angst

As a singer and songwriter, Alanis Morissette has one of the most distinctive voices in rock ’n’ roll. Her raw, quirky, brainy lyrics, idiosyncratic diction and powerfully expressive range mean that nobody in the universe sings quite like her. But if you subscribe to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there’s another universe somewhere in which everybody — whether teen, adult, male, female or nonbinary — sings just like Alanis Morissette.“Jagged Little Pill,” the Tony-winning musical inspired by…

Muse’s Matt Bellamy has been writing songs about a dystopian near-future for years, so it seemed strange when, well into the age of Trump and Brexit, he reined in his lyrical excesses for 2018’s Simulation Theory. He has rediscovered his paranoid mojo for the band’s ninth album – and how… Will of the People confronts variously the rise of populism and dictatorships (the title track), wildfires, earthquakes, Covid and, well, everything (We Are Fucking Fucked, presciently written before Liz Truss declared her candidacy for…

Unlike his SoundCloud rap progenitors, the Kid Laroi isn’t in the business of lowercase sadness, but brutally attention-claiming capital letters: like his song titles, he loudly styles it LAROI. Since his ascent in 2019, the 18-year-old Kamilaroi rapper has collaborated with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Machine Gun Kelly and Justin Bieber, making nine-figure streams sprinting towards the billions look like light work.At the first of two headline shows at Brixton Academy, he sweats out his setlist like a fever, tearing…

‘I feel the bones of how we used to be,” sings Sophie Allison on her third album as Soccer Mommy. It’s not a reference to her creative process – it’s the opening line of a song about a failing relationship – but it does feel oddly apropos the music she makes. At 25, Allison is more of an indie traditionalist than most of her US alt-rock peers. Her sound comes unsullied by diversions into glossy 80s synth-pop, faux R&B or knowing pastiches of 70s singer-songwriter soft rock. It has thus far stuck to a template rooted…