Matt Bellamy and Dominic Howard joined us to chat about their favourite conspiracy theories, secret side projects and what exactly Thought Contagion is
EmersonRR asks:
When will the new album come out?
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Katy Perry has expressed regret at the stereotypes peddled on her debut single. She’s not the only artist who has attempted to distance herself from badly aged material
What a difference a decade makes. “If I had to write that song again, I probably would make an edit on it,” Katy Perry recently told Glamour magazine of her 2009 breakthrough hit, I Kissed a Girl. “Lyrically, it has a couple of stereotypes in it. Your mind changes so much in 10 years, and you grow so much. What’s true for you can evolve.”
Given that I Kissed a Girl is little more than a piece of titillation – “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it / It felt so wrong / It felt so right” – I’m not at all sure removing a couple of stereotypes from it would make much difference. And there was no mention from Perry of her contemporaneous and even more are-you-really-sure-you-want-to-go-there Ur So Gay.
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The DJ and all-round music evangelist answered your questions about taking over from Zane Lowe, confiscating phones in clubs and the lack of male feminist allies in the music industry
vanillasky99 asks:
What’s your favourite thing about being you?
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Dwyer has released 21 albums with Thee Oh Sees – and 20 other records that range from German industrial electronics to heavy metal. He gives the backstories about key tracks in his vast back catalogue
‘My motto is: try everything, life is short,” says John Dwyer, the leader of San Francisco garage rockers Thee Oh Sees. “We are growing at every turn. Every day you get a little older, a little closer to the grave – you should taste it all.”
A master of contemporary garage rock, he came into prominence as part of the fruitful San Francisco scene of the early 2000s. Since then Thee Oh Sees have rattled out 21 LPs of bewilderingly consistent quality, under various iterations of their name, and Dwyer has written, recorded and released another 20 albums with other collaborators, encompassing everything from industrial electronics to improvised jazz and death metal.
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Ahead of Chance the Rapper’s bow as the emcee of SNL, we take a look at his musical forebears who have pleased, shocked and nosedived over the years
This weekend, Chance the Rapper will take the stage to host Saturday Night Live, leaving the musical guest duties to Eminem. Last weekend, Taylor Swift rejoined the late-night sketch institution for a couple of songs, but she also handled full hosting responsibilities back in 2009. Ever since Paul Simon emceed the second-ever episode back in 1975, SNL has granted adventurous musicians the opportunity to try their hand at sketch work.
Episodes hosted by non-professional actors are always dicey; there are few experiences more exquisitely painful than watching a good-natured quarterback stumble his way through a commercial parody. Musicians generally have a better go of things, channeling their natural stage presence into a more precise format. But when they tank, they tank hard. We’ve surveyed Saturday Night Live’s long history of turning the host’s mic over to music stars.
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With her synthpop-heavy sixth album, the popstar dispenses with her diary-like lyrics in favour of something darker and more suggestive
For any Taylor Swift fan, a new album release promises not just a fresh batch of music but a chance to engage in that old Swiftian pastime: unpacking and deciphering the references in her lyrics, from allusions to the boys who’ve earned her ire to the ones that captured her heart. Following the release of the superstar’s sixth album, Reputation, the tradition persists: except this time, the album’s as much about Swift as it is the courtships that put tabloids in a frenzy.
With previous Swift albums, clues were hidden inside lyric sheets, where random capitalized letters signalled the person or place that inspired the track. Sometimes, like with the scorched-earth paean Dear John, the clue was in the title, while others were more crafty. In those good old days, making fodder of Swift’s lyrics was a fun indulgence given her, ahem, reputation as a deeply personal and perceptive songwriter, candid enough to recount her romantic travails with a memoirist’s sensibility but calculating enough to hide the real dirt where only super-fans could find it.
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A gentle Trump parody aside, the Country Music Association’s annual event dodged burning political issues – including gun control
“Maybe next time, he’ll think before he tweets,” sang co-hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood during their opening banter at the 51st annual Country Music Association awards. In terms of political provocation or controversy, the minute-long Trump-baiting parody of Underwood’s hit single, Before He Cheats, was as notable a political statement as anyone made during this year’s ceremony.
Paisley and Underwood have developed a repartee in their decade-long stint as the show’s co-hosts, yet their shtick has always been grounded in an affable, aw-shucks flavor of humor designed not to offend. As such things go, they’re consummate professionals, able to effectively deliver one-liners and to keep the performances and award presentations moving at a brisk pace. But provocateurs they are not.
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Singer Zara McFarlane, the festival’s director, and our jazz critic choose their five unmissable concerts from this year’s festival, which begins on 10 November
Basquiat and Jazz, featuring Black Top with Orphy Robinson
I am looking forward to hearing Orphy’s musical response to Basquiat’s work. I was really moved by the Barbican exhibition – Basquiat was so influenced by free jazz and improvisation. This gig is a fitting tribute: jazz musicians reinterpret Basquiat’s ideas, creating a kind of “call and response”. Expect top-class jazz improvisation from this great band and spoken-word performances from artist Anthony Joseph.
• At LSO St Lukes on 10 November. -
The demons and obsessions of jazz genius Thelonious Monk
He played angular and slow when the fashion was for fast and sun-drenched. And a misdiagnosed bipolar condition meant he retreated into silence for the last years of his life. But now the pianist’s singular talent is finally being heard
Consider this: both Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk were born in 1917. The creative DNA and brilliance of each musician were integral to the birth of modern jazz. For countless hours, weeks and months during the early 1940s they played, studied, argued and innovated together, along with Charlie Parker, drummer Kenny Clarke, bassist Oscar Pettiford, guitarist Charlie Christian and a steady progression of black men dedicated to exploring the possibilities of the music of their time, and to changing its shape. (And yes, aside from the pianist Mary Lou Williams and a number of female vocalists, this chapter in musical development is about the men.)
Then, by virtue of his crowd-pleasing pyrotechnic style, “dizzy as a fox” personality and willingness to school the squares, combined with the organisational gifts necessary to keep his bands together, trumpeter Gillespie’s career soared to the stars while pianist Monk, the jobbing musician who couldn’t, more than wouldn’t, conform to the conventions of the job, spent most of his professional life struggling to support his family.
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‘Tom has gone and we’ll go too’: one last song for folk legend Tom Paley
At Sharp’s folk club, one seat was poignantly empty: that of Tom Paley, who once played with Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly and who died last week. The club’s regulars explain what he meant to them
An old man in an exceptional jumper is singing an old sea shanty in tribute to Tom Paley, who died last week aged 89. Everyone joins in with the chorus, hesitantly at first but harmonising strongly by the end: “Tom has gone and we’ll go, too. Tom’s gone to Hilo.”
Paley, a legendary figure on the folk scene who played with Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, and influenced Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia, was to be found awaiting his turn alongside the mixed company of regulars, veterans and first-timers at Sharp’s, one of London’s most venerable folk clubs, hosted at Cecil Sharp House, Camden (home to the English Folk Dance and Song Society).