46 h. ago Justin Bieber: Swag review – inane lyrics undermine a gorgeously produced R&B passion project

(Def Jam) The surprise seventh album from the former tween idol is musically expansive, abetted by a host of star producers. If only he’d thought about the words a bitIn the mid-2010s, pop music changed. Instead of hounding the listening public with focus-grouped, machine-tooled crowd-pleasers, the biggest stars began releasing expansive, experimental albums that played to their own tastes and interests. These were records that were artistically self-indulgent, mostly in a good way: Rihanna’s sleazy, sultry Anti, Beyoncé’s densely referential Lemonade, Lady Gaga’s soft-rock-heavy Joanne, Miley Cyrus’s psychedelic Wayne Coyne collaboration Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (I may be the only person who holds that example in such high regard.)With his fourth album Purpose, Justin Bieber was adjacent to this shift. Leaning into the ascendant tropical house genre, collaborating with Skrillex and pursuing a sound you sensed a 21-year-old might actually like, it spelled the end of Bieber’s ...

Politics

4 d. ago Wet Leg: Moisturizer review – Doritos, Davina McCall and dumb fun from British indie’s big breakout band

(Domino)After winning multiple Grammys and Brits, the Isle of Wight band explore love and sexuality on their second LP – but there’s still room for some barbed put-downsMoisturizer concludes with a track called U and Me at Home. In it, Rhian Teasdale sings about the pleasures of doing nothing over guitars that bend in and out of tune in the style patented by My Bloody Valentine. Nothing much happens in the song – there’s some discussion about possibly getting a takeaway, and a brief nod to the “happy comatose” effects of weed – but it does feature a few lines that function as a kind of Wet Leg origin story. “Maybe we could start a band as some kind of joke,” sings Teasdale. “Well, that didn’t quite go to plan now we’ve been stretched across the world”.You don’t need to be a member of Wet Leg and aware of the circumstances of their formation – apparently the result of a conversation between Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers while on a ferris wheel – to feel slightly surprised at...

Events

5 d. ago Bryan Adams announces series of intimate performances in celebration of his new album

The Canadian rock icon is set for a series of intimate performances in celebration of Roll With The Punches from August 2025.

Culture

9 d. ago Adès, Leith, Marsey: Orchestral Works album review – an impressive collection marks a productive association

Hallé Orchestra/Adès(Hallé)This brings together new works of his own and by composers he admires that Thomas Adès has conducted at Bridgewater Hall during his residency with the HalléSince 2023 Thomas Adès has been artist-in-residence with the Hallé Orchestra. He has featured as composer, conductor and pianist in his appearances with the orchestra, and all his concerts have included new or nearly new works, both his own and by composers he admires. As the residency comes to an end, this collection brings together pieces he has conducted in Manchester; there are four by Adès himself, alongside William Marsey’s Man With Limp Wrist and Oliver Leith’s Cartoon Sun.Of the four pieces by Adès, only one is substantial. Aquifer, which he wrote last year for Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, is a densely packed 17-minute movement, which contains enough ideas to power a symphony at least twice as long, before being brought to a halt by the most common-or-garden of cadence...

Politics

9 d. ago From Madonna to New Order and Oasis, one man’s odyssey to make an ‘atlas of album cover maps’

Damien Saunder set out to survey the cartographic influence on album sleeve design. Four years and 400-plus records later, he’s created the coffee table book music fans and map lovers never knew they neededGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailGrowing up in rural Wangaratta in north-eastern Victoria, Damien Saunder spent many a wintry day listening to music on the family’s record player. Just beneath the stereo was a Reader’s Digest atlas. “Anytime we put on a record, I’d get out the atlas,” Saunder recalls. “It was like a gateway to the world – a way to dream, explore and let your mind wander.”Decades later, music and maps have come together again, this time in a coffee table book: Maps on Vinyl, a world-first survey of the cartographic influence on album sleeve design; an atlas of album cover maps. It’s the book most music fans – and map-makers – never knew they needed. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Kesha: . (Period) review – a smart, funny return to her hedonistic hot

(Kesha Records)After a long legal battle, the pop star’s sixth album harks back to her 2010s era, with a buffet of pop styles and only rare hints of her highly-publicised traumaKesha Sebert has described her sixth album . (referred to hereafter as Period) as “the first album I’ve made where I felt truly free”. It comes accompanied by a lengthy world tour, advertised by a photo in which the singer expresses her freedom – in what you have to say is a very Kesha-like manner – by riding a jetski while topless. Long-term observers of her turbulent career may note that this doesn’t seem so different from the way she framed her third album, 2017’s Rainbow, which she described at the time as “truly saving my life”, and featured her on the cover naked and was accompanied by a tour called Fuck the World.But it would be remiss to deny her the ability to make a similar point again. Rainbow was released at the height of her legal battle with her former producer “Dr” Luke Gottwald. Kesha had accu...

