(Edition) Rochford showcases his signature alchemic touch, featuring seven electric guitarists in a fusion of improv, reggae and romantic pop
When Aberdeen-raised drummer and composer Sebastian Rochford’s star rose around the millennium, he quickly made an impact with his precocious and inclusive awareness of 1950-1960s Monk-and-Miles jazz grooves, rock, funk, global music and more. From 2002, Rochford’s unique sax-led quintet Polar Bear began earning nominations for Mercury, Mobo and Urban Music prizes, as well as the kind of fame rare in instrumental jazz. He also played key roles with Acoustic Ladyland, Basquiat Strings, Fulborn Teversham, Sons of Kemet, and as a sideman with Damon Albarn, Brian Eno and Adele.
Finding Ways follows 2023’s A Short Diary (a duo album in partnership with pianist Kit Downes) in dealing with the death in 2019 of Rochford’s beloved poet father Gerard. The title of Finding Ways is no accident: this sharply contrasting record features edgy, metal sounds from seven studio-mixed electric guitarists, including acid-to-improv musician Tara Cunningham, Portishead’s Adrian Utley and former Verve and Albarn sideman Simon Tong. But it’s Rochford’s signature, songlike chemistry – subtly transformed by rich textures, energised by his own unpredictably shifting ambiguities of rhythm – that still infuses his sound.
(Island Records) The London five-piece throw the kitchen sink at these dizzyingly dense songs, often crushing their melodic pleasures in the process
In an era when new bands struggle to break into the mainstream, the Last Dinner Party’s unusually swift rise (they were supporting the Rolling Stones a mere eight months after their first gig, and won the Rising Star Brit award just two years later) meant they spent much of the press cycle for their Mercury-nominated, chart-topping 2024 debut rubbishing suggestions they’d been manufactured by the music industry. As its follow-up arrives, the London five-piece still seem defensive. “While it may seem to an outsider that we have moved quickly on to a second album,” they write in a self-penned press release, “this timing felt like a natural progression to us.”
From the Pyre certainly doesn’t sound opportunistically rushed out. Quite the opposite, in fact: this is a dizzyingly dense collection of long, intricate tracks that layer biblical imagery, baroque detailing and cacophonous 00s indie energy. From Kate Bush cosplay (Second Best) to slightly tortured metaphors (if This Is the Killer Speaking’s narrator has been ghosted, does that make her a murderer?), often all this sonic and lyrical extravagance seems to come at the expense of basic melodic pleasure. It’s only when the band restrain their instincts for maximalism and melodrama – as on the beautiful (and still stompingly anthemic) I Hold Your Anger, a brooding exploration of maternal instinct – that the Last Dinner Party’s erudite, elaborate pop is able to really sing.
His music was ignored for decades. Now, at 81, he is collaborating with pop stars. He and his wife talk about his extraordinary life – and facing severe illness
When Beverly Glenn-Copeland was diagnosed with a form of dementia called Late two years ago, he was advised to stay at home and do crossword puzzles. He tried, but he doesn’t like crosswords, and it didn’t feel right. One day, recalls his wife Elizabeth, he said: “Honey, I know this is meant to be giving me more time, but I just feel like we’re not living a life. I have places I want to see and people I want to meet before I die. Since we have to make money, let’s make money doing what we love to do.”
And so the couple, who live in Hamilton, Ontario, are in London, midway through a tour that is the latest chapter in Glenn’s extraordinary late-in-life journey from unknown musician to revered cult icon. It has only been 10 years since his indefinably radiant music was rediscovered (not that it was ever really discovered in the first place), and he wants to enjoy it.
An indie-pop darling details his rise to fame and subsequent public humiliations with appealing frankness
Evan Dando’s autobiography opens in early 2021. The singer is living in a mouldering trailer on Martha’s Vineyard. He has a $200-a-day drug habit and is subsisting off a diet of cigarettes and cheeseburgers that he can’t chew because the heroin, cocaine and amphetamine he’s injecting have caused his teeth to fall out.
It’s all a very long way from Dando’s brief burst of fame as frontman and solitary longstanding member of the Lemonheads: two big albums in 1992’s It’s a Shame About Ray, and 1993’s Come on Feel the Lemonheads, a huge hit cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson, an era with Dando’s face taking its place alongside the Betty Blue and magic eye posters on halls of residence walls, the Docs-shod female student’s pin-up of choice. But it’s also not totally unexpected, at least if you have even a glancing knowledge of the singer’s subsequent travails. Mainstream success was short-lived: Dando succeeds in sabotaging his own career in a blaze of hard drugs and wildly unpredictable behaviour. For the last 35 years, drugs and unpredictability – rather than music – is what Dando has become known for. The book’s blurb mentions “heroin chic”, but in truth, Dando’s dissipation is almost impossible to put any kind of romantic gloss on. To his credit, he doesn’t bother, instead recounting one public humiliation after another with a what-can-you-do? shrug.
