He gave Jimi Hendrix his gear, freaked out Frank Sinatra, inspired Norman Mailer – and tried to topple the American war machine. As a documentary about his band the Fugs comes out, the 87-year-old gives a rare interview

“Charles Manson once wrote me a letter saying, ‘If I was as powerful as you claim then you wouldn’t be here,’” Ed Sanders tells me over a video call, savouring the menace in that sentence.

Sanders is an American maverick; a musician, poet, activist, journalist and author whose greatest hit remains his bestselling 1971 book The Family, in which he chronicled the lives, crimes and trials of Manson and his followers. Sanders was well placed to report on crazed hippies, having played a pivotal role in launching the US counterculture – though he very much espoused peace, love and consciousness-raising, rather than Manson’s apocalyptic worldview.

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© Photograph: Stephen Chernin/AP

© Photograph: Stephen Chernin/AP

© Photograph: Stephen Chernin/AP

(Polydor)
Its release delayed by ill health, Kiwanuka’s latest was made in tandem with 2024’s Small Changes – but it’s much more than a mere companion album

In November 2024, Michael Kiwanuka released his fourth album, Small Changes, an extremely poised and self-assured piece of work. After three gold albums, a Grammy nomination, a Mercury prize win and the ongoing success of Cold Little Heart, a 2017 single hoisted to virality and million-selling status in the US after its use in TV drama Big Little Lies, Kiwanuka – and his long-term production collaborators Danger Mouse and Inflo – evidently felt confident enough to release a beautiful but wilfully understated album. Recorded in LA, some impressive names lurked in the credits: legendary session musicians including bassist Pino Palladino and the drummer James Gadson, who played on Marvin Gaye’s I Want You and Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly; the similarly legendary R&B producer Jimmy Jam served as organist on three tracks. It attracted the kind of critical praise in which adjectives like “unhurried” and “meditative” figured heavily.

But it also wasn’t the whole story. It turned out there was a second album, its songs written – or rather, jammed into existence by Kiwanuka and members of his live band – concurrently with Small Changes. It was made not in LA but in a studio that “looks like a medieval hut” in Southampton. August session musicians and legendary R&B producers were not present during its recording, nor were Danger Mouse and Inflo. Indeed, you could read its opening track, Summer Clothes, as a kind of Dear John letter to both of them (“I’m OK, I found another way … we’ll be back here soon, just not today”).

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© Photograph: Jodie Canwell

© Photograph: Jodie Canwell

© Photograph: Jodie Canwell

The singer-songwriter gets a lift from U2 and likes to reminisce to Bette Midler, but which cheesy Euro banger does she secretly like?

The first song I fell in love with
When I was five or six, my mum wouldn’t let me listen to anything other than Christian gospel. Her friend Jane felt sorry for me and brought me a cassette with Whitney Houston on one side and Cher on the other. My ears couldn’t believe what they were hearing. I Will Always Love You made me think: This is what I’m going to do.

The first single I bought
So Young by the Corrs, from Sainsbury’s in Woolton Village in Liverpool. I couldn’t really afford music as a kid, so buying a record was a big deal. I’d heard the Corrs on the radio, liked their voices and thought: I’m buying this.

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© Photograph: -

© Photograph: -

© Photograph: -

Kali Flanagan was handpicked by Julian Casablancas to support the Strokes – now, at 21, he’s writing songs full of the rushing emotions of youth

From New York
Recommended if you like Cameron Winter, Adrianne Lenker, Alex G
Up next My Piledriver Heart album out now; UK tour beginning 4 November

Making coming-of-age music as a young person can feel strange after a pandemic. So here are a few more curveballs. Imagine the breezy, youthful indie you post online in your early teens gets you a record deal. Covid happens. You move to New York, change your artist name, and then Julian Casablancas eyes you at an open mic and invites you to open for the Strokes in Colorado, aged 18, solo.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Grace Anthony Schmidt

© Photograph: Courtesy of Grace Anthony Schmidt

© Photograph: Courtesy of Grace Anthony Schmidt

Once scrappy post-punk poets, they’re now one of the biggest bands in the world. As they release new album Dopamine Chamber, fans including Kneecap and Shame explain their sensational rise

When Irish rockers Fontaines DC emerged in 2019, they were a bunch of post-punk poets making abrasive guitar music at a time when Dance Monkey, Drake and The Greatest Showman reigned supreme. But today, as their fifth album Dopamine Chamber is released, the quintet are looking towards a 2027 filled with gigs in UK stadiums, US arenas and headline slots at big European festivals – plus rumours of topping Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage. It’s quite a trajectory.

