Inside the US singer-songwriter’s path from early DIY explorations to modern country-folk force

London’s post-punk seismographers pick up more weird vibrations on their third album. By Victoria Segal. Illustration by Cold War Steve.

In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

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Mike Patton and the Avett Brothers join forces to create a work of immense beauty.

DENNIS WILSON was The Beach Boys' drummer, pin-up, alcoholic and chaos agent. He may also have been the group's other genius. In this extract from his new book on the band, PETER DOGGETT explores Wilson's tragic decline, and the extraordinary miracle it contained: Pacific Ocean Blue.