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Pavement - Rigsy (ATL Presenter)

I was lucky enough to see them before they split in '99, but nabbing tickets to their reunion show in Dublin (off our Amy!) has made as excited about a gig as I've been in years. Pavement! Ridiculously lo-fi and reliably weird, without being in any way annoying. A hugely underrated band resonsible for some of the most wonderfully random music I've ever heard made with a guitar and it'll be a real treat hearing a greatest hits set at The Tripod in May. And checking out 'Wowee Zowee' should be an obligation, frankly.

Manic Street Preachers - Paul McClean (ATL Producer)



Don't get me wrong, The Holy Bible is probably one of my favourite albums ever, but given the nature of the Welsh politico-rockers hiatus after Richey Edwards disappearance and apparent suicide (yes we know all about the rumours), the follow up was always going to have an added focus. Would they be blunted parodies of themselves? Everything Must Go retained the Manics' sense of bleak despair, but contained a definite note of defiance and also of catharsis. They had licked their wounds and came out scrapping. Nicky Wire is no lyrical slouch, plus some words still remained from Richey, so the sentiment was caustic enough, even seeming sometimes all the more pointed given the pop sheen on the songs many of which which went on to be humungo-hits. A Design for Life remains a high watermark for any band let alone one with its heart ripped out.

Blur - Amy McGarrigle (ATL Content Assistant)

So it's probably the most obvious choice but Blur's return last year truly cemented them in music history. It could have all gone wrong. Instead Blur went on an emotion-packed, nostalgic summer tour that made everybody get a wee bit soppy. An amazing performance at Glastonbury had even us poor punters at home feeling emotional, and that was before catching them at Oxegen with most of Team ATL in the pit, moshing and singing out loud to digging out the old albums and realising why I loved them so much. They could have been forgotten in the muddy memory of Brit Pop but when a band makes grown men weep, it's always a sign they've done something right.

Elvis - Joe Lindsay (Alumni and Friend of the ATL family)

Without a doubt, the greatest comeback of all time? The clue is in the title... Elvis, the 68 Comeback Special!! The sixties were not kind to the King Of Rock 'n Roll. A succession of increasingly dire films, the drug habit taking hold, the weight piling on. He was irrelevant, spoiled, jaded and seemingly on a spiral of creative suicide. An offer of a TV special for a man whose most significant work was a decade behind him must have seemed like just another act in the Elvis carnival sideshow. But this was to be no final curtain or nail in the coffin. He went on a strict diet, reworked some old songs and went back to the foundations of what the Presley Empire was built on. From the newly beefed up version of Guitar Man, through the intimate 'jam session' to straight up gospel, the absent king was back for his throne. Less than a decade later he would die on it, bloated, decadent and irrelevant again. But in '68 he reminded the world why they loved him in the first place. And probably reminded himself...

Alice in Chains - Chris Johnson (ATL Trainee)

A comeback with a new front man was unfathomable after the passing of troubled singer Layne Staley, yet the recruiting of the relatively unknown William Duvall was a stroke of genius. It was as if he was as if he'd been possessed by the tortured spirit of Staley - he was as engaging as the deceased frontman in his prime. In 2009, they released their 4th album, Black Gives Way To Blue, on which they sounded revitalised, with Jerry Cantrell unleashing some of the most sinister guitar riffs of his entire career. In their darkest hour, they struck gold.