Their rise has been strangely traditional for a time when social media has culture in a chokehold. Ever more ambitious albums, the support of radio and institutions such as the BBC, and a lot of touring have all played parts. Beyond that, “fact is, they’re one of the best bands in the world,” says fellow countryman Mo Chara, one third of Kneecap.

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© Photograph: Ewen Spencer

© Photograph: Ewen Spencer

© Photograph: Ewen Spencer

(WPDMT)
Bringing back the hyperliterate sound design of their acclaimed 2025 debut, the London duo explore childhood with whimsical humour and terrific musicality

One of last year’s surprise highlights was The Velvet Underground & Rowan, the debut album by the wacky, hyperliterate London duo Worldpeace DMT. That irreverent album title summed up their approach to their references: Leo Fincham and Rowan Miles – also of the Femcels – buttressed nods to Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys with a palette straight out of NME circa 2011. If it isn’t a coup to make the sound of Grouplove and Darwin Deez sound cool and urbane in 2025, I don’t know what is.

This year, Worldpeace DMT have changed tack, perhaps in response to suggestions that they’re at the forefront of an emergent genre called “laptop twee”. The duo’s August mixtape Flowers Powers mostly eschewed plunderphonics and heavy sampling in favour of live instrumentation that ran the gamut from Spiritualized to outlaw country; Stick Around for Tea, their second album, brings back a shade of the goofy, Sung Tongs-esque sound design that made their debut such a joy, while pulling Fincham and Miles’ songwriting to the fore.

Stick Around for Tea seems, loosely, to be a concept album about childhood. The inherent whimsy of the Worldpeace DMT project suits these songs, which wring dry humour from lyrics about spiders, tigers and anthropomorphised guitars. Fincham and Miles sing in a self-consciously childish way that belies their taut musicality: a lush, almost Van Dyke Parks jauntiness on Munich Gyaru, for example, or a knack for bulletproof pop structure on the title track. The result is the kind of devastatingly contemporary record that even arch classicists couldn’t possibly turn up their noses at.

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© Photograph: Thomas Connolly

© Photograph: Thomas Connolly

© Photograph: Thomas Connolly

Adored by Madonna and Charli xcx and buoyed by finding true love, the Londoner is branching out into rock and breaking the mainstream. She explains how her working class upbringing made her so fearless

Leaving the important stuff to chance isn’t Shygirl’s style. First aid kit, wind-up radio, batteries: earlier this morning, the singer filled her online shopping basket in preparation for impending disaster. She had read a news article advising households to put together an emergency kit. “I’m that kind of person,” she says, grinning. She woke her boyfriend, who was asleep in bed next to her. “I was like: babe, we’re sorted! I’ve got the water purifying tablets, everything!”

It’s a sticky September afternoon in east London, and the singer, whose real name is Blane Muise, introduces herself as “Shy” and slides into the booth opposite me at an Italian trattoria. She first burst on to the club scene with the naughty, pulsating Want More in 2016, and in the decade since, the singer, rapper and DJ has applied the same rigour to her career as she has to her emergency prepping, going from cult underground artist to rising pop star, opening arenas for Beyoncé and Charli xcx, winning a Mobo award in 2024, and appearing in Madonna’s recent Confessions II – The Film, in which she shared a toilet stall with Arca and Richard E Grant.

