Music news

• Kylie: Tension II review – more of the same is much, much less

  19-10-2024 15:00
  
  (BMG)
  Kylie Minogue’s follow-up to 2023’s euphoric Tension – and smash hit Padam Padam – fluctuates between sparkle and self-doubt, generic pap and two stone-cold bangersIt is impossibly easy to root for Kylie Minogue. The Australian pop princess is funny in interviews – see her dry, casual dismissal of the idea that Kylie Jenner could trademark their shared first name. She is also remarkably private – rarely, if ever, whipping up hokey, pseudo-emotional backs
  
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• Charli xcx review – a magnificent, one-woman triumph

  30-11-2024 15:00
  
  Co-op Live, Manchester
  Having left her mark on every high street and the Collins dictionary, the Brat star commands the stage alone in a joyful arena show that feels more like a warehouse raveCharli xcx is smoking a cigarette and surveying her disciples from an elevated platform. Most are clad in the ubiquitous slime green that adorned the cover of June’s culture-swallowing Brat album, while some sport the same wraparound glasses as their unapologetic idol. Everyone is dancing in unison to
  
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• Let it show: find an event for every day until Christmas with our culture advent calendar

  30-11-2024 12:55
  
  From The Nutcracker in Glasgow and the Human League in Cardiff to Messiaen in Manchester and Maggie Mistletoe in Farnham, our critics pick the best cultural events in the run-up to ChristmasPaul Heaton Glasgow
  In support of the release of his 10th studio album The Mighty Several, Paul Heaton hits the arenas of the UK with his new sidekick, Rianne Downey. Alongside new material, the pair promise an array of Housemartins and Beautiful South hits, mapping the territories of British heartland p
  
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• Band Aid 40 fails to reach UK Top 40 in opening week

  29-11-2024 19:00
  
  All-star version of Do They Know It’s Christmas?, spliced together from previous versions, falls short of the No 1 success of those earlier hitsThe 40th anniversary version of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? has failed to enter this week’s Top 40, reaching No 45.The new version of the song was made up of performances spliced together from three previous versions, in an arrangement by producer Trevor Horn. But despite featuring the unusual A-list juxtaposition of G
  
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• Kendrick Lamar: GNX review – amply backed-up grandstanding

  29-11-2024 12:00
  (PGLang/Interscope)
  Fresh from his feud with Drake, the US hip-hop star’s latest album finds him on imperious formAppositely named after a vintage model car that’s dear to his heart, Kendrick Lamar’s sixth album would sound great with the top down and a back seat full of friends nodding in sync to this album’s taut Sounwave productions and bullish self-belief. Lamar ropes in just three famous pals – SZA, Kamasi Washington and, notably, ubiquitous pop producer Jack A
  
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• Kneecap: UK government acted illegally in withholding funding from Irish rap trio

  29-11-2024 10:55
  
  The Department for Business and Trade said Kemi Badenoch’s decision to rescind funding had been ‘unlawful and procedurally unfair’Irish-language rap trio Kneecap have won their case against new Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch after she blocked an arts grant to the band citing anti-British politics.They took Badenoch, then business secretary, to court in the summer and at a hearing in Belfast’s high court, the new government said the refusal of £14,250 in fun
  
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• Auntie Flo: In My Dreams (I’m a Bird and I’m Free) review | Global album of the month

  29-11-2024 09:30
  
  (A State of Flo Records)
  Brian d’Souza’s genre-crossing curiosity takes him from propulsive disco to nursery-rhyme melodies and Tiësto-worthy tranceBrian d’Souza has always had a wandering ear. Since the 2011 release of his debut single as Auntie Flo, the DJ and producer has released four albums that traverse everything from South African kwaito to Ghanaian highlife, Ugandan pop and Afro-Cuban jazz. In 2020, he launched an online radio station playing exclusively ambient e
  
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• ‘I just had to rejoice’: the brilliance and tragedy of ‘fifth Beatle’ Billy Preston

