News

A stage show that intermingles music and life stories isn’t new in rock; just ask Bruce Springsteen and Ray Davies. But Jesse Malin already knows one way in which his first foray into the genre will be set apart from those that came and rocked before.

“The play opens in the hospital,” Malin says from his East Village home in New York. “And I’m telling somebody what happened to me and that I’ve canceled tours and haven’t played my guitar. There’s a guitar next to the bed and a wheelchair,...

Greg Kihn, the singer, songwriter, guitarist and West Coast pop star best known for his bouncy hit “Jeopardy,” which made it to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 before being parodied by “Weird Al” Yankovic, has died. He was 75.

Kihn died Tuesday after a battle with Alzheimer’s, publicist Michael Brandvold announced. His family did not want to disclose the location of his death.

Kihn blended folk, classic rock, blues and melodic pop in a style that helped define the Bay Area music scene in the 1980s. His first hit was “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em),” which got to No. 15 on the Hot 100 in May 1981.

The Greg Kihn Band released the danceable “Jeopardy” in January 1983, and only Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” kept from nabbing the No. 1 spot. A huge MTV favorite, it was quickly spoofed by Yankovic as “I Lost on Jeopardy,” which even featured the host of the game show,...

Farewell to the great Martin Phillipps, the New Zealand indie-rock pioneer of the Chills. He was one of the most brilliant songwriters of his era, with a string of Eighties and Nineties guitar classics: “Pink Frost,” “I Love My Leather Jacket,” “Heavenly Pop Hit,” “The Great Escape,” so many more. Phillipps had battled liver disease for years and recently entered a Dunedin hospital, but his unexpected death, at only 61, is a real loss. His tunes were full of alienation and misery, yet with his own distinct touch of human warmth.

The Kinks were heading into uncharted territory in the Sixties. The London rockers blew up in the early days of the British invasion, topping the charts with violently rowdy bangers like “You Really Got Me.” But Ray Davies began to explore a new kind of introspective songwriting, telling stories of everyday heartbreak. “Waterloo Sunset” is his artistic triumph: the delicate 1967 ballad of a lonely man by a train station, watching lovers from his window. This one-time cult favorite has become the Kinks’ most beloved classic, setting a standard that all...

The Kinks’ Dave Davies will be reunited with his long-lost Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction trophy, after it turned up listed on eBay earlier this month.

The Kinks guitarist posted about the circumstance on Twitter on Thursday, explaining that he “lost track of my award years ago and didn’t know where it was” until seeing the eBay auction.

Continuing, he wrote that the trophy was likely acquired after a storage unit of his sold off items in 2004, after he was “incapacitated” by a stroke. “I’m grateful to have made a full [recovery] from my stroke but it’s a shame that I wasn’t contacted. I’m assuming this is what happened,” he tweeted.

After finding the eBay auction — which was made by former record store Colony Records — Davies reports that his team wrote “to the seller and are waiting to hear back. I don’t want...

Exclusive: Brian Volk-Weiss’ Nacelle Company on Wednesday announced Billy Corgan’s Adventures in Carnyland, an eight-episode unscripted series that’s set to premiere on The CW app and cwtv.com on May 14th.

Directed by Volk-Weis and Ian Roumain, the series pulls back the curtain on how the legendary frontman of alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins takes on the world. When he isn’t churning out albums and touring the world with his band, Corgan works as a wrestling promoter through his storied National Wrestling Alliance, which he intends to restore to its former glory. As if being a rock star navigating the demanding politics of running both a band (Pumpkinworld) and a group of eccentric wrestlers (Carnyland) isn’t tricky enough, he’s also a father of two — and he’s planning a wedding to his longtime partner, Chloe Mendel. Can he possibly keep all these balls in the air?...

A new Beach Boys documentary featuring a plethora of previously unreleased footage, plus new interviews with the band, will arrive on Disney+ on May 24.

Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny, The Beach Boys will chronicle the California outfit’s singular sound and career as they evolved from a family band to one of pop and rock’s most revolutionary acts. Members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks, and Bruce Johnston all sat for new interviews for the film, as did Blondie Chaplin, who was part of the...

