Music news

• Holly Macve: Golden Eagle review – hard-luck songs make like the delta blues

  09-03-2017 23:15
  
  (Bella Union)Singer and songwriter Holly Macve was raised in Galway and Yorkshire, but you could be forgiven for assuming the 21-year-old is from the Mississippi delta or the Appalachian mountains. The shimmering guitar on Heartbreak Blues and the doom-laden piano chords and faraway backing vocals on The Corner of My Mind sound like they’ve been beamed from Sun Studios in Memphis, circa 1957. Golden Eagle, her debut album, has a strong country or bluegrass flavour – though some songs
  
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• Bush: Black and White Rainbows review – proficient mid-tempo stadium rock

  09-03-2017 23:00
  
  (Zuma Rock)Bewilderingly popular in 90s USA, Gavin Rossdale’s post-grunge outfit never got much of a foothold in their homeland, were savaged by critics and largely overlooked by a paying public otherwise occupied by Britpop. Now, though, with the sudden exposure provided by his unlikely judging stint on The Voice, Rossdale is suddenly a recognisable face on these shores, and – timing! – his band have a new album out just as the series draws to a close. Could this finally be th
  
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• Circa Waves: Different Creatures review – still stuck in skinny jeans

  09-03-2017 22:45
  
  (Virgin EMI)You wouldn’t know it from the hordes of producers, MCs and experimental R&B singers about at the moment, but the influence of the 00s indie explosion continues to echo throughout UK music – not just in the scene’s survivors but also in new bands, such as Wolf Alice and the Rhythm Method, for whom skinny jeans and angular riffs are formative influences. Circa Waves belong to the latter camp – though few bands wear their nostalgia quite as heavily as this Li
  
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• Solo Dance

  09-03-2017 22:40 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Solo Dance
  
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• Zara Larsson: So Good review – sugar-soaked postmodern pop

  09-03-2017 22:30
  
  (Epic) Swedish singer Zara Larsson is a postmodern popstar. She’s like a Rihanna-doting teen gatecrashing a tropical house party, gun fingers blazing, and her sugar-soaked songs have had more than 1bn Spotify streams. Unlike the vetted chart artists of the 90s, she has social media accounts filled with political opinions and profanities, and her songs are imbued with honesty, too: “I don’t want to shower even if I stink / ’cos I don’t want to wash you off my skin,&r
  
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• The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir review – Stephin Merritt's richly observed life

  09-03-2017 22:15
  
  (Nonesuch)Eighteen years after the epic 69 Love Songs, Stephin Merritt has crafted an autobiography in 50 songs, one for each year of his life. The singer-songwriter rifles through twice that number of instruments as his lugubrious baritone drolly documents pivotal experiences. There is the childhood pain of rejection by a pet (“We had a cat called Dionysus … every day another crisis”), his mother’s ghastly taste in men and his suspicions, in ’92 Weird Diseases, th
  
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• Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator review – Latin Americana and flamethrower polemics

  09-03-2017 22:00
  
  (ATO)“I feel that the soul of New York is under attack,” Americana songwriter and Bronx native Alynda Segarra recently said. Her sixth album as Hurray for the Riff Raff pushes back against gentrification and, more broadly, Trumpification; alongside that, Segarra personalises the political by foregrounding her Hispanic roots. If that sounds as if it’s a recipe for unmitigated worthiness, be assured that folk melodies and wild-hearted Latin beats play as big a role as Segarra&rsq
  
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• Readers recommend: share your songs about sweetness

  09-03-2017 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 13 March We have had sweet foods as a theme (here’s the resulting playlist from 2008), but this time our guru is looking for songs that sing of sweetness in any other sense. As ever, keep your eyes on the comments for more of a steer.You have until 11pm on Monday 13 March to post your nomination and make your justification. Regular RR contributor sanes
  
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• Julia Hülsmann Trio: Sooner and Later review – classy one-voice jazz

  09-03-2017 20:00
  
  (ECM)German pianist Julia Hülsmann can be a private, almost secretive artist as well as an empathic accompanist (memorably applying the latter skill to Kurt Weill songs with Theo Bleckmann last year) – but Sooner and Later draws her long-running trio into some explicitly jazzy moods, when they aren’t sounding fascinated by world music references from recent tours, notably to central Asia. The band consistently speak with one voice (she and bassist Marc Muellbauer often drop in a
  