  29-11-2024 09:00
  
  A magnetically vibrant keyboard prodigy who played on Let It Be and worked with George Harrison, Preston later lived through years of addiction. A new film aims to find ‘the dark and the light’ in his storyIn the 1960s and 70s, Billy Preston was the musician’s musician. A self-taught prodigy who grew up playing the organ in his Los Angeles church, he was accompanying Mahalia Jackson and appearing on The Nat King Cole Show before he was 11. By high school, he was travelling with
  
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• Kendrick Lamar: GNX review – stunning surprise from a rapper determined to be the greatest

  25-11-2024 17:14
  
  (PGLang/Interscope)After his beef with Drake, Lamar expands his list of targets with enthralling rhymes and adventurous arrangements. At this point, he’s deferring only to GodBy nature, hip-hop feuds are divisive, but the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar was polarising in a way that had nothing to do with whose side you took. There were people who thought it was the greatest rap battle in history, outstripping Jay-Z and Nas, Ice Cube and his former bandmates in NWA, even Biggie and Tu
  
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• ‘Charles had just bought a mean-looking Chevrolet’: how War made Low Rider

  25-11-2024 15:34
  
  ‘Our frontman walked into the studio, sat down with a bottle of tequila, salt and a lemon, listened to the track and started singing in a low voice’Calling ourselves War was a positive thing: we were waging war against war and the conflicts going on in our back yard. Our weapons were our instruments, which fired rhythms, melodies and most of all harmony. We were a multi-ethnic band and we used our songs to bring peace and love. Continue reading...
  
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• Anohni review – uniquely gifted interpreter pays homage to mentor Lou Reed

  25-11-2024 14:13
  Royal Festival Hall, London
  On this special night, Anohni reveals her rarely heard talents as a covers artist as she expands the boundaries and musicality of beloved – and obscure – Reed songsBlessed with a voice you might imagine perfectly suited to interpreting others’ material, Anohni has largely shied away from recording covers. A couple of songs by Dylan, Lennon and Yoko Ono, an amazing take on Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love – and that’s been about it ove
  
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• Zayn review – shy star lets his hypnotic vocals do the talking

  25-11-2024 13:14
  O2 Apollo, Manchester
  Malik sips tea and hesitantly delivers an intimate, accomplished set – and pays tribute to former One Direction bandmate Liam PayneWatching Zayn Malik perform tonight, it’s hard to picture him in One Direction, a band whose lively performances once filled stadiums all over the world. Of course, Malik was always the shy one, so much so that he eventually quit the group in order “to be a normal 22-year-old”. He ventured out as a solo artist and secured
  
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• MJ Lenderman review – a shooting star from the American south

  23-11-2024 15:00
  
  The Garage, London
  Showcasing new album Manning Fireworks, the North Carolina indie rising star seals his reputation as a slacker guitar hero who knows exactly what he’s doingA pedal steel guitar is weeping in one corner of the stage, comforted by a keyboard countermelody coming from the opposite end. Centre stage is up-and-coming guitarist of the moment MJ Lenderman, a study in slackerish nonc muels freewheels by his side, flinging lots of hair around.This modern-day, if sepia-tinted tabl
  
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• One to watch: Yoo Doo Right

  23-11-2024 13:30
  
  The Canadian post-rockers channel their political concerns into thrilling krautrock-inspired noiseAt times of global crisis, Montreal post-rock three-piece Yoo Doo Right try to channel their distress in positive directions, and their third album, From the Heights of Our Pastureland, finds them looking for ways to rebuild what is broken. “Late capitalism is ever present… we’re all witnessing a genocide in Palestine in real time,” drummer John Talbot told Still Listening m
  
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• ‘Experimental, queer and kind of magical’: Sade and Sam Smith feature on 46-track album for trans rights

  22-11-2024 15:00
  
  More than 100 artists from Beverly Glenn-Copeland to Anohni contributed to Red Hot’s Transa, one of the year’s most remarkable recordsTransa, a galvanising new music compilation in support of trans rights, was born out of tragedy. In 2022, the groundbreaking trans musician Sophie died after an accidental fall; the Transa co-founder Dust Reid had already been thinking about a project that centred trans and non-binary people, and this enormous loss kicked the project into gear.“T
  
