Dave Ball obituary
One half of the synth-pop duo Soft Cell best known for its No 1 single Tainted Love
‘I don’t make it easy for myself’: divorce and desire power Lily Allen’s autofictional comeback
The singer has brought her seven-year music hiatus to an end with a new album, West End Girl
Add to playlist: the spiky, playful free jazz of Laura Ann Singh and the week’s best new tracks
A rowdy debut departs from Singh’s American bolero work to revel in the chaos of atonal scrapes, cymbal splashes, wonky horns and raucous vocals
Jennifer Walton: Daughters review – a stylish and painful debut
Fiction, folk and a devastating diagnosis feature in the producer and DJ’s literary penmanship, her gentle, gothic vocals thick with morbid, magical thinking
Lily Allen: West End Girl – a gobsmacking autopsy of marital betrayal
Allen’s first album in seven years traces the fallout from an open relationship, but as well as being cathartic and candid, these stylistically varied songs have melodies that sparkle
‘It’s scary how many St George’s flags there were’: Blood Orange on coming home to Essex and mourning his mother
After grief brought Dev Hynes home, he reconsidered the county that shaped him. The result is a masterful new album – made with a little help from Lorde and Zadie Smith
The Guardian view on live music: a scheme to spread the sound around deserves support
Editorial: More gigs would be a good thing, and a voluntary £1 levy for grassroots venues could help
Dave Ball was not some bloke in the background of Soft Cell – he drove their startling, subversive sound
Far more than a mute foil to Marc Almond, Ball brought his love of northern soul and strange electronics to bear on some of Britain’s most uncompromising pop
Dave Ball, synth-pop hitmaker as one half of Soft Cell, dies aged 66
Synth player and producer had huge success with Tainted Love and other Soft Cell hits, and later returned to UK Top 10 with dance project the Grid
Indie rising stars the Belair Lip Bombs: ‘We don’t want to regret not giving it a proper crack’
The Australian band’s second album, Again, is among the year’s best, put out by Jack White’s Third Man Records. This time, they say, ‘it’s cool being part of a record release where people are going to hear it’
‘At night, his guitar comes into my mind’: Amadou and Mariam’s surviving singer on life after losing her husband and musical partner
As Amadou and Mariam, the blind couple tenaciously carved out a career as one of Africa’s biggest global acts. Now, after Amadou’s death this year, his wife tells the story of their first posthumous album
Post your questions for Mavis Staples
As the 86-year-old music legend prepares to release a new album, she will take on your questions
‘I was working as a cook when it went to No 1’: how Norman Greenbaum made Spirit in the Sky
‘My label said a four-minute single with lyrics about Jesus would never get played on radio. But, in 1969, the song sold two million copies. It’s now been No 1 in three different decades’
The Uncool by Cameron Crowe review – inside rock’s wildest decade
From shadowing a cocaine-addled David Bowie to winning over Joni Mitchell, deliciously readable tales by the director of Almost Famous
‘Everyone seems to be on Zimmers’: after 70 years of hip-shaking thrills, is rock’n’roll dead?
It is now seven decades since Little Richard sang Tutti Frutti – and a rip-roaring new type of music burst out into the world. But is rock’n’roll about to die out? Our writer goes searching for signs of life