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© Photograph: Jessica Madavo

© Photograph: Jessica Madavo

© Photograph: Jessica Madavo

Starting with Sixth Wonder - Burnout, and Sixth Wonder - IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT FROM ME?, fron Glasgow. The first video might haunt your dreams tonight. (previously)

Spiritbox - Mourning, their first new music since Tsunami Sea. They said it's a new direction, I tend to believe them. (previously) BLACK SPIKES - SENAS DEMONAS and BLACK SPIKES - APATIJA, both off their album Ydos, which I already posted, but they didn't have a videos before. (previously) The Rat Utopia Experiment - Three-Banded Armadillo, the circus punks are back. (previously) SECRET RULE - Someone Killed the Pope, Italian modern metal, title track of their eleventh album. 天乞い - amagoi / Character, ex-Jungfrau. CRYPTA - A Portrait of Decay, death metal from São Paulo. MADAM - Fell In Love With A Girl, the Toulouse trio doing the White Stripes. (previously) 星熊南巫 - HOSHIKUMA MINAMI / NOVA feat. Kenta Koie, the Crossfaith and AFTERVOID frontman guesting, plus YD from Crystal Lake. Kami Kehoe - LOVE IS A WEAPON, alt-rock with pop instincts and some nice breakdowns. LUNA KILLS - LEECH, the Finnish four-piece. (previously) RAZE - ทิ้งไว้กับฉัน (UNFADING) and RAZE - จํานน (Break Me), metalcore from Thailand with two vocalists, Murlyn screaming and Yoko singing. 花冷え。 - バリバリBuddy, the Harajuku-core crew doing the ending theme for the anime I Reincarnated as a Sword II. (previously) 闇雲 -yamikumo- / 悪党 (AKUTOU), nine members, visual kei and idol in one, and the song is a television ending theme. ANKOR - ITACHI · blood moon, singing about Naruto on the second volume of I SEE RED. (previously) The whole thing as a single playlist.

As he releases new album Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, the 77-year-old British folk legend answers your questions about Billy Connolly, Californian fish and chips and whether he nearly joined the Eagles

Billy Connolly recalled being in a room with you, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake and John Martyn. Did you feel you were collectively doing something special? poscopy
That might have been at the Royal Festival Hall [in 1969], where Fairport Convention had Nick and John as openers and Billy must have been backstage. He’d have been in the Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty, before he evolved from a banjo player who told jokes into a comedian who played a bit of banjo. He was always a fantastic bloke and we’ve been friends for a long time.

There was a great camaraderie between the stable of acts Joe Boyd produced: Fairport, the Incredible String Band, John Martyn, Chris McGregor. We felt different, not special, and didn’t feel successful because we weren’t. None of these people really sold many records in their lifetimes, but people are still discovering them now. This album is my latest attempt to sell some units.

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© Photograph: Paul Clampin

© Photograph: Paul Clampin

© Photograph: Paul Clampin

(RCA)
Massive in her home nation but less so outside, Angèle is aided by Justice, Soulwax and Caroline Polachek in ​a bold bid for broader appeal – but her resultant album ​can be generic as well as daring

As has often been pointed out, we live in an era where the traditional Anglo-American stranglehold over pop has been broken. Partly because streaming has presented listeners with a far broader choice of music than would once have been imaginable, and partly as a result of social media accounts doing the promotional departments’ job for them, the charts are now as likely to include music made in Seoul or Lagos as London or LA. Spurs’ 62,000-capacity stadium has recently hosted not just Jay-Z, Gorillaz and System of a Down, but India’s Arijit Singh, South Korea’s BTS, BigBang and Stray Kids, and Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny, who addressed the crowd almost exclusively in Spanish.

Clearly, British audiences’ disinclination to be welded to English-speaking artists is a cheering thing. Equally clearly, there seem to be limits: the same interest hasn’t been afforded Francophone pop. The biggest French-speaking stars in recent memory have either dealt in dance music or acquiesced to recording in English. Belgian rapper Stromae has attracted media interest and co-signs from Kanye West and Lorde without ever progressing beyond cult status in the UK.

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© Photograph: Kenza Le Bas

© Photograph: Kenza Le Bas

© Photograph: Kenza Le Bas

Utilita Arena, Birmingham
The opening night of Wonder’s tour marking the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life leaves jaws on the floor, thanks to sumptuous tracks carrying still-urgent messages

Seated amid a bank of keyboards, Stevie Wonder addresses the audience at the first date of his tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life, his most celebrated album. He says playing it in full like this was a longstanding ambition: the issue was that it needed so many people to bring it to fruition. He actually fulfilled that ambition a decade ago in North American arenas in 2014 and 2015, gigs from which the 50th anniversary shows take their cue – complete with Superstition added as an encore – but that said, you have to take his point about the number of people involved.