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• Silkroad Ensemble With Rhiannon Giddens: American Railroad review – homage to a forgotten army of workers

  22-11-2024 13:00
  
  (Nonesuch)
  The collective and their artistic director’s classy multimedia project highlights the lives lost and land snatched away in building the US transcontinental railroadEver since her days with folk revivalists Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens has championed the marginalised or suppressed elements of American musical tradition. Now artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble, a multi-ethnic, 13-strong troupe founded in 2000, Giddens has overseen a history of America’s
  
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• Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes review – an exquisite return

  22-11-2024 12:30
  
  (Polydor)
  Five years on from his self-titled Mercury winner, the singer-songwriter scales things down to potent effectAs an artist, entertainment is the purpose of your work – or the result of it. If you’re Coldplay, it’s all purpose. Michael Kiwanuka is different. It feels as though whenever he entertains us with the songs ripped from his yearning heart, it’s just a happy coincidence. His last, self-titled album was an instant classic in 2019, a revelatory work perfectly
  
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• Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More review – a solo debut worth waiting for

  22-11-2024 12:00
  (4AD)
  The Pixies and Breeders musician’s distinctive touch is ever present on a set that spans heartbreak, good times and strident guitars
  A decade and more in the making, Kim Deal’s first solo album under her own name more than repays the wait. Nobody Loves You More distils the cult American musician’s strengths – previously flexed in the Pixies and her own bands, the Breeders and the Amps – into a tight 11 tracks that span heartbreak, good times and strident guita
  
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• Lars Danielsson/Verneri Pohjola/John Parricelli: Trio review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

  22-11-2024 10:00
  (ACT/Edition Palmer)
  Bassist Danielsson, guitarist Parricelli and trumpeter Pohjola combine folksy melodies, Latin grooves and free-roaming improv on this lustrous albumWhen the three European musicians who created this glowing collage of folksy melodies, Latin-grooving and freely roaming improvisations were asked to name their three favourite jazz records, they all included one by Keith Jarrett. These singular artists aren’t Jarrett mimics, but see the piano giant as a transitional bridge
  
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• ‘We didn’t intend to create outrage’: Huggy Bear on radical politics, riot grrrl – and causing chaos on live TV

  22-11-2024 09:00
  
  They said they’d exist for three years, then split. And that’s what the British punks did, winning love and notoriety for their feminist, queer worldview. Thirty years on, a new book tells their story‘You should be able to heckle if there’s something sexist on live TV.” In the staff room at the Lloyd Park Children’s Charity in Walthamstow, where he has worked for 30-odd years, Huggy Bear’s vocalist Chris Rowley is reflecting on his band’s appearanc
  
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• Poppy Ajudha: Poppy review – frank lyrics elevate soulful, funky love songs

  22-11-2024 09:00
  
  (Virgin)The singer-songwriter cycles through many moods, finding hope and complication in her search for love and meaningWhen south London singer-songwriter Poppy Ajudha ended a two-year hiatus with the release of single My Future, a stunning and resolute self-love anthem about the greatness of ambition, she was evidently shifting her jazzy pop-soul formulation in a new direction. Debut LP The Power in Us had mused on bold political themes from abortion rights to borders, but second album Poppy
  
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• Father John Misty: Mahashmashana review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

  21-11-2024 13:00
  
  (Bella Union)
  The singer-songwriter sticks to apocalyptic first principles on his sixth album, couching contemporary chaos in soaring ballads and discofied yacht rock Nine years after his breakthrough album I Love You, Honeybear turned Josh Tillman from a minor indie singer-songwriter (and the former drummer of Fleet Foxes) into a critical cause célèbre, most people with any interest know broadly what to expect from a new release under the Father John Misty name. There will be blac
  
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• Two Bee Gees drummers die within days of one another

  19-11-2024 16:58
  
  The band’s original drummer, Colin Petersen, died four days before Dennis Bryon, who played throughout their imperial Saturday Night Fever phaseColin Petersen, the original drummer for Bee Gees, has died aged 78.Petersen joined the band in 1966 alongside brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb. He performed on their second studio album Spicks and Specks, released that same year, and played on early hits such as To Love Somebody, I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You and I Started a Joke. Co
  
