Each was a punk rock album and one, inevitably, has been subjected to greater historical analysis and many more reissues than the other. Of course, Johnny Rotten and co’s first and only long-player was significant but the other band’s album was important too.

Think Charles Mingus, and it’s unlikely that a neon-coiffed saxophonist playing acoustic house while doing a solo can-can around the stage will come to mind. A highly original, introspective figure whose best music is a thrillingly rumbustious fusion of bluesy melody and gruff rhythmic experiment, Mingus is a bold choice for the usually lush-toned Metropole Orkest.

The Some Bizzare Album was released in January 1981. Compiled by DJ Stevo, it featured twelve unsigned acts he felt represented a fresh way of approaching pop – one enabled by the availability of synthesisers and rhythm machines. Stevo was playing the new music at the nights he hosted, putting the bands on and compiling the electronic chart for the weekly music paper Sounds. After being inundated with demo tapes, he chose the ones he liked best and issued the album.

Last year, the arrival of Close to the Noise Floor compelled theartsdesk’s Reissue CDs Weekly to conclude that it was “hugely important and utterly delightful”. A four-CD set, it was a thrilling, first-time overview of the UK’s early indie-synth mavericks from Blancmange to Throbbing Gristle and Muslimgauze to Sea of Wires. Now, it has spawned a follow-up.

August is often a quiet month on the release front but theartsdesk on Vinyl came across a host of music deserving of attention. Now that even Sony, one of the biggest record companies in the world, are starting to press their own vinyl again, it’s safe to say records aren’t disappearing quite yet. On the contrary, the range of material is staggering in its breadth. So this month we review everything from spectral folk to boshing techno to the soundtrack of Guardians of The Galaxy 2.