There really are a lot of musicians up there: three percussionists, a string section, five brass players, six backing vocalists, two guitarists, three keyboard players, including Wonder himself, who variously plays a bank of synthesisers both vintage and modern, a grand piano, an upright tack piano and, on Ngiculela/Es Una Historia/I Am Singing, a bizarre stringed instrument called a harpejji that wasn’t actually invented when Stevie Wonder last released an album, let alone when Songs in the Key of Life was made. Harpejii or not, that very much counts as scaling things down dramatically compared to the album’s actual sessions. Made by a man who could pretty much do everything himself, its recording nevertheless involved 108 musicians: eight people are credited for handclaps.

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© Photograph: Katja Ogrin/Getty Images for ABA

© Photograph: Katja Ogrin/Getty Images for ABA

© Photograph: Katja Ogrin/Getty Images for ABA

Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
Irish six-piece embark on their biggest tour yet, turning grisly old stories into a knees-up with politically astute, spit-and-sawdust energy

It’s not often you see crowd surfing during folk songs, let alone songs about murderers-for-hire who targeted priests in the early 1700s. But so it is at a Mary Wallopers show, the Irish trad group with a passionate following for their rowdy folk ragers.

Legs and pints go flying as the six-piece, playing banjo and tin whistle, set about Seán na Sagart, a new track which turns a grisly old story into a knees-up. By its breathless conclusion, the hitman is dead and his victims and clients alike get it in the neck from the band. Singer Charles Hendy grins, savouring the punchline: “You can’t trust the clergy with their holy little bits / And ya won’t be thanked by any god for workin’ with the Brits.”

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Canada-born singer-songwriter, 82, posts footage of citizenship ceremony to Instagram

Joni Mitchell has become a US citizen, after first moving to the country in the mid-1960s. The Canada-born singer-songwriter, 82, posted footage of her citizenship ceremony on her Instagram account, along with a photo of her next to an American flag, accompanied by the caption: “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

It means that Mitchell can now vote in US elections, something that she had complained she wasn’t able to do.

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© Photograph: Instagram

© Photograph: Instagram

© Photograph: Instagram

Beacon Theatre, New York
Two decades after country music blacklisted the band for their Iraq war protest, the trio celebrate their unapologetic album Taking the Long Way

Last month, with almost no fanfare, the US formally completed its withdrawal of troops from Iraq, after 23 years of violent quagmire. But it was the beginning of that conflict that loomed over New York’s Beacon Theatre on Monday night, where the Chicks played the second of three sold-out shows. In March 2003, eight days before the US invaded Iraq, the country supergroup’s lead singer, Natalie Maines, said on stage in London she was “ashamed” that then president George W Bush was from the trio’s home state of Texas, triggering a swift, self-righteous and scarily prescient backlash.

More than one person at the Beacon wondered aloud where fellow fans were back then, when a single comment, circulated on AM radio and cable news, led to CD-burning protests and death threats. (High school, was a common answer.) I myself was nine, with a child’s stark view of morality and consequence. Our country was at war, I knew, in an impossibly faraway place, and my favorite band bore the cost of criticizing it. One day, I could catch blue-sky hits including Travelin’ Soldier, Landslide and Cowboy Take Me Away on the radio on the way to school; the next, they were gone.

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© Photograph: Thomas Falcone

© Photograph: Thomas Falcone

© Photograph: Thomas Falcone

Concorde 2, Brighton
Drawing almost entirely from her last two albums, and backed by a band rooted in jazz and experimentation, Orton performed her emotionally fraught songs to a rapturous crowd

The audience at Brighton’s Concorde 2 largely look old enough to have first encountered Beth Orton’s music three decades ago, as it wafted around a smoke-filled living room in the post-club small hours. That was the primary means of transmission for her 1996 debut album Trailer Park, which smartly appended classic singer-songwriter tropes to misty electronics. But if they’re expecting an evening of nostalgia, they’re in for a shock. The title track from 1999’s Mercury-nominated Central Reservation aside, her set swerves the music that made her famous, drawing almost entirely from her two most recent albums: this year’s The Ground Above and 2022’s Weather Alive.

