thu 30/10/2025

New Music Interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Johnny Marr

Nick Hasted

Johnny Marr’s second single as a solo artist, New Town Velocity, describes his youthful propulsion by pop music in grey late Seventies Manchester towards a bright, boundless future he duly reached with The Smiths. It surely also describes the renewed energy he’s drawn from being back in his home city after five years in Portland, Oregon.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Frank Turner

Lisa-Marie Ferla

In a world of reality television show winners and interchangeable flash-in-the-pan singer-songwriter critical darlings, Frank Turner stands apart as the real deal. Over the past 18 months, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that Turner had appeared as if from nowhere and his name was suddenly everywhere.

Read more...

10 Questions for Russell Smith of Terminal Cheesecake

Thomas H Green

In the late Eighties one of the most sonically unhinged bands of all time came together in East London. Terminal Cheesecake caused few commercial waves but gathered a devoted coterie of fans for their unholy racket at pummelling concerts.

Read more...

10 Questions for The Duckworth Lewis Method

Adam Sweeting

It's four years almost to the day since The Duckworth Lewis Method released their first album, a whimsical batch of songs about the myths and mysteries of cricket. It earned them a kind of nichey notoriety among cricket fans and was an eccentric treat for devotees of the duo behind the project, The Divine Comedy's mastermind Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh of Dublin-based pop band Pugwash.

Read more...

10 Questions for Musician & Comedian Reggie Watts

James Williams

Equal parts prodigiously talented musician, consistently funny comedian, auteur, theatre performer, free thinker and writer, Reggie Watts is nigh on impossible to pigeonhole. He is a hurricane of furious creativity operating completely in his own lane, hurtling full-speed towards Parts Unknown. Primarily known for his inimitable blend of improvisational music and comedy, each show he performs is completely original, never to be repeated.

Read more...

10 Questions for Musician Cerys Matthews

Jasper Rees

“He who sings frightens away his ills.” Cerys Matthews has spent a lifetime heeding the wise counsel of Don Quixote. Born at the tailend of the Sixties, she grew up in the Welsh tradition of musical surroundsound before veering right into the heart of Britpop as the wailing amber-topped siren of Catatonia. Four albums and many stadium triumphs later, the painful break-up more than a decade ago was fed through the distorting prism of the tabloids.

Read more...

10 Questions for Internet Broadcaster Jamal Edwards

joe Muggs

In six and a half years of existence, SBTV has redefined what youth culture broadcasting can be. It began as nothing more than a YouTube channel where Jamal Edwards would put up videos he had filmed of his favourite grime MCs – but his natural ambition and charm ensured it kept expanding from that base.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Steve Earle

Adam Sweeting

A renaissance man from Texas? Hell yeah. Loosely pegged as "country singer" when he struck out for Nashville in the late Seventies, where he survived on a series of odd jobs before landing himself a songwriting job with a music publisher, the mature Steve Earle has blossomed creatively in all directions. Were he to use business cards, which I can't imagine somehow, he could justifiably bill himself as singer, songwriter, actor, playwright, novelist and political activist.

Read more...

Interview: Hariharan

Peter Culshaw

Hariharan gives the appearance at least of being fabulously laid-back when I meet him in the lobby of one of Mumbai’s top five star hotels. Wearing a jaunty hat, he is recognised by a lot of passers-by, and when he orders a cappuccino HH is fashioned artfully from chocolate in the foam (see photo below right).

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Nick Rhodes

Thomas H Green

Nick Rhodes (b 1962) is a founding member of the group Duran Duran. Their synthesizer player and driving force, he is the sole member to have been in every incarnation of the band. Duran Duran started in Birmingham in 1978 when Rhodes was only 16, a post-punk synth-pop act indebted to Roxy Music and David Bowie.

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
It’s back to the beginning for the latest Dylan Bootleg

The youthful subject of A Complete Unknown, which closes with him ‘going electric’ at Newport as the culmination of a...

Ireland's Hilary Woods casts a hypnotic spell with...

Night CRIÚ evokes clandestine ceremonies in forest glades, covert rituals taking place in the depths of a cave. Crepuscular and ghostly,...

Hedda, Orange Tree Theatre review - a monument reimagined, p...

Hedda Gabler is a Hollywood star of The Golden Age – or rather, she was. She walked off the set of two movies into a five-film...

theartsdesk Q&A: director Kelly Reichardt on 'The M...

Kelly Reichardt has a thing about losers. You often see them in her films. It's the failure of American individualism that concerns her...

Emma Doran, Leicester Square Theatre review - domestic life...

The Irish diaspora in London were out in force for Emma Doran’s appearance at Leicester Square Theatre. Her online work and her...

Lily Allen's 'West End Girl' offers a bloody,...

Even in our garish online age, most celebrities and...

The Assembled Parties, Hampstead review - a rarity, a well-m...

There’s a line in the late Richard Greenberg’s 2013 play that refers to a recently elected showbiz type turned politician who sports...

theartsdesk Q&A: director Stefano Sollima on the relevan...

In his celebrated TV-series Gomorrah (based on the bestseller of the same name by author Roberto Saviano) Italian director...

Blu-ray: Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy is a road movie with a...