Hit Singles

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The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs: “It was a publicity stunt and it worked”

Back in 1999, the idea of writing 69 love songs didn’t seem such a monumental task. “My labour was very cheap at the time,” says The Magnetic Fields’ mainman Stephin Merritt. “So devoting a year of full-time labour to one project didn’t seem all that unreasonable.” Advertisement For the past two years, Merritt has been touring his resultant three-hour masterpiece 69 Love Songs around the world to celebrate its 25th anniversary, playing the entire album over two consecutive nights, with upcoming shows at London’s Union Chapel as well as in Brighton and Bristol (tickets here). Last performed...
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Super Furry Animals announce 30th anniversary tour

Super Furry Animals are back! The Welsh wizards have today announced that they’ll play six live shows in May to mark the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Fuzzy Logic. See the dates for the Supacabra tour below: Wed 6 May 2026: Dublin, 3Olympia TheatreFri 8 May 2026: Glasgow, The BarrowlandsThu 14 May 2026: Llandudno, Venue CymruSat 16 May 2026: Cardiff, Utilita ArenaThu 21 May 2026: Manchester, O2 ApolloFri 22 May 2026: London, O2 Brixton Academy Advertisement The Super Furries will be supported by Getdown Services (all dates except London), Melin Melyn (Cardiff only) and Honeyglaze (London only). Tickets...
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Edwyn Collins reviewed: emotional final hometown concert capped by an Orange Juice reunion

“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” The buzz of expectant chatter in the auditorium turns to cheers as the room fills with the magnificent racket of The Mekons’ 1978 single, “Where Were You”, clattering out as intro music, and as a reminder of what was in the air back when all this started. Behind the stage, letters apparently stolen from the set of Elvis’s 1968 comeback special spell out E D W Y N. And now Edwyn Collins himself appears from the wings, walks slowly and determinedly to take the chair he will occupy for most, but not...
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Nashville treasure celebrating 100 years of country music institution, the Grand Ole Opry

When James Brown came to Nashville in 1979 to record vocals for “It’s Too Funky In Here”, he received an unexpected invitation. Country star Porter Waggoner asked him to stop by the Grand Ole Opry – not as an audience member, but as a performer. Backed by the fiddlers and pickers in Waggoner’s band, The Godfather Of Soul tore through Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” as well as his own “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”. A few Opry members clutched their pearls, but the audience went wild. “It wasn’t meant to be a big media event, just a...
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Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override reviewed: Wilco frontman’s triple album is a gentle salve in stormy times

A 30-song triple album of mostly mellow consolation It was novelist and critic John Berger who first posited that “calm is a form of resistance”. Who knows if Jeff Tweedy was channelling that sentiment while creating the gentle behemoth that is Twilight Override, but he has certainly responded to the maelstrom of paranoia and inhumanity unleashed by the second Trump term – what the Wilco frontman has dubbed “a bottomless basket of rock bottom” – with a disarming composure, and a big batch of tunes for his fifth solo outing. Twilight Override is a 30-song triple album of mostly...
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Spain’s Josh Haden: “The entire band was smoking weed every day!”

Though Spain are known for their lethargic pace, this wasn’t always Josh Haden’s style. He’d previously been singer and bassist for Treacherous Jaywalkers, a punk act signed in the late ’80s to SST that he now describes as “boundlessly energetic, in a negative way.” Nonetheless, a constant staple of his teenage years was John Lee Hooker’s 1966 LP, It Serves You Right To Suffer, which provided the inspiration for his next band. “It was completely opposite to all the other music I was listening to, but, as I got older, I felt like I could, or should, be open...
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Mulatu Astatke Mulatu Plays Mulatu

His journey was meteoric Somewhere around the close of the 1950s, a 16-year-old Ethiopian boy arrived at Lindisfarne College, a boarding school in the Wrexham countryside. The young Mulutu Astatke had come to North Wales to earn a qualification in aeronautical engineering. But around his more formal studies, he picked up a trumpet and, encouraged by Lindisfarne’s headmaster, learned to play. His journey from there was meteoric – from rural Wales to London’s prestigious Trinity College of Music, and then into the city’s flourishing jazz underground, where he graced the stages of Ronnie Scott’s and Soho’s Metro Club, rubbing...
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Robert Plant & Saving Grace reviewed: a new fellowship and a new quest for the Zeppelin frontman

The only thing to do is to come home From West Midlands clubs to cavernous American stadiums, from the wasted land of the Sahara to the glitz of Nashville – not to mention the darkest depths of Mordor and over the hills where the spirits fly – Robert Plant has been on quite the journey. When globe-trotting gets old, though, the only thing to do is to come home. Plant’s new album, his first with his current group Saving Grace, is a return to the promised land, located somewhere around Kidderminster and the Wyre Forest. It’s a reconnection for...
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Graham Nash On His 10 Greatest Songs

“I’m not going anywhere!” “It’s going to be a really good evening of songs and stories,” says Graham Nash of his current live show, which hits the UK on October 4. “I’ve got three people with me that are half my age, so I have to bring my A-game every night. There’s Todd Caldwell, who’s the organ player for the CSN band, on all keyboards. Adam Minkoff, who plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, bass and sings – sometimes at the same time. And Zach Djanikian, who plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, bass, mandolin and tenor sax. They’re...
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Bruce Springsteen: 172-page Definitive Edition. Updated!

More Boss than Boss Is there no limit to the energies of Bruce Springsteen? Even leaving aside his sideline as a spokesperson for American democracy, we must most recently face up – as Peter Watts does in this new magazine which is out tomorrow – to the payload of his latest archive release. Namely, Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Garage romanticism, rowdy country, ghostly instrumentals, the box set genuinely contains multitudes, further evidence of an artist building a bigger picture, even if favourites must be sacrificed along the way. Advertisement There’s been no danger of that at a Springsteen...
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