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• David Binney: The Time Verses review – adventures in jazz empathy

  09-03-2017 19:45
  
  (Criss Cross)The New York saxophonist and composer David Binney, an adventurer in contemporary music, has the technique and imagination to connect the saxophone intensity of John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman to the structural riddles of Tim Berne, Steve Coleman, and even contemporary classical methods. This set’s quartet, with pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist Eivind Opsvik and drummer Dan Weiss, is Binney’s most enduringly compatible partnership, and the proof is plain all over The Time V
  
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• ConNotations CD review – Mai Yi Foo makes light work of Shostakovich, Berg and Saint-Saëns

  09-03-2017 19:45
  
  Foo/Hutter/Woroch/Wass/Britten Sinfonia/Power(Orchid Classics)The thread running through this disc, brainchild of pianist Mei Yi Foo, is that all three works are hiding something behind the notes. The idea promises more intrigue than it delivers, yet the pieces still add up to an enjoyable programme. With trumpeter Philipp Hutter and the pleasingly lean-sounding Britten Sinfonia, Foo makes light work of the Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, in which Shostakovich, that compulsive player of
  
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• Joubert: Jane Eyre CD review – April Fredrick gleams in Charlotte Brontë role

  09-03-2017 19:30
  
  Fredrick/Stout/Thomas/Milhofer/English Symphony Orchestra/Woods(Somm Recordings)John Joubert remains best known for choral music, but the composer, 90 this year, has written no fewer than eight operas. Jane Eyre, which he worked on as a side-project for 10 years and completed in 1997, remained unperformed, apart from in a problematic one-off reduction, until the Birmingham concert last October from which this recording was taken. Setting Kenneth Birkin’s libretto, he mercilessly selects ju
  
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• Spaceships, vegan food and branches of marijuana – in Jamaica with reggae's legends

  09-03-2017 19:23
  
  Greats including Cedric Myton and Ken Boothe teamed up with a new generation of musicians to record the Soul of Jamaica album the old way – unplugged and outdoors
  To hear one of the best roots reggae albums to come out of Kingston, Jamaica, this spring, you have to drive a long way from Trench Town. In fact, you have to leave the city altogether and head up high into the mountains that surround it.Not every taxi is keen on making the trip, so you might want to enlist a local’s help a
  
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• Anne-Marie Rides A Bloody Horse In The ‘Ciao Adios’ Video

  09-03-2017 18:42
  
  More pop stars on horses in all future music videos, please.
  
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• Ski And Snowboard Around The Alps For Free With Steep’s Free Access Weekend

  09-03-2017 18:31
  
  Apres-ski not included.
  
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• FIF: Grimes

  09-03-2017 18:23
  
  Grimes (AKA Claire Boucher) is a DIY artist, and we're obsessed.
  
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• The Great Escape Adds Raye, Abra Cadabra, Zak Abel, Paigey Cakey And More…

  09-03-2017 17:56
  
  With only 10 weeks to go until The Great Escape takes over 35 venues across Brighton, 125+ brand new names have been added to the already HUGE line-up.
  
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• Into the void: Farewell to Black Sabbath – in pictures

  09-03-2017 17:31
  
  The founding fathers of metal have confirmed that they have reached the end of the road. Here’s nearly 50 years of one of rock’s greatest bands, in photographsBlack Sabbath: ‘We used to have cocaine flown in by private plane’
  Continue reading...
  
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• Stephen Bear Is Still Confused About Why Vicky Pattison Hates Him So Much - EXCLUSIVE

  09-03-2017 17:26
  
  Just Tattoo If Us starts April 3 at 10pm only on MTV!
  
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• Raheem Bakaré Returns With Alluring Visuals For 'LSD'

  09-03-2017 17:23
  
  Gearing up listeners for his upcoming project 'Lucid Soul Dreams', Raheem Bakaré is back with experimental visuals for 'LSD'...
  
