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