Music news

• Cardi B pleads not guilty to strip club assault

  26-06-2019 12:14 via theguardian.com
  The rapper is accused of ordering attacks on two bartenders, one of whom she accused of sleeping with her husbandCardi B has pleaded not guilty to assault following two altercations at a New York strip club in August 2018. The rapper, born Belcalis Almanzar, turned herself into police in October following the alleged assaults on two bartenders at the Angels Gentleman’s Club in Queens, New York.The bartenders, who are also sisters, claim that Cardi and her entourage threw bottles and alcoho
  
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• Warren Ellis on Steve Albini, Mad Max and the best sandwich: ‘Whipped cream and banana on white bread’

  12-05-2024 02:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Asked 10 random questions, the Dirty Three musician talks about watching bad TV with Marianne Faithfull, cleaning toilets and the best advice Albini gave himGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailWhat’s the worst job you’ve ever had?There was no worst, really. If you have to work, you have to work. I needed money. So I cleaned dishes at a strip club, I cleaned nightclubs. There’s something incredibly meditative about mopping in nightclubs; you have all the base elements of
  
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• Olivia Rodrigo review – shiny pop-punk with real guts

  11-05-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ovo Hydro, Glasgow
  There’s no doubt the former Disney actor is a pro, but she’s also a deft, sincere songwriter who captures the viewpoint of a teen outsider to perfectionPop music made by child actors doesn’t often feature axe duels and headbanging. But tonight, during a song called Obsessed, gen-Z phenomenon Olivia Rodrigo, wielding an electric guitar, faces off against one of her guitarists, Emily Rosenfield, as the rest of the band build a grungy din around them.Pop vocalis
  
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• Will Oldham on Steve Albini: ‘He elevated the quality of the human experience’

  11-05-2024 13:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The artist known as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy met the late musician as a 15-year-old fan, and became a creative partner and friend. He explains why Albini’s idealism is more needed than everI met Steve Albini in 1985, when I was 15 years old. Me and some friends had driven up to northern Kentucky to see Big Black perform at a club, which we had to create fake IDs for. Afterwards, Big Black, myself and a couple of other folks from Louisville all retired to the same apartment to slee
  
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• One to watch: the Belair Lip Bombs

  11-05-2024 13:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The Australian quartet’s punchy, hook-packed songs combine immediacy and complexity in a way that recalls the StrokesLush Life, the 2023 debut album by Melbourne four-piece the Belair Lip Bombs, is the kind of punchy, hook-laden rock record that hardly gets made any more, straightforward in sound but borderline unassailable in its construction. Principal songwriter Maisie Everett, formerly of the garage rock trio Clamm, has a singular knack for writing earworm hooks: Lush Life’s firs
  
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• Martin and Roman Kemp look back: ‘I didn’t want a parent v kid relationship. I wanted us to be equal’

  11-05-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The musician and actor, and the DJ and presenter, on fame, football and dinner party debates with George MichaelBorn in 1961, Martin Kemp is an actor and musician, best known as the bassist for Spandau Ballet. His son, Roman, 31, is a TV and radio personality, presenting the One Show and hosting a show on Capital FM from 2014 to 2024. He made the documentary Our Silent Emergency, following the death of his friend and producer Joe Lyons, who killed himself in 2020. Roman lives in London, while Ma
  
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• Beabadoobee: ‘I don’t have time for death threats. I’ve got a mortgage to pay’

  11-05-2024 12:55 via theguardian.com
  
  A support slot on Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and a Rick Rubin produced album has given the former TikTok-viral musician a new sense of self-confidence. Not even the internet trolls can stop herAbout a year ago, Beatrice Laus, AKA Beabadoobee, started taking ballet lessons. The acclaimed, perpetually TikTok-viral indie rock musician had been touring hard in 2022, and began to feel her body breaking down. Like most early-20s musicians – or twentysomethings in general – she was, at
  
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• Chaka Khan: ‘Someone said there were too many black people in our band. He put some white guys on stage with us’