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• ‘There was three of them waiting, like: play this track or else’: DJ EZ, the reality-bending maestro of the decks

  19-11-2024 14:00
  
  The staunch champion of garage is one of the UK’s most talented musicians, manipulating tracks at lightning speed. In a rare interview he discusses neurodiversity, being teetotal – and the truth about his feesOne day around the turn of the millennium DJ EZ turned up for his regular slot at Kiss FM. His career was taking off in earnest, in line with his reputation as a technically gifted mixer and linchpin of the UK garage scene. He was among the first DJs to play Daniel Bedingfield&r
  
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• MJ Lenderman review – songs of solace and goofy poetry from lauded indie darling

  19-11-2024 13:30
  
  The Garage, London
  The North Carolina musician and his band comfort the crowd with a set of smart, beguiling songs played with skill and camaraderieThere’s a sense of solace and welcome to MJ Lenderman’s music, a warmth that runs counter to a wet and biting Monday night in mid-November, and carries all the way to the back wall of a packed London Garage. Its affability lies partly in a certain familiarity – songs carried with the gait of Pavement or Guided By Voices, while Lende
  
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• Amyl and the Sniffers review – nonstop fireworks

  16-11-2024 15:00
  
  Roundhouse, London
  The Aussie rockers led by the magnetic Amy Taylor showcase new album Cartoon Darkness with an explosive set that just keeps giving and givingPart of the appeal of the Roundhouse, a famous north London venue, is that if a gig ever becomes boring, you can gaze at its vaulted, jointed ceiling – a marvel of the industrial age. It’s a safe bet that no one checks the architecture tonight, or on the other two nights of this sold-out residency. Because punk crossover stars
  
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• One to watch: Man/Woman/Chainsaw

  16-11-2024 13:30
  
  This young British art-punk five-piece revel in taut chaos and wry lyrics on their debut EP, Eazy PeazyInfluenced by the DIY experimental scene cultivated by Black Country, New Road and Black Midi, south London art-rock quintet Man/Woman/Chainsaw are happiest making a racket. “We thrive on the thin line between pretty and noisy,” vocalist and guitarist Billy Ward has said. “It’s that chaos that excites us.”Schoolfriends Ward and fellow singer-guitarist Vera Lepp&aum
  
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• Flo: Access All Areas review – ​skilful R&B revivalists need to get their freak on a bit more

  14-11-2024 13:45
  
  (Island)
  The trio bring gorgeous vocals and spiky attitude to 90s-facing songs – but they need a little more of that era’s oddball invention, as well as an undeniable hitYou don’t have to be particularly keen-eared to spot Flo’s musical influences. They announce them in the opening seconds of their debut album – or rather actor Cynthia Erivo does. Her guest spot is the latest in a series of high-profile co-signs the London trio has attracted. SZA is apparently a fan
  
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• Roy Haynes, jazz drummer whose career spanned nine decades, dies aged 99

  13-11-2024 09:28
  
  American drummer who began in 1940s swing and bebop scenes played with Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and dozens moreRoy Haynes, a drummer who was one of the last remaining musicians of jazz’s swing and bebop eras, has died aged 99. His daughter Leslie Haynes-Gilmore said he had died following a short illness.Haynes’s energetic style, which also encompassed fusion and avant-garde jazz, earned him the respect of many contemporaries across a career that began in the mid-1940s. He played
  
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• Lou Donaldson obituary

  11-11-2024 18:50
  American jazz saxophonist and singer who enjoyed a huge hit with his 1967 anthem Alligator BoogalooThe droll, sleek-haired saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who has died aged 98, was disinclined to let a good lick or a good gag wither on the vine. Alongside his immense saxophone eloquence, he possessed a highly entertaining strangled-parrot blues voice, and at gigs in his later years would regularly deliver his vocal party piece, Whisky Drinkin’ Woman. He would then express his gratitude to audie
  
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