This would count as a bold move from someone 30-odd years into their career, were it not for the fact that Orton’s recent albums are so good – the latest fruit of an artistic reboot that began in the mid-2010s, when she shifted a sound that had grown increasingly acoustic and traditional back towards something more experimental and dancefloor-adjacent.

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© Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian

© Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian

© Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian

Raised as one of 11, the Vancouver artist (and model) is now signed by A24. She talks about her ultra-religious childhood and how – despite her album title – she still suffers from imposter syndrome

The first time Sophia Stel came to London, she slept outside in the freezing cold. The Vancouver songwriter had finished a live set last autumn, then gone out until 3am with her then crush, but when they returned to their Airbnb, they found that Stel’s manager had dead-bolted the door and fallen asleep. Stel plus crush looked for a hotel but ultimately had no choice but to kip on the doorstep. “We hadn’t spent that much time together and I got to see how she was in a stressful situation,” Stel says, smiling at the memory. “She kept her vibe up and tried to solve it – I knew I was so in love then.”

A lot has changed in Stel’s life in the year since. She opened her business bank account as an artist, and that crush is now her girlfriend. “It’s a lot of change, but maybe because of my Sagittarius moon, I’m fine with it to an extent,” she says, only half-joking, when we meet at her publicist’s office in south London, the 27-year-old Stel in her uniform of vintage hoodie and Adidas trackies.

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© Photograph: Mikaela Kautzky

© Photograph: Mikaela Kautzky

© Photograph: Mikaela Kautzky

‘In nightclubs, I’d be the dude scribbling lyrics in the corner while everyone else was dancing or copping off’

I had the lyrics to Not Nineteen Forever before the band existed. They were in a little red book of poems and scribbles that got me a place on the creative writing course at the University of Salford. Most of what became the songs for our first album, St Jude, were in that book. As well as uni, I was working in a shop and spending five nights a week at the Night & Day bar in Manchester, but in a nightclub I’d be the dude scribbling in the corner while everyone else was dancing or copping off.

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© Photograph: Edd Westmacott/Avalon/Getty Images

© Photograph: Edd Westmacott/Avalon/Getty Images

© Photograph: Edd Westmacott/Avalon/Getty Images

(XL)
This is a beguiling, endlessly inventive and frequently astonishing fifth LP from a group at increasing ease with being the best band of their generation

Fifteen centuries ago, the Byzantine archbishop Theophilus of Adana did first-hand business with the devil for his own superficial betterment. Today, we just blindly tick a little box marked “accept terms and conditions” or let high-street snake oil merchants inject poison into our faces. The Faustian pact has become as depressingly banal as it is endemic and destructive – and unlike Theophilus, we can’t rely on the Virgin Mary to save us now. In the midst of headlines about AI destroying humanity, the idea of listening to music submerged in precisely this shade of doom might sound like, well, hell. If anyone can thread that poisoned needle, it’s Fontaines DC.

When the Dublin band introduced their last album, 2024’s Romance, it came with a surprise new look. Their uncoordinated jeans and shirts had been replaced by neon hair, shiny trousers and bug-eyed sunglasses that split the difference between Korn and the Prodigy. As they faced up to having traded their anonymity to become arena fillers, it wasn’t hard to read this look as a sort of protective cosplay, a cybergoth Sasha Fierce for five fairly low-key Irish lads trying to make peace with leaving their roots behind. Newly melodic and lavishly produced, Romance made no bones about the band’s ambitions and became their first platinum-certified album.

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© Photograph: DOT/Ewen Spencer

© Photograph: DOT/Ewen Spencer

© Photograph: DOT/Ewen Spencer

The 85-year-old was helped on stage by actor John Stamos, who shared an emotional message about his ‘musical hero and mentor’

After months of cancelled comeback tours, the Beach Boys have played their first public show since July – with co-founder and frontman Mike Love joining the band on stage in Cincinnati, Ohio, despite “facing serious health challenges”.

Love was helped on to the stage by his son Christian Love and the actor and band member John Stamos, who told the audience at PNC Pavilion on Saturday night that Love has “been going through some health issues … but he would not miss tonight”.