Independent titles lead the openers at this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office, with Thea Sharrock’s comedy Wicked Little Letters starting in 685 sites through Studiocanal.

Written by Jonny Sweet and based on a true scandal from 1920s England, Wicked Little Letters centres on an English seaside town targeted by a series of obscene letters, that are investigated by a group of women from the area.

Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley lead the cast, that also includes Anjana Vasan, Malachi Kirby and Timothy Spall. Buckley, Vasan and Kirby were named Screen Stars of Tomorrow in 2017, 2021 and 2013.

It is the third feature from UK filmmaker Sharrock,...

Once upon a time, many many moons ago during a lunar eclipse (as the reception of his 2003 Pictures From The Surface Of The Earth photograph exhibition at the James Cohan gallery in New York was going on), Wim Wenders told me about his favourite fairy tale. Hans Im Glück, or Lucky Hans, trades in a series of exchanges all of his earthly possessions for something generally considered of lesser value until at the end, relieved of his burdens in a graceful way, finds what he was looking for all along.

The protagonist of the Oscar shortlisted Perfect Days, Hirayama, played by the extraordinary Kôji Yakusho (winner of the Best Actor Award at last year’s...

Former Kinks keyboard player John Gosling has died. He was 75.

The Kinks announced his death on the band’s official social media accounts, writing, “We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of John Gosling. We are sending our condolences to John’s wife and family.”

Drummer Mick Avory wrote, “Today we lost a dear friend and colleague, he was a great musician and had a fantastic sense of humour… which made him popular member of the band, he leaves us with some happy memories. God Bless him….”

Guitarist and lead singer Dave Davies said in part that he was “dismayed” and “deeply upset” by the death of his “friend and important contributor to the Kinks music.”

“I will hold deep affection and love for him in my heart always,” Davies wrote. “Great musician and a great man.”

Lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies, meanwhile shared his “condolences” to Gosling’s family and wrote,...

The Kinks keyboard player John Gosling has died at 75, according to the band’s official social media page. No cause or further details were provided.

“We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of John Gosling. We are sending our condolences to John’s wife and family.”

Lead singer Ray Davies added, “Condolences to his wife Theresa and family. Rest in Peace dearest John.’ Ray’s younger brother Dave Davies added: ‘I’m dismayed deeply upset by John Gosling’s passing.

“He has been a friend and important contributor to the Kinks music during his time with us. Deepest sympathies to his wife and family. I will hold deep affection and love for him in my heart always. Great musician and a great man.”

Drummer Mick Avory also paid tribute to Gosling. “Today we lost a dear friend and colleague, he was a great musician and had a fantastic sense of humour…...

The Beach Boys will tell their story in their own words in the first-ever official book from the surf-rock legends.

The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys compiles exclusive interviews from band members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston — as well as archival text from late members Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson — to form the autobiography, which spans the beginnings of the band and signing their Capitol Records contract up through their famed 1980 Independence Day concert at the National Mall in Washington D.C.

In addition to the interviews,...

The Kinks will mark their 60th anniversary as a band with a two-year celebration that kicks off this March with The Journey – Part 1, a two-disc compilation featuring songs handpicked by the surviving members.

Boasting tracks from the Rock Hall-inducted group’s first singles in 1964 to their 1975 concept albums, each side of The Journey – Part 1 — curated by Ray and Dave Davies and Mick Avery — follows a narrative arc, ranging from “Songs about becoming a man, the search for adventure, finding an identity and a girl” to “Days and nights of a lost soul,...

For nearly 40 years, Yo La Tengo have been carrying on one of the great conversations in rock & roll history, welcoming us into their little idyll of pastoral noise, mumbled epiphanies, and sublime cover song choices. Even a diehard fan might struggle to pass a multiple-choice exam where you have to match a list of their song titles with the album they were on, but that sense of familiarity and constancy imbues every new release with the feeling of checking in with old friends. What’s more, their attention to detail...

Exclusive: Susan Stroman, the celebrated Broadway director and choreographer, has revealed that an acclaimed UK revival of musical comedy Crazy for You, which features show-stopping numbers from the George and Ira Gershwin songbook, will transfer from the Chichester Festival Theater into Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Lw Theatres-owned Gillian Lynne Theatre for a strictly limited 30-week West End season from June 24. Opening night is July 3.