Politics

1 week ago ‘Seeing climate change like this, it changes you’: dance duo Bicep on making a new project in Greenland

Collaborating with Indigenous artists and sampling melting glaciers, the Northern Irish artists are championing Arctic culture – and documenting a collapsing worldRussell glacier, at the edge of Greenland’s vast ice sheet, sounds as if it’s crying: moans emanate from deep within the slowly but inexorably melting ice. Andy Ferguson, one half of dance duo Bicep, walks around in its towering shadow recording these eerie sounds. “Everyone comes back changed,” he says of Greenland. “Seeing first-hand climate change happening like this.”It’s April 2023 and, in the wake of Bicep’s second album Isles cementing them as one of the leading electronic acts globally, Ferguson has travelled to Greenland as part of a project to collaborate with Indigenous musicians and bring the momentous struggle of this region – and even the planet – into focus. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The Glastonbury Bump: HMV reveals the artists seeing a surge in sales post

Who benefitted from performing at Worthy Farm this year when it comes to sales figures?

Politics

2 w. ago Glastonbury 2025 reviews, Friday: Lorde, Lola Young and En Vogue

Highlights from Friday at Glastonbury 2025, from Lorde’s debut live performance of her new album ‘Virgin’ to En Vogue’s nostalgia and sun-soaked set

Politics

2 w. ago Lewis Capaldi’s Glastonbury comeback tells us everything we need to know about him

After he was forced to cut his 2023 set short, the Scottish singer-songwriter returned to the Pyramid Stage in the most triumphant manner. If there’s such a thing as a fairytale beginning, writes Louis Chilton, we just saw it

Politics

2 w. ago Lorde secret set at Glastonbury review – new album playthrough is bold but a little foolhardy

WoodsiesLorde resembled Patti Smith as she introduced her entire new album, but the lack of well-known hits let the energy dropIt would be misleading to call Lorde’s performance at Glastonbury a “secret set”. Though listed on the schedule only as the mysterious “TBA”, playing the Woodsie stage for an hour shortly after the festival’s kick-off on Friday morning, the anonymous artist’s identity was seemingly widely known weeks before. Ella Yelich-O’Connor herself had not been exactly subtle, meaningfully flashing her eyes at Radio 1’s Greg James when he pointed out that the release of her fourth album, Virgin, coincided with Glastonbury’s first day. On Thursday, ahead of Virgin’s release, she provided confirmation by posting an aerial photo of the Woodsies tent on Instagram. It’s a bold move, to debut a new album to a crowd who won’t yet have had a chance to listen to it, let alone form any impressions – but Lorde has that kind of clout. Since her precocious debut, Pure Heroine, she h...

Politics

2 w. ago Lorde at Glastonbury review – new album playthrough is bold but a little foolhardy

WoodsiesLorde resembles Patti Smith as she introduces her entire new album, Virgin, but the lack of well-known hits lets the energy dropIt would be misleading to call Lorde’s performance at Glastonbury a “secret set”. Though listed on the schedule only as the mysterious “TBA”, playing the Woodsie stage for an hour shortly after the festival’s kick-off on Friday morning, the anonymous artist’s identity was seemingly widely known weeks before. Ella Yelich-O’Connor herself had not been exactly subtle, meaningfully flashing her eyes at Radio 1’s Greg James when he pointed out that the release of her fourth album, Virgin, coincided with Glastonbury’s first day. On Thursday, ahead of Virgin’s release, she provided confirmation by posting an aerial photo of the Woodsies tent on Instagram. It’s a bold move, to debut a new album to a crowd who won’t yet have had a chance to listen to it, let alone form any impressions – but Lorde has that kind of clout. Since her precocious debut, Pure Heroi...

Politics

2 w. ago A ‘secret’ Lorde set and a spiritual wedding: Glastonbury gets off to sunny start

Festivalgoers treated to good weather as thousands flood Woodsies stage to see singer hours after latest album launch Glastonbury 2025 live: latest updatesAs the noon sun broke through the cloud over Glastonbury festival on Friday, the excitement among the 200,000 ticket holders as the first chords of music rang across Worthy Farm was palpable.Lorde was among the artists to open the first full day of music at the Somerset carnival in a “secret” set on the small Woodsies tent – an understated turn for the pop superstar, who has played the Pyramid and Other stages. Continue reading...

Society

2 w. ago What time Franz Ferdinand is playing Glastonbury Other Stage today

Franz Ferdinand are returning to Glastonbury in 2025 following the release of a brand new album

Politics

2 w. ago Joshua Redman: Words Fall Short review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

(Blue Note)The US saxophonist pulls back the vocals of his last record to present a new ensemble and all-original repertoire, resulting in an ideal balance of ingenuity and rapportJoshua Redman has been such a brilliant saxophone improviser for more than three decades that his unerring flawlessness at a spontaneous art almost becomes a tic. But his playful delight in music-making, a quality that swept from his eponymous debut release in 1993, has never faded. Redman’s 2023 first album for Blue Note was the covers-packed Where Are We, his first predominantly vocal venture, featuring the frail, borderline-tearful voice of young New Orleans-based singer Gabrielle Cavassa, herself a new Blue Note signing.Perhaps to deflect this from looking like a label-steered career reset, Redman has cannily entitled its successor Words Fall Short, and included only one Cavassa vocal. Even more smartly, he has introduced a terrific new young road band on an all-original repertoire, and added acclaimed...