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© Photograph: Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images

© Photograph: Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images

© Photograph: Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images

They spent their heyday on yachts, then rolled up their sleeves in the wilderness years. Ahead of a Halloween show at the O2, pop’s great survivors explain their staying power

In 2022, Duran Duran were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It felt like a big deal, a sweet moment of acknowledgment for the band’s five-decades-long career, the 100m records sold, the string of bulletproof hits: Save a Prayer, Rio, Hungry Like the Wolf, Girls on Film. They were inducted by actor Robert Downey Jr; Drew Barrymore, Naomi Campbell and Gwen Stefani were on hand to pay heartfelt tribute and, as keyboard player Nick Rhodes points out, “It’s a big national live TV broadcast in America that goes out to millions of people,” so the band booked some warm-up shows. “And it so happened that there was a date that came up in Las Vegas on 31 October,” says Rhodes. “And I looked at everyone and said: ‘Well, we can’t do a normal show. Las Vegas on Halloween – surely that’s the opportunity for a little bit of fun?’”

They worked up a set of suitably themed material, including covers of Billie Eilish’s Bury a Friend and Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer. There were, of course, costumes involved, because, as Rhodes drily notes, “When have Duran Duran ever not dressed up?”

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© Photograph: Stephanie Pistel

© Photograph: Stephanie Pistel

© Photograph: Stephanie Pistel

The singer shamelessly blasts Lady Gaga in the car and is brought to tears by Portishead – but which song does she have to be careful listening to?

The first song I fell in love with
I remember listening to Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics when I was really young. There was something about the line at the beginning that I was completely intoxicated by.

The first download I bought
When I was about 10 or 11, I would put my headphones on and wander through the park all angsty listening to Fake Tales of San Francisco by Arctic Monkeys, my first download on my iPod Nano. I loved the storytelling, the characters and the gritty tableaux they described: it felt so real, even though it was far away from where I grew up.

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© Photograph: -

© Photograph: -

© Photograph: -

While some heard the former Black Midi frontman out, others made for the exit as he addressed accusations

When Geordie Greep finally took to the stage in Vancouver this week, noticeably without his band, the crowd was hushed and the atmosphere tense. His lateness, however was the least of his problems.

Greep, a Brit school graduate and the former frontman of Black Midi, had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman while on tour. Flyers had been handed out outside the venue spelling out the allegation against him. “Let him know what Vancouver thinks of rapists,” they read.

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© Photograph: Alex Ladicos

© Photograph: Alex Ladicos

© Photograph: Alex Ladicos

His integrity is one reason I’ve stuck with him, says Nick Davey

Elvis Costello has been a role model since I was a bespectacled teen and he appeared on the music scene to provide some credibility for NHS glasses. I no longer keep the scrapbook, but did cut the clipping from the Guardian in 2022 when he nominated his Honest playlist. His integrity as an artist and a human being has been one reason I’ve stuck with him for 49 years. I was delighted, therefore, to see consistency in his picks for his second Honest playlist (4 October), with Georgie Fame as his alpha and Louis Armstrong’s Keepin’ Out of Mischief as his omega. He seems, however, to have forgotten about his teen party listening. And we’d better not ponder the reasons for his change in response to “The best song to have sex to”. Thanks for keeping my hero in the spotlight.
Nick Davey
Chesterfield, Derbyshire

• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

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© Photograph: Adam Beeson/Alamy

© Photograph: Adam Beeson/Alamy

© Photograph: Adam Beeson/Alamy

Drawing from post-hardcore, twee and emo, the Exeter trio’s intoxicating energy feels like an invitation to form your own band

From Exeter, UK
Recommended if you like Boyracer, the Promise Ring, Rites of Spring
Up next Little Bastard EP out now

It’s tempting to view any half-decent scene as either a magical happening or a simple quirk of geography and timing. In reality, they’re more like monuments to the importance of showing up. For that to continue to happen, you need bands like Pushbike. Rattling through four songs in well under 10 minutes, each crooked hook, euphoric yelp and cheesewire guitar lead on their Little Bastard EP feels like an invitation to form a band, draw a flyer, or book a show.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Molly Boniface

© Photograph: Courtesy of Molly Boniface

© Photograph: Courtesy of Molly Boniface

(New West)
Following 2023 breakout Time Ain’t Accidental, the best songs here are when Williamson strips back country music, rebuilding it as something familiar yet different

In her essay Goodbye to All That, Joan Didion writes that she left New York City when “the golden rhythm was broken”. Texas-born alt-country singer Jess Williamson borrows the title for the aching opening track of her sixth solo album, on which she contemplates whether she has had enough of Los Angeles. But while Didion was looking back on leaving the city of her youth behind, Williamson is still in LA, wrestling with competing desires to stay or flee.

