Music news

• Steve Albini obituary

  10-05-2024 19:26 via theguardian.com
  
  Frontman for ‘noise rock’ bands Big Black and Shellac acclaimed for his production of albums by Nirvana, Pixies and PJ HarveySteve Albini, the musician and frontman of the alternative rock bands Big Black and Shellac, who has died from a heart attack aged 61, was more widely known for his huge list of credits as a producer, or – as he preferred to be called – recording engineer, of albums by independent artists from the mid-1980s to the present.Notable recordings bearing
  
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• Kacey Musgraves review – sweet and salty country-pop magic

  10-05-2024 13:33 via theguardian.com
  
  O2 Academy, Glasgow
  The Texan star transfixes with her crystal clear voice and flawless band, balancing airy verses on the healing beauty of nature with a dash of darkness‘Looks like you came to party!” teases Kacey Musgraves, radiant in a white dress and matching cowboy boots. With a gentle wave, the Texan country star tells us to take it easy. Tonight’s showcase for her introspective sixth album Deeper Well is all mellow magic – but for every airy verse about the healin
  
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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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• Elbow review – a charged night of insatiable yearning and rollicking laments

  10-05-2024 12:41 via theguardian.com
  
  O2 Arena, London
  Beaming, big-hearted and benevolent, Guy Garvey charms with stately songs of heartbreak, unafraid of uneven time signatures and heavy-metal thudElbow looked for a while to be settling into a mellow, beatific serenity. Their last album, 2021’s Flying Dream 1, was a winningly gentle affair, its delicate tracks seemingly competing between themselves to be the most soothingly romantic. You idly wondered if the band were easing into a benign dotage.This impression was spectacul
  
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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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• ‘Full of secrets and promises’: Dusty Springfield’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

  10-05-2024 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Sixty years after her debut album, we rate the pop singer’s best tracks, from a song recorded in a stairwell to a Pet Shop Boys collaborationIt’s closer to a show tune than soul, but Dusty Springfield kept singing Quiet Please live during her wilderness years for a reason. The version from 1979, the year Springfield’s UK tour was cancelled due to poor sales, is particularly freighted: “She may not be the latest rage, but she’s singing and she means it … give
  
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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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