Music news

• Frànçois & the Atlas Mountains: Solide Mirage review – indiepop gets political

  02-03-2017 23:45
  
  (Domino)Despite song titles such as Apocalypse à Ipsos, non-Francophones might struggle to find the political edge in Frànçois & the Atlas Mountains’ fourth album. It’s supposedly “a response to recent world affairs”, but their fey, dainty indiepop could just as easily be the soundtrack to a lazy summer as to, y’know, the end of the world. African highlife influences return, but more striking this time is their gift for deftly intertwining r
  
  Read more

• Grandaddy: Last Place review – Danger Mouse broadens alt-rocker's sonic palette

  02-03-2017 23:30
  
  (30th Century Records) Way We Won’t, the opening track on Grandaddy’s fifth album, has a chugging, Weezer-style fuzz guitar and faux-naive riff that recall their best-known song – AM 180, from their debut album Under the Western Freeway, now 20 years old. But producer Danger Mouse has helped Grandaddy broaden their sonic palette. Last Place is more sophisticated and less self-consciously wacky than some of the Californians’ previous releases, and better for it. Slower son
  
  Read more

• Blanck Mass: World Eater review – brutal noise with frequent sweet spots

  02-03-2017 23:15
  
  (Sacred Bones) Fuck Buttons’s Ben Power certainly doesn’t appear to think that what the world needs now is love, sweet love. His third album as Blanck Mass, we learn, is intended to represent “a previous year teeming with anger, violence, confusion and frustration”, and as the nine minutes of Rhesus Negative unfold hyperkinetically, a treated voice somewhere very deep in the mix conveying some nameless dread, it does feel as if one is being smacked repeatedly around the h
  
  Read more

• Nadia Reid: Preservation review – lovelorn folk with dirt under its nails

  02-03-2017 23:00
  
  (Basin Rock)Eighteen months on from Nadia Reid’s 2015 debut, Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs, the 25-year-old New Zealander has delicately but decidedly upped the ante. Her ethereal, pensive vocals are cast against plangent folk-guitar shapes, but there is more dirt under her nails. The songs deal with empowerment through determination in the aftermath of love and loss, often in no uncertain terms. The transcendental title track finds her quietly informing someone that she stayed t
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Lorde: Green Light review – comeback track signals new dance diva direction

  02-03-2017 22:45
  
  The 20-year-old New Zealand singer makes a triumphant return with a stellar 90s-inspired pop song about her first heartbreakGreen Light, Lorde’s first single since her 2014 Hunger Games tie-in Yellow Flicker Beat, starts off in familiar territory for the 20-year-old New Zealand-born pop prodigy. Over a sparse piano beat, she sings of car-applied makeup and being together yet separate from someone who is “a damn liar” at a bar; spectral backing vocals that recall the choirs acco
  
  Read more

• Vermont: II review – vintage synths in a candlelit mancave

  02-03-2017 22:30
  
  (Kompakt)As Motor City Drum Ensemble, Danilo Plessow plays euphoric house and disco DJ sets that prompt strangers to write their numbers on each other in sweaty eyebrow pencil; Marcus Worgull, meanwhile, produces perkily melodic techno. But for their collaborative project, Vermont, they retreat from the dancefloor to a candlelit mancave full of vintage synths, where they indulge in a spot of ruminative ambience. Almost devoid of percussion, it’s pared back to just a few elements: gruff bas
  
  Read more

• Deep Throat Choir: Be OK review – sweetly subversive choral pop

  02-03-2017 22:30
  
  (Bella Union)Under the guidance of celebrity choirmaster Gareth Malone and his hit TV shows, choirs – from NHS to Military Wives – have made a significant dent in the charts this decade. Deep Throat Choir, an all-female, East London-based outfit founded by Luisa Gerstein of experimental group Landshapes, might share the same feelgood factor as those ensembles, but aren’t cut from quite the same tear-jerking cloth. Their saucy moniker promises something more subversive, and bely
  
  Read more

• Temples: Volcano review – heaped spoonfuls of psychedelic sugar

  02-03-2017 22:15
  
  (Heavenly)With opener Certainty’s trilling keyboard pitched halfway between OMD and an ice-cream van chime, Temples’ second album sets its stall out early. With the exception of Roman God-Like Man’s appropriation of the melody from Pink Floyd’s Grantchester Meadows and the howling synths of Bowie’s Breaking Glass, there are fewer of its predecessor’s gauche fanboy steals; instead the effect is more home-synthesised psychedelia with ecstatic J-pop visuals. Just
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Readers recommend: share your songs about purple

