Elsa hewitt

From pop star to Kitchen Disco icon, Sophie Ellis-Bextor has brought joy to lives and homes across the globe. She talks to Rosamund Dean about marriage, menopause and why the music must go on

The Fateful Symmetry MUTE 7/10

Few guitarists are loved as equally for their acoustic work as their electric playing but such is the unique talent of Richard Thompson . We meet him to find out how he’s preparing to go head-to-head with Tommy Emmanuel, chat about the end of his touring days, and talk alternative tunings

U.S. Girls ★★★★ Scratch It 4AD. CD/DL/LP ...

For 60 years, HERBIE HANCOCK has taken the bonnet off music, hacking its valves and gears, forging a future as yet unseen. He shaped jazz and funk and synth-rock; Miles and Joni felt the benefit. Now he's a Polar Music Prize laureate. "I've always been this geek, this nerdy guy,"

From the noisy streets, community cafés and surprisingly verdant cemeteries of Southeast London have risen CAROLINE : a confoundingly brilliant eight-piece band with no obvious frontperson, fusing choral folk with fractured post-rock and experimental pop. As Sam Richards discovers, they haven’t made life easy for themselves. “But there has to be a vulnerability of some sort. Otherwise, what’s the point?”