From the bayou to Woodstock and back – the easygoing adventures of Bobby Charles. By John Mulvey.

Squeeze ’s songwriting duo are back in harness, toting a rock opera they wrote in the ’70s with an all-new album to come. Given their near-constant strife, it’s a miracle. But as they insist, “the thing that always brings us together is the songs…”

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.”

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

At the dawn of the new millennium, Matt Johnson was in a dark place. Over the previous two decades, the creative engine and sole permanent member of The The had built a devoted following for his inten