The production with British stars Charlie Stemp and Carly Anderson played to packed houses during an eight-week summer run at Chichester.

Related Story ‘The Wiz’ Sets 2024 Broadway Return With New Material By Amber Ruffin Related Story Andrew Lloyd Webber & Producer Michael Harrison Announce New Musical Theater Partnership Related Story Love Changes Everything: Michael Ball Will Revisit 'Aspects Of Love' In A Reimagined Version Of Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical

It’s a coming home of sorts for Stroman, who won the Tony Award for Best Choreography when...

BMG, the world’s largest international music company outside the three ‘majors’, has struck a sub-publishing agreement for India with Turnkey Music & Publishing, one of the country’s only standalone music publishing companies.

BMG’s music publishing catalogue comprises over three million songs, made up of works by legends including George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Roger Waters, Ray Davies, Buddy Holly, Paul Anka, Diane Warren, Kurt Cobain and Chris DeBurgh as well as contemporary superstar songwriters, including Lewis Capaldi, Bebe Rexha, Kings Of Leon, Juice Wrld, and thousands of others.

Some of the greatest songs in music history are represented by BMG, such as ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ (Pink Floyd), ‘Walk This Way’ (Aerosmith), ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ (Tears For Fears), ‘Wild World’ (Cat

Stevens/Yusuf Islam) and ‘Come As You Are’ (Nirvana).

BMG also owns the publishing of catalogues including Virgin, Chrysalis, Stage Three,...

Moviegoing Memories is a series of short interviews with filmmakers about going to the movies. Albert Birney & Kentucker Audley's Strawberry Mansion is Mubi Go's Film of the Week in the US for February 18, 2022.Notebook: How would you describe your movie in the least amount of words?Albert Birney: Dream tax.Kentucker Audley: A dream auditor falls in love with the dreams of an older woman. Notebook: Where and what is your favorite movie theater? Why is it your favorite?Birney: The Dryden Theater at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. I worked at this theater from 2006 - 2011. Every night of the week there was a different film projected. New releases, foreign films, silent films, visiting filmmakers—a little bit of everything. Working there was a dream job and it will forever be my favorite theater. Audley: I might have to say The Kentucky Theater in Lexington, Ky,...

Spoon are the most reliable great American rock band of the past 25 years. That might say more about American rock than it does about Spoon, but facts don’t lie. They’ve been at it since the mid-Nineties, and they’ve never made a dull record, thanks to leader Britt Daniel’s brilliant songwriting and a knack for nuancing their Texas indie rock. They do jittery guitar bangers; they throw in some soul; they try out electronics; they nod to Prince and the Kinks and Motown and Wire. But it...

The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde will perform a set of classic Bob Dylan tracks — as well as some of her own songs — during a special livestream event, premiering Dec. 26 at 3 p.m. Et.

“Chrissie Hynde and Co. Sing Bob Dylan (and Other Songs)” was filmed and recorded at the Royal Opera House in London. The show will mostly feature songs Hynde recorded for her recent Dylan tribute album, Standing in the Doorway, although she’ll also play some originals and tracks by Ray Davies, Charles Trenet, and Hoagy Carmichael.

The stripped-down...

Hulu’s Original Docuseries McCartney 3,2,1 is a laid-back sit down with Paul McCartney, the man who believed in yesterday, reminiscing about all those years ago. Long-time Beatles fans will have heard most of the stories before, though there are a few new tidbits which have been buried in the mix. The casual conversation provides a wealth of tonality when McCartney talks about the sounds behind the music.

For the chat, McCartney sits down with Rick Rubin in the most familiar of settings: a recording studio, with easy access to the songs being discussed. The six-episode series explores McCartney’s work with The Beatles, Wings, and solo releases. Directed by Zachary Heinzerling, the interview is relaxed, although Paul is often very animated. He fiddles with console buttons, pops up for quick runs at a piano or guitar, and air drums throughout. The black and white filming makes the conversation feel intimate and timeless.

