Guardian Music

First Direct Arena, LeedsThe titanic choruses and stormy metal riffs of latest album Sanctuary are the perfect foundation for Amy Lee’s astonishing, skyscraping vocal range To watch Evanescence in concert is to be spellbound by founder Amy Lee’s astonishing voice. The Arkansas band’s gifted mezzo-soprano lends their music vocals that range from skyscraping and spectacular to haunting and devastating. She soon moves through the registers on the opener Sanctuary, setting the stage for a show duri

Despite the city’s backdrop of deprivation and racism, vibrant nightclubs and daring artists thrived – but after No 1 success for the Real Thing, why was the scene ignored?Months before the Real Thing’s You to Me Are Everything became a UK No 1 hit in 1976, lead singer Chris Amoo took the unreleased song to the Timepiece, a nightclub devoted to Black music tucked in between bars on Liverpool’s Fleet Street. His DJ friend Les Spaine stuck it on, and the empty dancefloor “just filled up, and nobod

The crowds wept and prayed, police used their song lyrics for briefings and a vicar gave a sermon about brotherly forgiveness. The directors of Don’t Look Back in Anger relive their wildest ride everOn 4 July last year, Oasis were all set to start the first gig of their hugely anticipated comeback, 16 years since the band imploded after Liam Gallagher swung a guitar in the direction of brother Noel’s head backstage in Paris. However, just 20 minutes before showtime, there was no sign of the sing

Tickets set to cost £408 at return for Somerset festival after a fallow year, a jump from £378.50 in 2025After a fallow year in 2026, Glastonbury festival fans can start to get excited – and nervous – about tickets for 2027’s event going on sale.The price breaks £400 for the first time, at £408 including a £5 booking fee, a rise from the 2025 cost of £378.50. The usual scramble to acquire them – with all the attendant frantic spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups – will begin at 9am on Sunday 4 Octob

Singer has rewarded patience of hundreds waiting outside hotel with regular appearances and even some dancingNoëlla Lamy, 52, who described herself as one of Céline Dion’s biggest fans, was preparing to spend all night on a Paris pavement without a tent but wearing a sweatshirt printed with the singer’s face for comfort.“Céline Dion is a force of bravery and an inspiration,” she said. Continue reading...

‘I was trying to bring back some glamour. The backcombed hair was like architecture really. It took more than 45 minutes to style’Just What I Always Wanted had already been in our live set, but with different verses. When we’d gone on David Essex’s Showcase earlier in 1982, in the middle eight I sang “A wink from Wilbur, a kiss from Kurt, don’t tell Hank, he might get hurt” – all names of my backing band the Wilsations. But when it came to recording, I said to Tot Taylor, who wrote most of my ea

Larmer Tree Gardens, WiltshireHitting 20, this festival has grown into a warm, genre-hopping powerhouse where fringe experimental acts are greeted as warmly as the star headlinersThere is a celebratory feeling in the air at End of the Road festival this year as it turns 20. The piano stage has been turned into a giant birthday cake with candles on top, one man is dressed as a toilet to commemorate the porcelain anniversary, and Jarvis Cocker leads a spirited singalong of Happy Birthday while wis

Bandleader Femi Koleoso brings together the England and Arsenal star, the musician and the artist to discuss adversity, creativity and Black British culture• ‘On the other side of pain there can be renewal’: Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso on reasons to hold onto hope• ‘Like painting with light’: photographer Temi Adegbayibi on capturing the energy of music• My cultural awakening , featuring Ezra CollectiveFemi Koleoso I wanted to bring together people who inspire me and whose work I think evokes

Favela Rising showed me how a grassroots movement can change the lives of young people. Its ethos is baked into the youth charity I work for – and where two of Ezra Collective met• ‘Like painting with light’: photographer Temi Adegbayibi on capturing the energy of musicI grew up in Great Yarmouth listening to classical music, learning piano and violin, playing in an orchestra and singing the Beatles in choir. Music was something that was arranged and formal, a privilege handed to me. At 18 I mov

Girl bands from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are going global with their fusion of traditional and modern sounds“We all know that music is a universal language,” says Maloi Ricalde from Filipina girl band BINI, which mixes tropical pop with traditional songs, English with Tagalog, and silver knee highs with pastel colours.“Incorporating Filipino language, Filipino culture, Filipino sound, into our music, it really gives identity and meaning to our music,” Ricalde tells the G