A cocktail of heroin and cocaine puts paid to a show designed to impress investors who’ve just bought a share of Dando’s song publishing for $300,000, but it’s just one of many gigs that collapse into chaos: he falls offstage, or the police are called and he’s led away from the venue in handcuffs. The Lemonheads miss their slot at Glastonbury because Dando is holed up in a hotel, doing heroin: when he does eventually turn up, he performs an unscheduled solo set, but the crowd throw bottles and boo him offstage. He hangs around Oasis in their pomp, even writing a song with Noel Gallagher: it has to be removed from a Lemonheads album at the last minute, because Gallagher deems it an “embarrassment”.
The country-rock star is as unguarded and open as she’s ever been on her eighth studio album, ‘Returning to Myself’. She speaks with Mark Beaumont about her ‘wild, magical’ upbringing, her stormy but ‘life-affirming’ collaborations with Elton John, and her pivotal role in bringing Joni Mitchell back to music
They could have given the award to an album that wasn’t already a huge hit – but Fender’s blend of kitchen-sink drama and stadium choruses is expertly done
‘You can expect all the usual excitement,” offered host Lauren Laverne at the start of this year’s Mercury prize ceremony. It’s the kind of thing people hosting awards shows are duty-bound to say, but the use of the word “usual” suggested she was diplomatically overlooking last year’s event, which – through no fault of the album that won, English Teacher’s This Could Be Texas – had all the excitement of a wake.
The Mercury had lost its corporate sponsorship, necessitating what host Annie Mac called “an intimate celebration of this year’s shortlist”, in the same way that an estate agent might call a flat with the shower next to the cooker “cosy”.
For 60 seconds I gave everything – explosive energy, perfect mime and rock star charisma. I think I blacked out from shock when they said I’d won
I was 10 when I read an article in the local paper about the Air Guitar World Championships, which take place every year in my home town of Oulu, Finland. My parents had helped out at the very first contest back in 1996 – my mum gave out flyers, my dad sorted the music. Since then, national championships have been held all across the world, with the winners assembling in Oulu every summer.
At the time, I asked my parents if I could compete. At first they were hesitant; the event was in a bar, and there would be a lot of adults. They thought it might be an intimidating atmosphere, but I was determined.
Ace Frehley was the last of the quartet to join Kiss, and when he left, the band were beginning their slow descent through the 80s. By the time Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley wrestled the brand back to the big stages, Frehley – who has died aged 74 – was little more than a face-painted pattern to the generations of new fans who came to gawp at the fireworks.
But one shouldn’t underestimate his contribution to Kiss: almost all of Kiss’s setlist to the end was made up of songs he had played on. And though he was not a prolific writer, one of his compositions – Cold Gin – remained in their setlist until Stanley and Simmons quit in 2023, more than 40 years after Frehley left the band (the less said about the 1998 reunion album, Psycho Circus, the better).
Reneé Rapp denounced ICE raids and the Trump administration from a stage in Portland, where violent clashes between protesters and police have occurred.
Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist and co-founder of the rock band Kiss, has died aged 74.
The musician, who inspired a generation of guitarists and performed on Kiss’ first nine albums, died on Thursday in a New Jersey hospital after suffering injuries during a recent fall, his family said in a statement.
Sam Fender is the winner of the 2025 Mercury prize, for his chart-topping album People Watching.
Announcing the award, Sian Eleri, BBC radio DJ and one of the judges on the judging panel, said the album was characterised by “cohesion, character and ambition. It felt like a classic album, one that will take pride of place in record collections for years to come.”
Depiction of Shakespeare character by Friedrich Heyser believed to have inspired pop superstar’s new music video
A 200-year-old museum in Germany has found itself in the eye of a storm of delighted Taylor Swift fans when it emerged that one of the probable inspirations for the music video of her new song The Fate of Ophelia was hanging on its wall.
In the opening scene of the clip for the first song on Swift’s blockbuster new album The Life of a Showgirl, one of the world’s biggest pop stars assumes the role of the tragic Shakespearean character. The video, released earlier this month, was watched more than 27m times on YouTube in the first three days.
Amid rising, confusing prices and a cost of living crisis, we would like to hear your experiences of paying to see gigs
Seeing live music is becoming increasingly expensive, thanks to the rise of dynamic ticket pricing and resale websites in addition to an ongoing cost of living crisis.
With this in mind, we would like to hear about your experiences of paying to see live music. Have your gig-going habits changed due to rising prices? What’s the most you’ve spent on going to see an artist live? And was it worth it?
L’univers du streaming musical est en pleine évolution, et Apple franchit encore un grand pas en simplifiant enfin la transition depuis Spotify vers son service de streaming Apple Music. Depuis quelques mois, la firme californienne a déployé un outil natif qui facilite le transfert complet de votre bibliothèque musicale, incluant toutes vos playlists, vers Apple Music, sans étapes complexes ni perte de données.
Connexion
The Independent
The Guardian
