Peter Bruntnell: Journey to the Sun review – Lush songs of human kindness

Book your death cab now: the week’s best rock and pop gigs

Death Cab For Cutie, Rudimental, Ronnie Spector, Years & Years, Boyzone, The Delines

Lean on Pete: Horse and boy film is an emotional knockout

Review: Charlie Plummer shows himself to be the best young actor of his generation

'Right now, speaking as an American, we are lacking compassion'

Too much fame, too young, that has been a problem for young actors too – but the articulate, polite Charlie Plummer is unlikely to spin off the rail

Erasure, Jeff Tweedy and Gus Dapperton: The best rock and pop this week

Tradfest kicks off on Saturday as The Oh Hellos and Rosborough play at Whelan’s

Chronicler of mean streets, rough sleepers and broken people

Willy Vlautin writes novels and sings songs about the growing darkness of American life

Richmond Fontaine: You Can’t Go Back if There’s Nothing to Go Back To: Fine end to well-honed career

Know your place: how to get perspective on a book’s setting

Willy Vlautin, Catherine O’Flynn and Paul Lynch discuss the importance of a novel’s setting

The Delines: Colfax

Willy Vlautin: ‘You try to make something that is a story, and is about life, but also says something that matters’

Whether in his outstanding debut, ‘The Motel Life’, or his latest novel, ‘The Free’, the American writer – and key member of Richmond Fontaine – understands the marginalised lives that his characters endure