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• ‘From the inside, it sure felt like a cult’ – Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields’ life in songs

  09-03-2017 17:20
  
  On the Magnetic Fields’ new album, 50 Song Memoir, Merritt dedicates one track to each of his years. Here are some of the pivotal moments – and the stories behind the songsStephin Merritt’s bohemian upbringing as the child of a single mother dominates the first disc of 50 Song Memoir, which swims with her beliefs in alternative science and eastern philosophy and reads like an Eat, Pray, Love audiobook narrated by Richard Dawkins. On ’74 – No, we learn that his mothe
  
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• Fan Account Of The Week: @LMJupdates

  09-03-2017 16:45
  
  This week's featured fan account is dedicated to Lauren Jauregui from Fifth Harmony...
  
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• Jeremy McConnell Celebrated Stephanie Davis's Birthday In The Strangest Way

  09-03-2017 16:32
  
  Jeremy McConnell got botox.
  
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• Ex On The Beach Spoiler Video: WHY AYE! Geordie Shore Lad Aaron Chalmers Finally Gets A Penthouse Buck With New Ex Jenny Thompson

  09-03-2017 16:28
  
  Don't miss brand new Ex On The Beach, Tuesdays at 10pm - only on MTV!
  
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• BBCNOW/Zhang – Malala's message is set to music

  09-03-2017 16:28
  
  Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
  Kate Whitley’s Speak Out honoured Malala Yoursafzai’s historic call for worldwide access to education; on the podium, Xian Zhang made the music blaze with colourThis BBC National Orchestra of Wales concert marked International Women’s Day with the premiere of a BBC Radio 3 commission, Kate Whitley’s Speak Out, setting words spoken by Malala Yousafzai in her 2013 address to the United Nations Youth Assembly. From Yousafzai’s historic call for
  
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• La La Land music director to work with English National Opera

  09-03-2017 16:19
  
  Marius de Vries joins as creative consultant to help new artistic director develop projects away from traditional operaEnglish National Opera has recruited the record producer and music director of La La Land Marius de Vries as creative consultant to help develop projects away from traditional opera.The company said De Vries, who has written and produced for artists including Madonna, David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright, Massive Attack and Annie Lennox, would contribute to projects “combining an
  
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• Patience review – Gilbert and Sullivan's satire still stings in ETO’s expertly comic production

  09-03-2017 16:15
  
  Hackney Empire, London
  There’s a strong set of principal performances in a fine show, with Bradley Travis an effusive joy and Ross Ramgobin hinting at star potentialGilbert and Sullivan’s 1881 opera famously satirises the vogue for everything aesthetic, but it has other targets, notably the macho posturing of the dragoon guards who are eventually forced to emulate the mannerisms of their poetic rivals in order to regain the attention of the female chorus.Presented in Florence de Mar&
  
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• Why doesn’t everyone rap in scouse? How British hip-hop broke free of London

  09-03-2017 16:10
  
  Aystar, Bugzy Malone and Levelz are some of the names that have helped the UK scene flourish. The biggest regional talents explain why each city has its own voiceThere’s a track on the most recent Giggs album called The Best. The London MC takes the first verse, setting out his credentials as a master gangster and talking about how he might have to “spank some arses” in his trademark basso profundo. The hook follows, rapped by an MC called Aystar. The theme is the same while th
  
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• You Honestly Won’t Believe What Ricci Guarnaccio Looks Like Now

  09-03-2017 16:03
  
  Hey, as long as he's happy.
  
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• Laura Marling: Semper Femina review – telling details and big ideas

  09-03-2017 16:00
  
  (More Alarming)
  The folk star is back with a set of erudite but instantly relatable musings on femininity, art and relationshipsLaura Marling’s sixth album is not a record much interested in wearing its intelligence lightly. A concept album about femininity and female relationships (or “an exploration of womanhood”, as one magazine put it, making it sound like something that worthy Channel 4 would have broadcast in the early 80s), it starts quoting Virgil at you before a note i
  
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• Charlotte Crosby Releases Intimate Picture Entwined Around Stephen Bear

  09-03-2017 13:59
  
  Charlotte Crosby shares image with Stephen Bear.
  
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• Your Period Isn’t Actually Syncing With Your Friends After All

  09-03-2017 13:54
  
  Boo.
  
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• Get To Know: Jorja Smith

  09-03-2017 13:23
  
  This 19 year-old from the UK is definitely one to watch...
  
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• 17 Reality Star Crying Faces That Perfectly Sum Up Even The Smallest Of Tragedies In Life

  09-03-2017 13:18
  
  Because nothing says it better....
  