This tumultuous love-me, love-me-not is set to Williamson’s most traditional soundscapes to date: “Deep in the woods I feel the hum of the city,” she sings on Hum of the City in her strongest Texas drawl over mournful strings and twiddling banjo. Gone are the iPhone-programmed drums that made her 2023 breakout Time Ain’t Accidental so appealingly offbeat, and while the Americana flourishes give weight to Williamson’s nostalgia for her native Dallas, at times they make the album stodgier and less imaginative than her previous record.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Jackie Lee Young

© Photograph: Courtesy of Jackie Lee Young

© Photograph: Courtesy of Jackie Lee Young

(Interscope)
Adored by the A-list and filling arenas, but without huge smash hits, the Australian singer treads his own distinctive path through pop via shoegaze, Balearic and the Smiths

A few years back, the New York Times reported on the phenomenon of the “middle-class pop star”. The feature bluntly explained that this signified “a pop star who isn’t that popular”, for whom the word signified not commercial dominance, but “a sound, an aesthetic, an attitude”. It isn’t an entirely new phenomenon: you may recall a game late 00s attempt to differentiate critically acclaimed but commercially underground pop artists – Alphabeat, Frankmusik and the Clik Clik among them – from the massed ranks of chart-topping TV talent show graduates by grouping them together under the generic banner of “wonky pop”. But the arrival of social media clearly changed things dramatically, enabling artists who seldom, if ever, encroach on the charts’ upper reaches to develop ferociously loyal – and very online – followings, reliably packed-out shows and a genuine aura of celebrity to go with their good reviews.

Troye Sivan might well be the apotheosis of this phenomenon. Over the last 12 years, his albums have shifted respectable, rather than earth-shattering quantities. Intermittently, the odd single has become a mainstream hit, but their success is vastly outstripped by his profile – arena tours, features in broadsheet newspapers and style magazines, interviews on late night US chatshows – and indeed his standing among huge stars. He has been glowingly written about in Time magazine by Kylie Minogue. Nicole Kidman appears in the video for the title track from She’s the Best. Madonna apparently gave personal approval for him to use a sample from 2000’s Music on another of the album’s singles, Party. He has duetted on hits by Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande and Charli xcx, with whom he co-headlined a US tour just after the release of Brat.

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© Photograph: Marcus Cooper

© Photograph: Marcus Cooper

© Photograph: Marcus Cooper

Ahead of the Irish alt-rockers’ highly anticipated fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, we count down their potent, occasionally political, catalogue

A single inspired by the birth of bassist Conor Deegan’s daughter, It’s Amazing to Be Young is a lovely example of Fontaines DC operating in euphoric mode, a relatively recent addition to their emotional mood board: “Sometimes,” offered frontman Grian Chatten, “optimism is a necessary delusion.”

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© Photograph: Theo Cottle

© Photograph: Theo Cottle

© Photograph: Theo Cottle

The Aussie trio explain creating their new record sampling kids’ science shows and Tunisian music – and their surreal film with Haley Joel Osment

Last December, Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, the core members of the Aussie disco-pop collagists the Avalanches, found themselves winding through the frosty, mountainous region of Minakami, Japan, with Haley Joel Osment. The pair’s lauded debut album, 2000’s Since I Left You, has become a touchstone in plunderphonics – a genre known for its innovative use of samples – and in the years since its release, the group have amassed an ardent cult following. Osment, the former child star of The Sixth Sense and Forrest Gump, seemed to count himself among their devotees, frequently liking their posts on Instagram, so they decided to reach out and ask him to board their latest project: a 35-minute movie that would accompany their new LP, No Bad Memories.