The Vancouver band earned a cult fandom for their uncompromising gigs. As they ready their brutal debut album, they discuss subverting audience expectations and the nightly toll of excavating trauma onstageYou’d be hard pressed to find a band with fewer airs and graces than Piss. First, there’s the unavoidable matter of their name, which they style in all caps, no nonsense; a word that scans as vulgar and combative but also somewhat facetious when displayed on their merch in loopy cursive, somet

O2 Arena, LondonFans scream ‘eat zucchini’ as if their lives depend on it as the six-piece’s remaining members strut their way through chest-rattling hits, ludicrous bangers and flaccid flopsIt takes a certain amount of resilience to be a Katseye fan. Since debuting three years ago via the boot camp meets reality TV show The Debut: Dream Academy, the multinational K-pop hybrid girl band have put their so-called Eyekons through the wringer. Last month alone they lost their second member to a “per

Nacho Pezzati’s new album Swerved taps into the moody ambience of the UK north-west underground, ratcheting a tangible and thrilling sense of uneaseFrom Barcelona, SpainRecommend if you like Space Afrika, Shackleton, PurelinkUp next Swerved out nowSwerved, by Barcelona-based producer Nueen (Nacho Pezzati) is a bassy, moody, darkly ambient album that travels through R&B, drill, cloud rap and dub without any obvious changes in its grey-black weather. But this is slowly churning music, on the brink

(Self-released)Singer Emma Morton brings an indie-girl chorister’s brightness to this captivating debut album, on songs with hints of darkness that sound ages-oldSairie’s debut album begins at this transitional time of year, its glistening psych-folk easing us out of the summer heat towards the coming darkness. In its Pentangle-like opener Song for the Winter, birds’ voices “climb higher”, hills “glow brighter” and waves “call out louder”, and the songs that follow are similarly saturated with c

(The Flenser)The Oklahoma band use hooky vocals to help their lyrics on desensitisation slip down easy, though their third album lacks the distinction of earlier releasesChat Pile’s 2022 debut album God’s Country was monstrously, miraculously fully formed. The Oklahoma sludge-metal quartet’s oily guitars and grunting mid-tempo percussion conjured their namesake, mining toxic waste mounds, while Raygun Busch’s throat-shredding vocals drew from the city’s real-world violence. But their releases si

(Polydor)The 22-year-old is impressively frank about indulging industry sleaze in her pursuit of fame on a debut that puts a distinctive spin on the best of 00s hedonismThere’s something very striking about hearing a pop star in 2026, their voice larded with Auto-Tune, opening a song with the line “I can’t really sing”. We live in an era where fans seem more aware than ever of the nefarious music business machinations that lurk within the star-making process, one where you’re never far away from

Like Johnny Depp and Chris Brown before him, Homme has got past his chequered history to retain an adoring fanbase. Almost a decade post-#MeToo, audiences no longer seem to careAs part of the promo for Queens of the Stone Age’s new album Perfecth, the band has set up a novelty complaints hotline for fans to call. “No bitching too big, no whiny too tiny,” it promises. I’ll bite: how about the fact that frontman Josh Homme’s ex-wife Brody Dalle testified in court that he head-butted her so hard th

Gretsch Synchromatic 160 acoustic guitar expected to sell for as much as £120,000, as star lot in auction of items owned by late personal assistant Siobhan BaileyOne of the most iconic items in George Michael’s career, the acoustic guitar he energetically strummed in the video for 1987’s Faith, is going up for auction.The guitar, a Gretsch Synchromatic 160 with a sunburst finish to the body, has an estimated sale price of £60,000-£120,000. It comes with a case featuring the words Rockabilly Rebe

Temi Adegbayibi started out taking pictures of the Ezra Collective and other British musicians as a hobby, then found his work exhibited at the Royal Albert Hall. He discusses Black joy and the movement and stillness of jazzWhen I speak to Temi Adegbayibi on the phone, the 26-year-old photographer is on the move. He is travelling across London, then running up the stairs to his desk, fitting our conversation into the interstitial spaces of a life split between freelance photography, film product

Mississippi-born Wilson, who worked across folk, pop, R&B and country, was once dubbed America’s best singerCassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy-winning jazz singer, songwriter and producer has died. She was 70.Dubbed America’s best singer by Time magazine in 2001, Wilson was best known for her genre-bending voice, which expanded the boundaries of traditional blues-based jazz and worked effortlessly across folk, pop, R&B, country and beyond. At the heart of all her work was her idiosyncratic co