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• Ed Sheeran ‘Covers’ Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself’ – A Song Sheeran Actually Wrote

  09-03-2017 13:12
  
  ‘Love Yourself’ has now received a long-awaited cover by the artist that actually wrote the track - Ed Sheeran!
  
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• This IWD Campaign Is Changing The Way People See Muslim Women

  09-03-2017 13:04
  
  It's simple, but powerful.
  
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• Zaddy [Explicit]

  09-03-2017 13:03 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Zaddy
  
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• The xx review – maximalist extravaganza amps up the fun

  09-03-2017 13:01
  
  Brixton Academy, London
  A beefed-up sound and a beautifully accomplished stage show signal a more outward looking approach from a band with a few tricks up their sleeveThe sumptuously glossy, hypersynthetic set – composed of rotating mirrored panels, a raised percussion platform and, initially, a sunset-pink glow – looks like a cross between a 1970s TV studio and a hotel lobby from 100 years later. At times the xx seem like a fictional band from a sci-fi film, some nerdy director&rsq
  
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• Readers recommend playlist: songs about purple

  09-03-2017 13:00
  
  This week, reader severin creates a playlist from your suggestions – including songs by Jimi Hendrix, MIA and Marc Almond
  Here is this week’s playlist – songs picked by a reader from your suggestions after last week’s callout. Thanks for taking part. Read more about how our weekly series works at the end of the piece.Ladies and gentlemen, we have an elephant in the room, a large purple elephant. You read the topic – songs about purple – and two songs immediate
  
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• Sophie Kasaei Reveals Marnie Simpson Has Gone AWOL: "I Just Wish She'd Talk To Us"

  09-03-2017 12:24
  
  Sophie Kasaei says Marnie is ghosting her.
  
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• Drake Gave A Surprise Performance At The Weeknd's London Show & We Love Their Bromance

  09-03-2017 12:22
  
  Drake performance three songs at The Weeknd's sold out London show...
  
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• Megan McKenna Seen In Floods Of Tears After Huge Row Over Pete Wicks

  09-03-2017 12:10
  
  Poor girl just can't catch a break.
  
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• Meghan Markle Calls For An End To Period Shaming As She Pens International Women's Day Essay

  09-03-2017 12:05
  
  Yes this.
  
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• Australian Music prize: AB Original become first Indigenous act to win $30,000 award

  09-03-2017 12:01
  
  Briggs and Trials beat Nick Cave and the Avalanches to prize for their debut album, Reclaim AustraliaAB Original – the hip-hop pairing of the rapper and actor Briggs and the producer Trials – has become the first Indigenous act to win the $30,000 Australian Music prize, beating shortlisted artists including Nick Cave and the Avalanches. “It sucks to be them,” Briggs laughed, of their competitors. “Normally it sucks to be us!” Continue reading...
  
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• Roger Waters: 'War isn’t about ideology, it’s not about religion. It’s about money'

  09-03-2017 12:00
  
  As The Wall gets set to debut as an opera, the ex-Pink Floyd bassist talks about why it still resonates and why Trump symbolizes everything we need to avoidThese days, if you mention The Wall, people may think you’re talking about Donald Trump’s proposed barrier separating the United States from Mexico. If you travel northward into Canada, though, The Wall means something else entirely – Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall is being turned into an opera. Another Brick in the
  
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• Ex On The Beach Spoiler Video: Geordie Shore Lass Zahida Allen Gets Proper Emosh As Sean Pratt Tries To End Their Romance Again

  09-03-2017 12:00
  
  Don't miss brand new Ex On The Beach, Tuesdays at 10pm - only on MTV!
  
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• Joe Jonas Is Totally Up For Making A Camp Rock 3, But Only If It’s 'Adult'

  09-03-2017 11:15
  
  Like... Adult?
  
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• Lewis Bloor BLAMES Marnie Simpson For His Decision To Cheat: "She Humiliated Me"

  09-03-2017 11:11
  
  Lewis says it's Marnie's fault he cheated.
  
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• Scared To Be Lonely (MTV Laid Bare Exclusive Commentary)

  09-03-2017 10:56 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Scared To Be Lonely (MTV Laid Bare Exclusive Commentary)
  
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• Exclusive! A Scottish Club Didn't Let Martin Garrix In Because He Was Wearing Joggers

  09-03-2017 10:47
  
  HE'S JUST LIKE US!
  
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