  11-05-2024 10:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The singer on being impatient, mourning the death of the planet, and why sleep is her favourite thingBorn in Illinois, Chaka Khan, 71, joined the funk band Rufus in her teens and had hits with Tell Me Something Good and Ain’t Nobody. In 1978, she launched her solo career with the anthem I’m Every Woman. She has released 13 albums, won 10 Grammy awards and was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 1999, she established the Chaka Khan Foundation to help women and
  
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• Les Savy Fav: Oui, LSF review – New York post-punk oddballs make restrained return

  10-05-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Frenchkiss)
  The veteran five-piece’s first album in 14 years has flashes of the old thrill, but doesn’t quite hit earlier heightsA thrilling live proposition since the late 1990s, due in large part to the stage magnetism of frontman Tim Harrington, the New York-based post-punk five-piece Les Savy Fav never quite managed to distil that magic into equally essential albums until 2007’s less abrasive, more melodic Let’s Stay Friends, before hitting a peak with 2010’s R
  
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• Kings of Leon: Can We Please Have Fun review – polished but tired

  10-05-2024 12:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (Polydor)
  The Nashville rockers still sound great, but their lyrics seem bereft of ideasCan We Please Have Fun is such a horrible phrase. It adheres to the Nashville rockers’ favoured five-syllable album title structure, if that’s important to you, but is prickly and passive-aggressive coming from four middle-aged men. Its intended message feels like inane boosterism given the state of the world; further proof of the quartet’s unending insularity. And why should rock be fun any
  
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• Yaya Bey: Ten Fold review – a free-ranging tribute

  10-05-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Big Dada)
  Bey’s latest, written in mourning to her rapper father Grand Daddy IU and featuring his voice, includes catchy dancefloor bangers alongside soulful odesNew York artist Yaya Bey should be far better known than she is. Her 2022 album Remember Your North Star riffled through genres from R&B to reggae with aplomb, packing in nagging hooks, easy humour, and emotional reckonings with exes and her estranged mother. While she was touring it, Bey’s musician father died. “
  
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• Dehd: Poetry review – a sparkling dialogue with rock’n’roll history

  10-05-2024 09:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (Fat Possum Records)
  The Chicago trio go back in time and dip into big-chorused Americana, slacker indie and vintage soul – all with real feelingChicago rock band Dehd’s music is two things: mercilessly catchy and meticulously camp. The trio’s biggest hit to date – 2022’s Bad Love – was a smoke machine-fogged rush of instant-singalong glam. Now, their fifth album arrives in a swirl of bratty pop-punk: opener Dog Days’ stop-start guitars accompany pouty p
  
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• Smith and Myers review | John Fordham’s jazz album of the month

  10-05-2024 08:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Red Hook Records
  In their album Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens the two musical soulmates impressionistically reflect on John Lennon, Albert Ayler and moreIn the 1960s, Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) became a beacon for artists seeking to play a new jazz that could often sound fiercely unfamiliar, but without losing the tradition’s communal vivacity – “joyous and pugnacious” was the Guardian&
  
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• Jonny Greenwood: ‘I’m still arsing around on instruments like when I was a kid’

  10-05-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Radiohead guitarist changed rock music, then conquered the world of soundtracks. But can he revolutionise the church organ with an eight-hour composition? Jonny Greenwood is in the studio in his Oxfordshire home, surrounded by a cornucopia of weird and wonderful instruments. He almost trips over a stray autoharp while walking around the room on a video call, showing me his pianos, his ondes Martenots, his recorders of different sizes, his guitars, a tambura, a steel-strung harp and any numbe
  
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• Dennis Thompson, drummer in rock band MC5, dies aged 75

  10-05-2024 03:08 via theguardian.com
  
  Thompson was the last surviving member of the group after the death of guitarist Wayne Kramer in FebruaryDennis Thompson, the drummer for influential Detroit rock band MC5, has died at the age of 75.Thompson, who was the last surviving member of the group after the death of guitarist Wayne Kramer in February, died in a Michigan nursing home on Thursday. He had been recovering after a heart attack in April, his son Chris McNulty told Detroit News. Continue reading...
  