“We’d never made a film before, so it was like, ‘This could be a complete disaster for him,’” recalls Di Blasi, who is dressed in a black tee and purple cap with the logo for the cult electronic label трип when we meet in Manhattan in mid-September. “We were like, ‘We don’t really have anyone yet … We don’t even know what we’re doing.’” To their surprise, Osment signed on.

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© Photograph: Dean Podmore

© Photograph: Dean Podmore

© Photograph: Dean Podmore

Celebrated for his earnest, dextrous voice, Jackson crossed into the pop charts with the hits Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake) and You Are My Lady

Freddie Jackson, the US singer whose smooth and romantic take on R&B found a huge audience in the 1980s, has died aged 70.

A statement from his family on social media reads: “Freddie was more than a legendary voice. He was a kind, generous soul who loved his fans, his family, his friends and his music with everything he had. For decades he gave us the songs that became the soundtrack to our love stories, our celebrations and our most treasured memories. That gift will live on for ever.” No cause of death was given.

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© Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP

© Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP

© Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP

After representing society’s dispossessed, Ponder started a music career in her 40s – then faced miscarriage, anxiety and more. She explains her survival instinct

“You can get everything you dreamed of career-wise, and your life can still crumble, and that is what happened to me,” says US singer-songwriter Danielle Ponder.

Five years ago, and five days before her 40th birthday, Ponder left her job as a public defender – a lawyer for those without the means to pay for one – to pursue music full-time. Ponder’s rich, church-reared voice and resonant music quickly lent themselves to cinematic moments: she wrote and performed the theme song for Apple TV+’s Manhunt and her trip-hop-infused track Roll the Credits has been used by adverts, TV shows and video games. Several comments on the YouTube video come from viewers who searched for it thinking she was Nina Simone. Her debut album, Some of Us Are Brave, came out in 2022 and was warmly received by critics, and she appeared on Seth Meyers’ talkshow. Her gamble had paid off. “But personally,” she says, “it felt like everything around me was falling apart”.

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© Photograph: Faith Joyvon

© Photograph: Faith Joyvon

© Photograph: Faith Joyvon

The term Afrobeats is applied to all sorts of genres, flattening them into one. Artists, media and the music industry must do better at showing off the richness of African pop

In 2024, South African pop star Tyla won the best Afrobeats award at the MTV VMAs. Beaming in a yellow dress, she began her acceptance speech in a celebratory tone. “This is such a big moment for African music. The global impact of Water,” – her hit single – “proves that African music can be pop music.” But as the audience’s cheers swelled, she became more sombre, describing the moment as bittersweet. “There’s a tendency to group all African music as Afrobeats,” she continued. “Even though Afrobeats has opened so many doors for us, African music is so diverse. I come from South Africa, I represent amapiano”, referring to the country’s rolling, sensual dance subgenre. Her passionate entreaty notwithstanding, months later she’d reprise her win in the Afrobeats category of the American Music Awards.

Tyla is hardly the only African artist to rail against the Afrobeats tag. Tems has spurned the term, describing her music as a cocktail of “Afro, R&B, soul and alternative elements”. Likewise, Burna Boy prefers to call his music Afrofusion, a fitting characterisation of the smorgasbord of sounds that converge in his music. Wizkid, Ckay, King Promise and Davido have also chafed at the term Afrobeats, yet it persists and holds back African music.

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© Photograph: JC Olivera/Variety/Getty Images

© Photograph: JC Olivera/Variety/Getty Images

© Photograph: JC Olivera/Variety/Getty Images

The singer-songwriter owes a lot to Georgie Fame and likes the romantic side of Jimi Hendrix – but which ringtone song can put him in a bad mood?

The first song I fell in love with
The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix, which came out in 1967 when I was 12. Hendrix was known for outgoing music, but I was a romantic soul, so the emotional side of his music led to that strain in my own writing.

The song I do at karaoke
Karaoke? Certainly not. I do this for a living. Would you have made my great-grandfather dig ditches for fun? I prefer to live vicariously through Bill Murray singing (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding in Lost in Translation.

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© Photograph: Mark Seliger

© Photograph: Mark Seliger

© Photograph: Mark Seliger