The roots of the rave tree have stretched far out across the vale of Avalon. On the Pyramid Stage, Greta Thunberg is the guest of honour. At the Other Stage, climate change awareness films screen between acts. But the hub and heart of Glastonbury’s activist mindset remains the Greenpeace Field, where unity and awareness over the world’s most […]
Roland Orzabal is weeping. It’s a Saturday night in Los Angeles and Tears for Fears are midway through a triumphant set at the city’s Forum venue, which has already included a towering performance of mammoth 1985 hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and a euphoric version of 1989’s “Sowing the Seeds of Love”. It’s the […]
Released from the clutches of a major label, Raye is now making music on her own terms. In early February of this year, Rachel Keen was getting ready for the Brit Awards. She was nervous; her heart was pounding. The shimmery orange gown she was wearing suddenly felt tight, like a boa constrictor around her neck. […]
The jazz singer is at a Paris cafe to talk about her new album, lockdown blues, media negativity and posing naked for the sleeve of her much-loved live record. The Melody Gardot I met 10 years ago felt like the Greta Garbo of jazz. Cool, striking, blonde (usually), with a dramatic sense of style and […]
The Hayward Gallery’s eagerly awaited exhibition is a fascinating look at an emerging sensibility – even if ‘the fantastic’ is an occasionally elusive concept. Maybe it’s a reaction to the toughness of the times, but “the fantastic” is suddenly everywhere in art. From this year’s Venice Biennale, with its surfeit of updated surrealism and sci-fi-influenced cyborg […]
The versatile actor David Harbour speaks about how his experiences with mental health led to his new West End play, family life with pop star Lily Allen, and ‘the problem with James Bond’ David Harbour denies he’s become British. And yet… the evidence is stacking up. Firstly, the Stranger Things star begins our interview by making a […]
Russell T Davies’s Manchester-set series was groundbreaking when it arrived more than two decades ago, When the original British version of Queer as Folk premiered in February 1999, I was a painfully shy 15-year-old who hadn’t told anyone I was gay. I watched the first episode alone in my bedroom with the volume turned down so my […]
This is National Wake’ tells the story of an outlaw group whose very existence was an act of defiance. Guitarists Ivan Kadey and Steve Moni, along with director Mirissa Neff Guitarist and songwriter Ivan Kadey didn’t set out to form South Africa’s first multiracial punk band, but from the moment he met brothers Gary and Punka Khoza it […]