Politics

2 w. ago BC Camplight: A Sober Conversation review – an eccentric rock opera confronting childhood abuse

(Bella Union)The US singer’s seventh album takes his meta-theatrical style almost into showtune territory, with songs about repression, depression and anger‘Some people face the music,” Brian Christinzio sings on The Tent. “Some people face the floor.” On this outlandish seventh album, the Manchester-based US singer-songwriter makes a bold bid for the former. That song alone excavates childhood memories, with Christinzio crunching leaves and finding caterpillars, cutely illustrated by twinkling piano, only for abrupt tonal shifts (siren-like drones, distorted vocals, heavenly choirs) to crash in like intrusive thoughts. It’s a queasy, visceral introduction to a record which confronts the summer he was abused, as a child, by an adult camp counsellor.A Sober Conversation is an eccentric rock opera about repression, depression and anger told with the meta-theatrical, tragicomic style that has won Christinzio a cult following. The title track veers into showtune territory, shimmying in ...

Events

2 w. ago Bantock: The Seal Woman album review – Celtic folk opera that never quite gets its head above water

Howard/Carby/Scottish Opera/Andrews(Retrospect Opera, two CDs)Granville Bantock’s story of a Selkie emerging from the sea is a century-old curio whose beauty has faded over the yearsExcept perhaps in Birmingham, where his memory is still cherished for what he did for the city’s music, including co-founding the CBSO, Granville Bantock (1868-1946) has slipped quietly into the margins of 20th-century British music. But as well as being an academic and conductor, Bantock was a prolific composer, with a work list including four symphonies, five concertos and nine operas, of which the last, the “Celtic folk opera” The Seal Woman, is easily the best remembered now.The premiere of The Seal Woman in 1924 was the Birmingham Repertory theatre’s first production; librettist Marjory Kennedy-Fraser took the main role of the Cailleach, whose dreams and visions tell the story of the Selkie, seal-people who emerge from the sea every seven years to live on land, shedding their skins to take human for...

Culture

2 w. ago Just Biber album review – Podger rises brilliantly to these sonatas’ extreme challenges

Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque(Channel Classics)The baroque violinist remains true to the spirit of Biber’s music on a new recording of six extremely difficult sonatas, animal noises et alTen years ago, Rachel Podger made a fine recording of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s Rosary Sonatas for solo violin and continuo, each of which portrays an episode in the life of Christ. Now she adds a disc of more sonatas by arguably the most important baroque composer for the violin after JS Bach – five of the collection of eight that Biber published in 1681, as well as the quasi-theatrical Sonata Representivo, which may or may not have been composed by Biber and probably dates from 1669.The pieces are all characterised by their extreme technical difficulty, and especially by their extensive use of scordatura, when individual violin strings are tuned differently from usual. Podger copes with all these challenges quite brilliantly, including imitating the sounds of animals in the Sonata Representi...

Politics

3 w. ago ‘I’ve never been so obsessed with a band’: readers’ best albums of 2025 so far

Bad Bunny blasting bigotry against Puerto Ricans, Davido’s uplifting vibes and a blast from trip-hop’s past. Here’s what has caught your ear this year• Read the Guardian’s best albums of the year so farConstellations for the Lonely is a fabulous return for Doves: textured, layered and, as ever, occupying a space and sound all their own. From the futuristic reflection of Renegade to the soulful Cold Dreaming to the thought provoking A Drop in the Ocean, and the devastating realisation of loss in Last Year’s Man ... This is a band confronting the past, to channel hope and find redemption by coming through challenges that can only be overcome through genuine friendship. Steven, Wolverhampton Continue reading...

Culture

3 w. ago Arson, sex shops, livestreamed funerals: Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman on the wild stories in her southern gothic rock

Wednesday’s picaresque yarns have resulted in the alt-rock album of the year. At home in North Carolina, their leader explains why she likes things ‘a little bit scary’ – and what’s next after her split from bandmate MJ LendermanTo step into Karly Hartzman’s home is to see the contents of her brain shaken out. There is a fireplace mantel covered in dolls and figurines; a wooden rack filled with cassette tapes; an old doll’s house filled to the brim with fabric scraps; a few overflowing bookshelves. As the 28-year-old leader of the indie-rock band Wednesday greets me at the door, she realises a few new additions have just landed through the letterbox, some books about the history of hardcore and punk: she has been listening to both a lot and is eager to educate herself.Hartzman is a collector by nature, a habit that is also at the heart of her songwriting. Equally inspired by the southern rockers Drive-By Truckers and the shoegaze greats Swirlies, Wednesday’s sound combines heartfelt...

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