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• Coldplay and Sting call for release of Toomaj Salehi, Iranian rapper sentenced to death

  10-05-2024 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Leading cultural figures including Margaret Atwood sign statement in support of rapper who criticised Iranian regimeMore than 100 figures from the worlds of music, culture and human rights activism – including Coldplay and Sting – have signed a statement calling for the release of the Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi who has been sentenced to death in Iran after protesting in support of women’s rights.The 33-year-old, who was a vocal supporter of the Women, Life, Freedom movement i
  
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• Taylor Swift debuts new tracks as she returns to The Eras Tour

  09-05-2024 23:50 via theguardian.com
  
  Pop star thrills Paris crowds with songs from newest album The Tortured Poets DepartmentTaylor Swift has added her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, to an already packed setlist as she returned to The Eras Tour after a two-month break.Swift had described TTPD as “new works reflecting events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure”. In Paris on Thursday night she put it more
  
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• Spanish investigation into Shakira’s alleged tax evasion dropped

  09-05-2024 18:41 via theguardian.com
  
  Court says irregularities in Colombian singer’s 2018 tax return did not indicate intent to defraud A Spanish court has shelved an investigation into an alleged tax fraud by the Colombian pop star Shakira, putting an end to her legal woes in the country where she once lived.Prosecutors had opened the case in July, alleging she had used a network of companies, some in tax havens, to cheat the tax office out of €6.6m (£5.7m) in 2018. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘I can’t take Michael Bublé seriously’: Mick Harvey on songwriting, staying straight and ‘survivor’s guilt’

  09-05-2024 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As he releases his first solo album in a decade, Nick Cave’s former right-hand man reflects on ageing well – and his peers who weren’t so fortunateGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailMick Harvey is looking back on the show reel of his life. It’s the video for his song When We Were Beautiful and Young, where startlingly intimate images – of his parents, back yard cricket, through to lifelong partner, Katy Beale, and their children – are mixed with footag
  
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• ‘The music industry is smoke and mirrors’: how DIY duo the Lovely Eggs are keeping the north weird

  09-05-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The psych-poppers have made records with Iggy Pop and launched their own TV channel, but their biggest challenge yet is taking shape in their home city of LancasterWalking through Lancaster on a sunny spring day, Holly Ross has a theory about her home town and its inhabitants. Once towering over the city was Lancaster Moor hospital, formerly the Lancaster county lunatic asylum, which was home to thousands of patients. “People were sent here from all over the place,” she says. “
  
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• Knocked Loose: You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To review – hardcore punk’s dark stars go supermassive

  09-05-2024 13:45 via theguardian.com
  
  (Pure Noise Records)
  The Kentucky metalcore quintet cleverly channel pop – and even reggaeton grooves – to create an album of crushing intensity and vast scopeThe previous release from Kentucky metalcore quintet Knocked Loose was 2021’s A Tear in the Fabric of Life, a six-song horror story about a car crash that kills the driver’s partner, sending the driver increasingly mad with grief to the point where they dig up the corpse, have sex with it and then kill themselves to
  
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• Tenacious D review – Jack Black’s daft duo are deeply schooled in rock

  09-05-2024 11:42 via theguardian.com
  
  AO Arena, Manchester
  The actor’s prog-metal spoof band with Kyle Gass hilariously skewer rock cliche – but come from a place of deep love for the genre‘Did anyone see Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny?” asks Jack Black, referring to their 2006 rockumentary. “Well, you didn’t see it in the cinema. No one did! It almost destroyed us.” The widely panned movie was indeed a box office disaster, but otherwise has been a rare blip on Tenacious D’s almost
  
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• ‘Coming out, it was like a veil was lifted’: Indigo Girls on homophobia, hope and their big Barbie moment

  08-05-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  With Margot Robbie belting out one of their songs on screen and an inspiring new documentary, It’s Only Life After All, the folk rock duo are gaining new recruits to their fiercely devoted fanbaseIn 1990, as her duo Indigo Girls were heading to platinum-selling success in the US, Amy Ray founded her own label called Daemon Records, formed as “a supportive network for each other within it, almost like a co-op,” she says. She internalised this “ecosystem idea” from Fu
  