This review was first published at its premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Near the beginning of Edgar Wright’s documentary “The Sparks Brothers,” actor Jason Schwartzman comes on screen to make an unusual admission. “Honestly, I don’t want to see this movie,” he says of the film about the rock band Sparks. “I don’t want to know too much about them.”

It’s a playful admission and an interesting way to kick off two hours and 20 minutes that tell us a whole lot about Ron and Russell Mael, the brothers who make up Sparks. After all, if one of the people that Wright has recruited to tell us how great they are doesn’t even want to watch the film, what’s the point?

The point, of course, is that Schwartzman’s demurral is entirely in keeping with the idiosyncratic nature of Sparks, a band that has...

The Kinks are hosting The Moneygoround, a “one man show livestream” in celebration of the 50th anniversary of their album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. The show, which will feature a 45-minute one-man play written by Ray Davies and Paul Sirett, will be broadcast January 29th at 8:00 p.m. GMT/3:00 p.m. Est on the Kinks’ YouTube channel.

“The Moneygoround is a one man show documenting a character facing the challenging circumstances of making an album under extreme pressure,” Davies said in a statement. “This play,...

For almost two decades, Yo La Tengo have put on an annual eight-night Hanukkah concert series in New York City. This year, with pandemic restrictions still in place, the celebration will look a little different: On Friday, December 18th, the last night of Hanukkah 2020, the band will host a one-night-only livestream performance in celebration of the holiday.

The virtual live show will kick off at 8:00 p.m. from the Greene Space in the West Village. In keeping with tradition for the event, the show will open with a surprise musical guest,...

The Kinks will mark the 50th anniversary of their music industry-satirizing 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround Part One with a massive reissue that pairs the remastered album with studio outtakes, demo recordings, BBC performances, and previously unreleased material. The Lola Versus Powerman reissue arrives on December 18th.

In addition to tracks that featured singer Ray Davies’ scathing view at the music industry at the time, the album also boasted the iconic quasi-title track “Lola,” the Kinks’ hit about an encounter with a transgender person. “The album is a...

Steve Van Zandt originally planned on spending 2020 touring the world with Bruce Springsteen and his colleagues in the E Street Band. Like the rest of us, however, the coronavirus has forced him to make other plans.

That is why the long-time host of Little Steven’s Underground Garage has just announced plans for a special series of radio shows he’s dubbing The Qoolest Quarantine Qollection that will air on his SiriusXM channel and syndicated terrestrial radio show. According to a press release, it will feature ‘”iconic co-hosts” and “classic interviews” with Brian Wilson,...

Filmmakers/authors discuss the movies they wish more people were familiar with.

Movies Referenced In This Episode

Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (2012)

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (1976)

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

Top Gun (1986)

Water Power (1977)

Taxi Driver (1976)

In Fabric (2018)

A Climax of Blue Power (1974)

Forced Entry (1975)

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

Nashville Girl (1976)

Ms .45 (1981)

Act of Vengeance a.k.a. Rape Squad (1974)

High Plains Drifter (1973)

Design For Living (1933)

Trouble In Paradise (1932)

Melody (1971)

Oliver! (1968)

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

That’ll Be The Day (1973)

Stardust (1974)

The Errand Boy (1961)

Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003)

The Bellboy (1960)

Which Way To The Front? (1970)

Hardly Working (1980)

A Night In Casablanca (1946)

The Cocoanuts (1929)

Duck Soup (1933)

Boeing Boeing (1965)

Confessions of a Young American Housewife (1974)

Cockfighter (1974)

The Second Civil War (1997)

I, A Woman (1965)

The Devil At Your Heels (1981)

The...

Screenwriter Barrie Keeffe, who penned the screenplay for the classic British gangster movie “The Long Good Friday” – which starred Helen Mirren in a breakout role – has died. He was 74.

Keeffe’s agent, Stephen Durbridge of The Agency, confirmed the news and said that his client had died in London following a short illness.

Keeffe started out as an actor and journalist, then became a self-professed political writer. His theater work included plays such as “Frozen Assets” for the Royal Shakespeare Company, about a young man who kills a prison officer, and “Sus,” about institutionalized police racism. The latter was adapted as a movie in 2010 with Clint Dyer and Rafe Spall, and with Robert Heath directing from Keeffe’s screenplay.

