Winter As a fresh new musical year kicks into gear, there is still an element of Covid catching-up to be done on the gigging front. Celtic Connections celebrates its 30th anniversary, including a 10 Years of Lost Map event – no disputing the maths there – but Roddy Hart’s Roaming Roots Revue will deliver its tenth edition one year late, having fallen foul of Covid restrictions in 2022. Colin Macintyre has made a virtue of the delay in his event to cram in what is now a 21st birthday rendition of his debut Mull Historical Society album, Loss, with an accompanying 20th birthday bash for its wee brother, Us. There is further indie nostalgia courtesy of the reunion of esteemed Glasgow quartet The Delgados. The founders of Chemikal Underground Records play Barrowland on 25 January.

A number of other Scottish artists hit the ground running with new albums. Swooning soulboy Joesef presents his debut Permanent Damage on 13 January, Hamish Hawk follows up his acclaimed album Heavy Elevator with Angel Numbers, onetime Soup Dragons frontman Sean Dickson delivers Happy Ending, his latest album as Hifi Sean, in the august company of singer David McAlmont, and the peerless Young Fathers release their fourth album Heavy Heavy, all out on 3 February.

There is multi-strand activity in the Blur camp. The Britpop legends have reformed to play a one-off Wembley Stadium show in the summer but individual members have been busy with their own projects. Damon Albarn fronts a new Gorillaz album, Cracker Island, with creature features from Tame Impala and Thundercat. Guitarist Graham Coxon has formed a new outfit, The Waeve, with former Pipettes singer Rose Elinor Dougall – stand by for their self-titled debut album, with Coxon on saxophone. Not to be outdone, drummer Dave Rowntree releases his debut solo album, Radio Songs, in a lo-fi indie vein.

KT Tunstall PIC: Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images

Spring Major spring album releases include a new Metallica behemoth called 72 Seasons, Depeche Mode’s first album since the death of Andy Fletcher, appropriately titled Memento Mori, and the completion of Smashing Pumpkins’ Atum: A Rock Opera In Three Acts. Lewis Capaldi and Lana Del Rey tussle for most unwieldy album title of the year with, respectively, Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent and Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.

The redoubtable Lizzo rules the Hydro on 8 March; two days later, The Stetsons are out in force at the Country to Country festival in the same venue. Marti Pellow soups up Wet Wet Wet’s enduring debut album Popped In Souled Out in the company of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra at the Armadillo on 26 March and KT Tunstall returns to Scotland to play a trio of shows in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow in mid-March – savour these appearances, as Tunstall is rationing her touring these days since succumbing to sudden sensorineural hearing loss in 2018.

Come late May, it’s time to welcome a new island festival, the Midnight Sun Weekender, at Lews Castle, Stornoway. Primal Scream, The Pretenders, Spiritualized and Edwyn Collins are among the first names to be announced. Meanwhile, one of Scotland’s foremost urban festivals, Hidden Door, pops up in a new Edinburgh location, transforming the iconic Scottish Widows office building on Dalkeith Road into an immersive audio-visual promenade.

Summer The big beasts come out to play in the summer months, with Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel and Elton John all gracing the Hydro stage in June, the latter warming up ahead of his farewell UK gig at the Glastonbury Festival.

Rock and metal fans can feast on an embarrassment of riches. The inimitable Kiss have decided they no longer want to rock and roll all night and party every day – their farewell tour comes to the Hydro on 8 July, by which point Ozzy Osbourne should have made good on his No More Tours pledge with his much rescheduled show at the same venue. Shock rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires and Brit metal veterans Iron Maiden also bring the noise, while Hampden Park will shake to the strains of Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard on 6 July and Red Hot Chili Peppers on 23 July, and Arctic Monkeys are set to seduce Bellahouston Park on 25 June.

Glasgow’s Galvanizers Yard has announced a varied summer line-up including shows by local indie heroes The Snuts, superstar DJ Carl Cox and Newcastle DJ/producer Ben Hemsley, while a full-on festival summer awaits. Travis, Bastille and Sigrid are the headliners at Belladrum’s Tartan Heart Festival, while TRNSMT have announced their first tranche of artists for Glasgow Green, spearheaded by a reformed Pulp. The rebooted Connect festival is set to return to the Royal Highland Centre with line-up TBA but it remains to be seen if Edinburgh Summer Sessions will take up residency in Princes Street Gardens.

Autumn By the end of the year, if the scheduling gods allow, music fans could be dining out on new albums by Ed Sheeran, The Killers, Kylie, Morrissey, Jennifer Lopez, The Cure and PJ Harvey, her first since 2016’s Hope Six Demolition Project, while the gig picture includes celebratory shows by The Waterboys and Deacon Blue, a trio of Hydro appearances by country pop diva Shania Twain and original teenybopper Cliff Richard, marking his whopping 65th anniversary in music. Beat that…anyone.

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