  02-03-2017 21:00
  
  Make your nomination in the comments and a reader will pick the best eligible tracks for a playlist next week – you have until Monday 6 March Over the years readers recommend has sought suggestions from across the musical palette – this time we’re looking for songs in the colour purple. You can’t have that Prince song, though – it was chosen in a reader’s list of eccentric songs in 2014.You have until 11pm on Monday 6 March to post your nomination and make you
  
  Read more

• Mokoomba: Luyando review – gutsy vocals and advice on dealing with lions

  02-03-2017 20:00
  
  (Outhere Records) The best young band in Zimbabwe return to basics in powerful style. Mokoomba burst on to the global scene nearly five years ago with Rising Tide, an album that featured 13 guest musicians and excursions into reggae, rap and funk. But they sound even better on this often sparse, DIY set in which they concentrate on gently energetic songs about traditional life, history and culture in the Victoria Falls region where they grew up. Mathias Muzaza is an engaging and gutsy lead singe
  
  Read more

• Howell/Beach/Chaminade: Piano Concertos CD review – clarity and steel

  02-03-2017 19:45
  
  Danny Driver/BBCSSO/Miller
  (Hyperion)When Amy Beach (1867-1944) was a child in New England, her mother banned her from playing the piano in public until she turned 16. Strict Calvinism didn’t smile on girl prodigies. When she married at 18, her husband allowed her a concert per year, so instead she composed. Her Piano Concerto has the heft and torrent of music that needs to be written and Danny Driver plays it with clarity and steel, absolutely unsentimental but flecked through with empath
  
  Read more

• Check Out These Ridic Spoiler Pics from Spring Break With Grandad Series 1 Episode #5

  02-03-2017 17:54
  
  Oh my... Don't miss Spring Break With Grandad on Mondays at 10pm - only on MTV!
  
  Read more

• What You Missed In Music: Stormzy Opens Up About Depression, Bruno Mars’ New Music Video & More

  02-03-2017 17:44
  
  Also, Latitude 2017 announced their line-up!
  
  Read more

• Sophie Kasaei Fears She’s ‘Second Best’ To Boyf Joel Corry As She Admits They ‘Aren’t On Speaking Terms’

  02-03-2017 17:05
  
  Uh oh...
  
  Read more

• Vicky Pattison Reveals The Milestone Event When She Wants To Be Proposed To

  02-03-2017 17:01
  
  Vicky Pattison reveals she wants to be engaged by thirty.
  
  Read more

• The Sexiest Spoilers From Ex On The Beach Series 6 Episode #8

  02-03-2017 16:55
  
  Don't miss brand new Ex On The Beach, Tuesdays at 10pm - only on MTV!
  
  Read more

• Ed Sheeran Just Revealed When Taylor Swift Is Going To Release Music

  02-03-2017 16:32
  
  And it's AGES away.
  
  Read more

• Chantelle Connelly Straddles Jemma Lucy On Caribbean Break Despite 'Fake Relationship' Confession

  02-03-2017 16:21
  
  Chantelle Connelly and Jemma Lucy on beach break - are they together?
  
  Read more

• Sleaford Mods: English Tapas review – a bruising, brilliant post-Brexit tirade | Alexis Petridis' album of the week

  02-03-2017 16:15
  
  The speed at which they work makes Sleaford Mods’ albums feel more topical than almost any other band’s – and their first post-referendum album finds them on typically furious, funny formIn theory at least, Sleaford Mods’ moment should already have passed. Fairly or not, artists with a wilfully stark musical blueprint tend to be subject to diminishing returns pretty quickly, and few artists around at the moment have as stark a sound as Sleaford Mods. Virtually everyone mu
  
  Read more

• Hurray for the Riff Raff: ‘Trump is trying to convince us we have no rights’

  02-03-2017 16:09
  
  The band’s leader, Alynda Lee Segarra, is defiantly Puerto Rican, but she wants to stand up for all America’s marginalised voices. Now, with a new concept album, she is doing just thatHurray for the Riff Raff’s new album, The Navigator, is set in an imaginary city gentrified beyond recognition. It could be the Bronx, where bandleader Alynda Lee Segarra was raised, or even here in Elephant and Castle in London, where the established Latin American community is threatened by rege
  
  Read more

• 12 Of The Most Awkward AF Moments Celebrity Exes Have Come Face To Face

  02-03-2017 15:52
  
  We can't look...but we do.
  