Keeffe was best known for having penned the original screenplay for “The Long Good Friday,” which starred Bob Hoskins alongside Mirren. It was a breakthrough film for Mirren, and will be...

The Kinks were on the verge of collapse when they began 1969’s Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). They’d just parted ways with original bassist Pete Quaife and their previous album, 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, failed even to chart in their native England despite excellent reviews. Making matters worse, an ongoing feud with the American Federation of Musicians made it impossible for them to tour in the States, a devastating blow at a time when groups like Led Zeppelin and...

Born in 1951, attending college at Kent State in the early Seventies (where she lost close friends at the 1970 Kent State massacre), clocking time in London at the height of punk (where she wrote rock criticism and worked at Vivienne Goldman’s legendary Sex shop among other adventures), Chrissie Hynde had already lived a counter-cultural rock and roll lifetime before the Pretenders released their classic debut LP in 1980. That may have been one reason why her singing always had the stately gravitas of an old-soul, even when she was telling you...

The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde mingles jazz grooves and psychedelic experimentation on her new cover of the Kinks’ 1967 song “No Return.”

The track opens with a wash of static, building to a Bossa nova drum pattern and atmospheric piano. “If I could see/ Just how lonely my life would be/ If you passed me by and said farewell/ And there is no return,” Hynde gently croons. “Stars would shine no more/ I would walk up and down this lonely room/ I would have friends, but be alone/ For there is no return.

The Kinks groundbreaking 1969 LP Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) is being re-released on October 25th as a four-disc deluxe edition to commemorate the album’s 50th anniversary. It will feature a remastered edition of the original album in stereo and mono, bonus tracks, demos, rehearsals, remixes, BBC performances and a lost Dave Davies solo LP from the era.

Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) is an ambitious concept album about a British carpet-layer, who moves to Australia after World War II.

The newly-minted rock duo, Cherie Currie and Brie Darling, unveiled a boisterous cover of the Kinks’ 1984 track, “Do It Again,” set to appear on their upcoming album, The Motivator, out August 2nd via Blue Élan Records.

Kinks frontman Ray Davies wrote “Do It Again” about the band’s constant touring schedule, but its depiction of the ceaseless churn of the day-to-day will be familiar to anyone who’s felt stuck in a dreary work or life cycle. On their cover of the song, Currie and Darling capture this blend of...

The Kinks have been teasing fans about a reunion that never seems to materialize for the greater part of the past decade, but it’s now finally happening. In a 2018 interview with Channel 4 News in England, Ray Davies said he was recording a “new Kinks record” with his brother Dave Davies and original Kinks drummer Mick Avory. “The trouble is, the two remaining members, my brother Dave and Mick, never got along very well,” Ray said. “But I’ve made that work in the studio and it’s fired...

Chrissie Hynde slides into a smooth French croon with her version of “Que Reste-t-il De nos Amours?”, the 1942 Chanson song by Charles Trenet. Throughout the breezy track, Hynde sweetly sings over jazzy piano, billowing strings, brushed drums and upright bass.

“Que Reste-t-il De nos Amours?” appears on the Pretenders singer’s upcoming covers LP, Valve Bone Woe, which also features jazz-inspired takes on songs from the Beach Boys (“Caroline No”), Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, Nick Drake, Charles Mingus (“Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters”) and Ray Davies, among others.

One of 1994’s heaviest albums was also one of its strangest. Released on June 21st of that year, Betty, the third full-length from NYC four-piece Helmet, retained the huge staccato riffs, free-form solos and supple vocal hooks that had helped make their prior album, 1992’s Meantime, into a period classic and unlikely MTV hit. But this time around, the band dialed up the weirdness, adding sly funk elements, surrealistic lyrics, a deconstructed jazz standard and unsettlingly wholesome cover art into the mix.

“I think I adopted a stance from the...

The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde unveiled a striking interpretation of Charles Mingus’ “Meditation on a Pair Of Wire Cutters,” set to appear on her upcoming album, Valve Bone Woe, out September 6th via via BMG.

