Music

This week

• Tortoise + Cluster

  Critics' Choice

  Sun Nov 22, Royal Festival Hall

  Chicago's polyrhythmic, jazz-flecked, post-rocking instrumentalists Tortoise gatecrash this year's LJF to give the closing night a real kick in the pants....

• VV Brown

  Critics' Choice

  Mon Nov 23, ULU

  The long-awaited album-supporting debut headline tour kicks off for the former Time Out On The Up star. Twenty-five-year-old singer-songwriter, producer and...

• Paloma Faith

  Mon Nov 23, Koko

  Following in the retro soul-pop diva footseps of Ms Winehouse comes Hackney's beehived Ms Faith, signed to Epic after an A&R scramble, and of whom much is...

• Laura Marling

  Recommended

  Mon Nov 23, St Pancras Old Church

  Gilded, elegant acoustic songs from this precocious (she's just 19), indie-folk scene darling and Mercury nominee, who looks fragile but whose voice...

• Fucked Up + Trashtalk + Throats

  Critics' Choice

  Wed Nov 25, Barfly

  Blistering and uninhibited, pseudonym-only (their vocalist calls himself Pink Eyes) progressive post-hardcore crew from Toronto - whose politics and personal...

• The Specials + Pama International

  Critics' Choice

  Nov 24-27, Hammersmith Apollo

  First of two nights for the 2-tone legends whose legacy lives on in songs like 'Ghost Town', 'Too Much Too Young' and their debut single 'Gangsters', which...