  Read more

• Kehlani live review – slinky slow-jams … and life advice for teens

  02-03-2017 15:43
  
  ABC, Glasgow
  The former PopLyfe singer adds a dash of cabaret poise to her maximalist make-out music, dispensing bracing tips on consent and self-care in betweenIn 2011, Piers Morgan was the only America’s Got Talent judge who voted against Kehlani Parrish – then the 16-year-old lead singer of wholesome covers band PopLyfe – passing the audition stages of the reality contest. That alone might be enough for most people to wish this gifted young Californian, now an impish but imp
  
  Read more

• Alison Krauss webchat – post your questions now

  02-03-2017 13:43
  
  The country music star is joining us to answer your questions in a live webchat from 1pm GMT on Monday 6 March – post them in the comments below 12.40pm GMTAlison Krauss is a country music legend, the woman who brought bluegrass into the mainstream with a host of spellbinding records that have won her 27 Grammys, more than any other singer in history.She recorded her first album at the age of 16 and won the first of those Grammys at 19. But it was her contributions to the hugely successful
  
  Read more

• Ed Sheeran: ‘I got hammered and cracked Justin Bieber in the face with a golf club’

  02-03-2017 13:29
  
  As he releases his third album ÷, the biggest male pop star on the planet talks about his most surreal moments of fame, being mobbed on easyJet and why he built a pub in his gardenIn the private dining room of a central London hotel, Ed Sheeran is telling me about the time he smashed Justin Bieber in the face with a golf club. “We were in Japan. We’d been out to a dive bar. He just drank water and I got hammered. Then we went to a golf course, and he lay on the floor and put a
  
  Read more

• Ed Sheeran Tattooed Roman Kemp’s Leg Only It Didn’t Quite Go To Plan

  02-03-2017 13:18
  
  Oops.
  
  Read more

• Adele Scraps ALL Tour Pyrotechnics After Firework Debris Lands In Her Son's Eye

  02-03-2017 13:12
  
  Adele has scrapped all pyrotechnics after her son was injured.
  
  Read more

• 7 Eating Disorder Myths You've Falsely Believed

  02-03-2017 12:40
  
  These need to be debunked ASAP.
  
  Read more

• Get To Know: Loyle Carner

  02-03-2017 12:26
  
  This week's featured artist is Loyle Carner...
  
  Read more

• Ex On The Beach Spoiler Video: Geordie Shore Lad Aaron Chalmers Necks On With Frankie Spong After Being C*ckblocked By Ex Becca Edwards

  02-03-2017 12:00
  
  Don't miss brand new Ex On The Beach, Tuesdays at 10pm - only on MTV!
  
  Read more

• Khloe Kardashian’s Ex Claims Their Relationship Was The ‘Worst’ Time Of His Life

  02-03-2017 11:51
  
  Bit harsh, James.
  
  Read more

• Ferne McCann Looks INCREDIBLE After Stripping Down To Just A Thong And A Pair Of Thigh-High Boots

  02-03-2017 11:46
  
  Ferne McCann strips off for Celebs Go Dating.
  
  Read more

• Bella Hadid Came Face-To-Face With The Weeknd On The Catwalk And It Was Awkward AF

  02-03-2017 11:27
  
  Teeny tiny bit of a nightmare.
  
  Read more

• Justin Bieber Spent His Birthday Making Beats Beneath A Portrait Of Justin Bieber

  02-03-2017 11:19
  
  Haven't we all?
  
  Read more

• Nickelback drummer tracks down fraudster who scammed $25k worth of equipment

  02-03-2017 10:31
  
  Daniel Adair did his own detective work to identify a Florida drummer who passed as him to buy $25,000 of kitIt can be hard being a member of Nickelback. One week you’ve got Arnold Schwarzenegger saying “congress is less popular than herpes & Nickelback” on Twitter. The next you’ve got a US army officer banning your music from being played in his command post. And that’s just February 2017 – without even considering, before that, their music being used as
  
  Read more

• Little Mix Tease Cowgirl Themed Video For Their Third Single From Glory Days

  02-03-2017 09:43
  
  YEEEEHAHHHHH!
  
  Read more

• Sweet Love

  02-03-2017 09:41 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Sweet Love
  
  Read more

• Mixed Signals

  02-03-2017 09:41 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Mixed Signals
  
  Read more

• Did You See [Explicit]

  02-03-2017 09:41 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Did You See
  
  Read more

• Lorde says new Green Light single is out on Friday and will be 'very different'

  02-03-2017 03:57
  
  New Zealand star promises that new single will ‘make you dance’ as it recounts her journey over the past two yearsLorde has confirmed she will release a new single on Friday.The 20-year-old pop star from New Zealand hinted at the news via a video clip on social media earlier this week. In the clip, Lorde can be seen sitting in a car behind a burly driver as she eats fast food while a tinny piano-led pop tune plays in the background. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

Follow @MusicUKnws on Twitter!