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• Olivia Rodrigo review – raging rock opera from a gen Z powerhouse

  08-05-2024 12:21 via theguardian.com
  
  OVO Hydro, Glasgow
  Rodrigo’s second UK tour showcases a confident star at ease with all-out punk-rock and intimate pop alikeToilet sinks are streaked with purple glitter and lost hair ribbons decorate the foyer. Olivia Rodrigo has not yet arrived, but the Hydro already feels like a teen girl’s bedroom. On stage, Guts – the title of her Grammy-nominated second album – is spelled out by towering, melting candles. A soldout crowd, clad in homemade merch, scream when the T te
  
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• Drake’s security guard ‘seriously injured’ in shooting at Toronto mansion

  07-05-2024 20:33 via theguardian.com
  
  Guard was shot inside Drake’s home and had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, while the assailant fled in a vehicleA security guard at the mansion of Canadian hip-hop artist Drake has been “seriously injured” in a shooting outside the musician’s Toronto home.The victim, an adult male, was rushed to a Toronto hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries following the shooting early on Tuesday morning. Continue reading...
  
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• Guitar formerly owned by Prince could fetch $600,000 at auction

  07-05-2024 20:03 via theguardian.com
  
  Cloud 3 used at height of his stardom may beat estimate and become most expensive of late musician’s guitarsOne of Prince’s guitars used by the late musician on stage at the height of his stardom in the 80s and 90s is being auctioned later this month.The Cloud 3 guitar, which Prince wielded during tours such as Purple Rain, Parade, Sign of the Times, Lovesexy, and Diamonds and Pearls, is estimated to fetch between $400,000 (£320,000) and $600,000 but could beat this estimate to
  
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• ‘He growls death metal in his pants!’ The Eurovision 2024 bangers to watch out for

  07-05-2024 15:11 via theguardian.com
  
  From a man with a mullet letting off fireworks to a Slovenian witch, this year’s Eurovision has some of the wildest entries everThe bookies’ favourite, and you can see why. For one thing, it addresses a hot-button social issue – the lyrics deal with Nemo Mettler’s non-binary gender identity – that’s also very Eurovision-friendly. In 1998, Eurovision had a transgender winner, Dana International, 34 years before Kim Petras became the first transgender woman to t
  
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• ‘I feel super gassed’: Lady Unchained, the prison radio host playing inmates’ raps

  07-05-2024 13:15 via theguardian.com
  
  Hosted by poet and broadcaster Lady Unchained, Free Flow lets prisoners phone in their raps – and one has even recorded a single. We go behind the scenes of the show, which is up for three awards“It’s your girl, Lady Unchained, and you’re listening to Free Flow – the instrumental show where we play the beat twice so you can get your bars right!”It’s a rainy Thursday afternoon and I’ve just arrived at the secret London location of one of the homes o
  
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• ‘Blood is on your hands, Biden’: US rapper Macklemore gives support to Palestine and campus protests

  07-05-2024 13:05 via theguardian.com
  
  New track Hind’s Hall backs Columbia University protesters and characterises Israel as ‘a state that’s gotta rely on an apartheid system’Chart-topping US rapper Macklemore has released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which gives robust support to Palestine as well as those protesting at US universities against Israel’s activity in Gaza.Hind’s Hall is named after the Columbia University building, renamed from Hamilton Hall by occupying student protesters to ref
  
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• ‘My bandmates looked like escaped prisoners’: farewell to queer punk icon Gary Floyd

  07-05-2024 11:23 via theguardian.com
  
  In an interview shortly before his death last week, the frontman of the Dicks remembered how ‘defying anybody’ led to some of the best US punk of the 80s – and mayonnaise-filled condomsBetween its vitriolic hatred of cops, Nazis, the Klan and the bourgeoisie, and the ecstatic joy of losing oneself to gloryholes and porno stores, few punk albums sounded like the Dicks’ Kill from the Heart when it was released in 1983 – and as it gets reissued this month, few still do
  
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