Let's rock: Oasis, AC/DC, Nile Rodgers and a Hollywood star?
There may still be tickets available for their Murrayfield appearances, but you're going to be paying through your nose to get them (at the time of writing one ticket resale company was looking for more than £500 for their cheapest tickets and nearly £2,000 for their dearest). Is that value for money? Depends on how desperate you are to see the band, I guess. And many clearly are. By all accounts, though, fans of the Dig Out Your Soul album (it's possible there's one or two) may be a little disappointed by the setlist. It's largely - and, let's face it, understandably - drawn from the first couple of albums Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory. It will be interesting how those songs recorded when the band were full of youth and hunger and attitude sound in middle age.
Air
Big Top, Fringe by the Sea, North Berwick, August 2
More 1990s nostalgia. But rather like Oasis's Beatle obsession, the sound of French duo Air was always rooted in the past. Their debut album - the gorgeous, swoony, Moon Safari, which Air will play in full for the first time in Scotland - was the sound of the space age 1970s rebooted and updated; a record to watch lava lamps to. The tunes - all electronic keyboards, beeping synths, vocoder and strings - bubble and pop like a dream you had of a childhood summer. Throw in Beth Hirsch's breathy vocals on You Make It Easy and All I Need and you have one of the defining albums of the end of the century; one whose influence you can hear in the music of the likes of Andrew Wasylyk (who, along with Tommy Perman, is tonight's support, which is rather pleasing).
For a while there Moon Safari was so ubiquitous it felt like you didn't feel the need to ever hear it again, but now, more than a quarter of a century later, its low-key pleasures feel refreshed. Cherry Blossom Girl for the encore though?
corto.alto
Lughnasadh Music and Arts Festival, Forgan Arts Centre, Newport-on-Tay, August 2
In fact the Glasgow-based, Mercury-nominated multinstrumentalist, producer and composer Liam Shortall (aka corto.alto) is just one of the names on the bill for the second Lughnasadh festival. Such stellar Scottish talents as Kathryn Joseph, Scared Paws and Becky Sikasa are also among the acts confirmed. But if the meaty, beaty and bouncy new single Don't Listen is anything to go by, corto.alto may be one of the highlights
Ezra Collective
Big Top, Fringe by the Sea, North Berwick, August 9
The band's only Scottish date in the current tour. The Mercury Prizewinners - the first jazz act to win the award - tapped into Afrobeat and Latin rhythms on their most recent Dance, No One's Watching. They are the UK's 'most exhilarating live act' according to the Guardian and they certainly lit up the stage at the Brits earlier this year. So, should be fun. Dancing will probably be compulsory.
Nile Rodgers & Chic, Barrowland, Glasgow, August 12 & 13
I know the Gallagher brothers are in Edinburgh in August and the world's biggest arts festival will be keeping everyone busy, but, really, you can't tell me there will be anything on anywhere in the country that will be more fun than these two nights at the Barrowland Ballroom. The simple truth of it is that, for the last 50 years Nile Rodgers has been and remains the nearest thing we have to a human incarnation of pop music, whether in his own band Chic or in his work with Diana Ross, Madonna, Sister Sledge, Bowie, Duran Duran or Daft Punk.
Nile Rodgers
Having come through serious illness he has spent the last few years reminding us of just how central he has been to pop's story with his live gigs which draw on his disco era and beyond. There's an argument to be made that the last minute of Sister Sledge's 1979 hit Thinking of You - produced by Rodgers and the late, great Bernard Edwards - is one of the greatest in music history. Feel free to discuss.
Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends
The Garage, Glasgow, August 20
Yeah, that Michael Shannon. The two-time Oscar nominee and star of Knives Out and Bullet Train has teamed up with indie rocker Jason Narducy to tour a show playing R.E.M. songs. This time around they are essaying their take on Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), the third album of the band from Athens, Georgia, and home to songs like Driver 8 and Can't Get There From Here. If you want an imprimatur of Shannon's seriousness it's worth noting that when Shannon and Narducy played Athens (the American one) earlier this year the members of R.E.M. turned up to join them onstage.
AC/DC
Murrayfield, Edinburgh, August 21
AC/DC
The old gods are disappearing. Black Sabbath - the inventors of metal - have played their final gigs. Indisputably with the death of Ozzy. Those who followed them - the NWOBHM bands (to use the acronym of the time) - are themselves getting on a bit. In short, Gotterdamerung is getting close. And yet AC/DC are still going strong. Vocalist Brian Johnson still sounds like he's been gargling rusty lead and petrol, Angus Young is still dressing up as a schoolboy at the age of 70 and they still sound like a dinosaur mating with a Transformer. Long may they do so.
PP Arnold - Soul Survivor
Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, August 22
The Fringe's music programme is the usual mixture of the classical, the comic, the curious, the trad acts, the tribute acts and Dean Friedman. But alongside Peter Doherty and Pussy Riot, to this gig featuring soul singer PP Arnold stands out. Formerly one of Ike and Tina Turner's Ikettes, Arnold came to London to support the Rolling Stones in 1966 and never left. Over the years she's worked with everyone from Peter Gabriel and Paul Weller to Rod Stewart. And her version of The First Cut is the Deepest (released back in 1967) stomps all over Rod's take from 10 years later.
Sam Fender
Ingleston, Edinburgh, August 22
The closest thing to a British Bruce Springsteen? Time will tell, but the Geordie singer has the heart, the tenderness, the passion for the job and an ear for an anthem. To be honest, for all the very apparent Springsteen influence, Paul Weller might be a better comparison. Fender has Weller's ability to catch working-class life in all its joy and despair in a lyric. In the decades to come 17 Going Under is the song we will play to understand this moment in time.
Chappell Roan
Ingleston, Edinburgh, August 26 & 27
Chappell Roan (Image: PA)
The sound of pop in 2025. Winner of the Best New Artist at the Grammys this year, Chappell Roan has gone from nowhere to A-lister in the last couple of years. Originally from small-town Missouri, she's moved to LA, embraced her queerness and become a proper pop star. It's been hard to avoid her hit Pink Pony Club in the last 12 months. Her songbook is fun, fizzy, sexually frank and hookier than a former New Order bassist. A potent reminder that pop is not dead, whatever baby boomers like me might say.
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