The song finds Hynde and the Valve Bone Woe Ensemble condensing Mingus’ 23-minute original into a hypnotic three-minute tune moored by an assortment of drums and other percussion, as well as the guiding thunk of Mingus’ own instrument, the upright bass. Atop the rumble, Hynde’s choral vocals waft amidst a mix of woodwinds, horns and reverb-soaked guitar.

The band Traffic has probably been getting its heaviest web traffic ever this past week, thanks to the use of a 50-year-old song, “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” that plays briefly but inescapably in the first 10 minutes of the superhero epic. It’s the most prominent of the handful of pop songs that show up during the three-hour running time, at least before an even older oldie, from 1945, brings up the end credits.

And boomers who are well familiar with the Traffic tune as an FM staple for the last half-century may not be that much less initially puzzled by its appearance than millennials: Why isSteve Winwood warbling aboard the starship Benatar?

(Warning: Our answers include mild thematic spoilers, for the hundred or so arthouse partisans and shut-ins who haven’t seen the film.)

Of all the movies you might walk out of saying, “Man, music supervisor Dave Jordan really earned his salary on that one,...

Fans of the legendary British rock outfit Spinal Tap were given a rare treat Saturday night as the band’s core trio reunited for a rare acoustic performance following the Tribeca Film Festival’s 35th anniversary screening of the landmark documentary “This Is Spinal Tap.”

David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls delivered a hit-packed set complete with a special guest appearance by Elvis Costello on a rousing rendition of the “Gimme Some Money” — a hit from the band’s pre-Tap mop-top Thamesman period — that had the capacity crowd at New York’s Beacon Theatre singing along with pure glee. Marty Dibergi, the director who captured Spinal Tap in all its early 1980s glory, was also on hand for the post-screening, pre-performance Q&A.

The all-acoustic performance magnified the amazing musicianship of the Tap troika that was so often overshadowed by pyrotechnics and over-the-top props on stage. A band...

Chrissie Hynde has announced a new covers album. Valve Bone Woe will be released on September 6th and is available for pre-order. Produced by Marius De Vries and Eldad Guetta and recorded with the Valve Bone Woe Ensemble, the LP features Hynde’s jazz-tipped renditions of songs from a range of artists, including the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, Nick Drake, Charlie Mingus, Ray Davies and others.

“I’m not hugely interested in branching out into other musical genres, being a devout rock singer and such, but jazz is...

Just over 50 years since the landmark album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society came out, it’s been certified gold in the U.K. The award means that the LP has sold more than 100,000 copies in the band’s native country. It’s still uncertified in the United States, where it would take half a million copies sold to earn a gold plaque.

“This is like what they give somebody when they retire,” Ray Davies said when he was receiving the plaque, in an ITV featurette about the album.

Head Over Heels, the Broadway musical currently playing at the Hudson Theatre in New York City, is based on a 16th-century prose poem of mistaken identity and jealous lovers that was later turned into a play, The Arcadia. But everyone really knows it as “the Go-Go’s musical” since the upbeat production features all the hits from the pioneering all-female group. It’s one of those meta-mashups that can take some time to get into but, once you do, there’s plenty of fun times to be had while upending the patriarchy.

Editors’ Pick: Robyn, Honey

Following a rough patch in her personal life with her first album in eight years, Robyn relaxes the tempos and relentless hook-slinging to let healing, rapturous dancefloor grooves take over. Her beats are more seductive and experimental, the reverence for classic disco and house more explicit, the bliss more redemptive. It’s a perfect night of clubbing reimagined as a very artful pop record. Will Hermes

Read Our Feature: Robyn Reborn

Read Our Review: Robyn Lets the Grooves Take Over on the Excellent Honey

Thom Yorke,...

These days, when Ray Davies listens to his band’s masterstroke, 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, it’s with “a bit of misery.” The frustration he was feeling at age 23, when he wrote it, is still fresh: The Kinks were banned from playing in the U.S. following a dustup with the musicians’ union in 1966, forcing him to “withdraw” into Englishness until 1969. But on the other hand, he also takes pride in the quaint stories and complex arrangements he wrote for each of the LP’s...

Around the time Dave Davies scored a hit in 1967 with “Death of a Clown,” he had a spiritual awakening and began questioning mortality. The lyrics of the song, which he co-wrote with his brother and Kinks bandmate Ray Davies, tells of a performer who has lost his spark but must go on with the show anyway. “We all wear masks, pretending to be something we’re not,” he says now. “‘Death of a Clown’ was kind of a trigger point saying, ‘What the hell am I doing? Am I just a clown,...

The Kinks meditate on lazy days and mortality in “Time Song,” an unreleased track that’s on the band’s upcoming 50th anniversary edition of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, out October 26th via BMG.

“Time lives our lives with us, walks side by side with us/ Time is so far from us, but time is among us,” frontman Ray Davies croons on the song over a slow, hazy waltz of acoustic guitar and piano. “Time is ahead of us, above and below us/ Is standing beside...

“What a great opener, ‘Hello, I love you, tell me your name,'” the Doors‘ drummer John Densmore says. “Like, whoa, Ok. That’s aggressive. You’re in love with me but you don’t know my credentials?”

He laughs and says that kind of pickup line was not frontman Jim Morrison’s style at all, even if he did write the lyrics. “He was sort of ‘Southern shy,'” the drummer says. “Well, if he got loaded, he got a little more open – a little too open sometimes.” But...

Ray Davies set the rock world aflutter late in June when he casually seemed to say that the Kinks were getting back together — and then characteristically undercut his comment by saying they’d be reuniting at the pub. Mark Goodman and Alan Light of SiriusXM’s “Debatable” grilled Davies on the subject today, asking him directly whether the famously fractious group, helmed by Ray and his younger brother Dave since 1963, are actually sorting out their differences and getting back together for the first time since 1996 — and as he’d said, reuniting with founding drummer Mick Avory for the first time since the early 1980s.

“We’ve got nothing to sort out — we’ll never get on!” Davies replied, referencing Dave and Avory. “But if we acknowledge that, we can make good music, because [Dave] is an outstanding guitar player. I still love winding [Dave] up,” he laughed. “I tried winding Gary up,...

In characteristically whimsical fashion, Kinks frontman Ray Davies told the BBC Monday that the group will be getting back together to record a new album after more than 20 years apart — although he seemed to hedge his bets by taking a call from drummer Mick Avory during the interview and saying he would see him in the pub later, then quipping: “The Kinks are getting back together…in the pub at least.”

However, Davies, 74, said during the interview with Channel 4 News (watch the video below) that he was “making a new Kinks album” with brother Dave Davies and Mick Avory.

“We’ve been talking about it because I’ve got all these songs that I wrote, then the band — not broke up, we parted company — and I think it’s kind of an appropriate time to do it.” A rep for Davies had no further information on a Kinks reunion.

By Darren Allison

Vocalion have the rare ability to continuously satisfy. Not only does the label re-connect us to the past with essential CD reissues, but also through re-recordings of long forgotten and often overlooked classics. Vocalion’s three latest CD releases continue to exemplify these principles, and all with a certain sense of style.

Themes from The Exorcist (1974) and Flashpoint (1975) are two albums from Ray Davies and the Button Down Brass. As albums, they formed part of an essential collective, an audio treasury that would find their way into the hands of young and enthusiastic kids, particularly of those who displayed an early interest and love of both cinema and TV. They were usually the affordable route; a few weeks pocket money would often result in one of these albums making it into the comforting domain of your bedroom. Sat alongside your Geoff Love compilations, they would provide countless hours of repeated enjoyment.

There were many ways to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Star Wars yesterday, but none quite as fun as a good old-fashioned "Weird Al" jam. Al shared his 1981 demo for his hit Star Wars parody song "Yoda" from the Dare to be Stupid album released in 1985. The demo first popped up on the Dr. Demento Radio Show in 1981 and it had the instrumentation Al was using at the time, meaning that the song is performed on an accordion and uses hand farts and a suitcase for percussion. The song was written after Al saw The Empire Strikes Back and is told through the eyes of Jedi-in-training, Luke Skywalker.

"Weird Al" released the demo for "Yoda" on his official YouTube account for the 40th anniversary of A New Hope and also to promote his epic box set that contains all of his 14 studio albums and a separate album of rarities. The...