Culture

Ashanti says she is re-recording her debut album, which turns 25 next year, in order to own her masters, and describes the new version as sonically clearer while keeping the same classic feel. Her Australian tour opens in Perth on 9 November, and she says her baby son will travel with her.

Chicago house artist Peven Everett, 51, best known for the anthem Gabriel with Roy Davis Jr, discusses his career, his recovery after a stage four lung cancer diagnosis two years ago, and a new documentary by Denholm Hewlett about his life and prolific self-released catalogue.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Kate Hutchinson

Mac DeMarco played the first of two sold-out Carnegie Hall shows, a two-and-a-half-hour career-spanning set mixing melancholic songcraft with comic stage antics. The review argues his sober, matured songwriting stands out, even as he keeps playing the giddy fool.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Larry Fitzmaurice

Bleachers frontman and in-demand pop producer Jack Antonoff talks about survivor's guilt over his sister's death, his confessional songwriting, his Live Nation ticket-price dispute, and performing songs about a marriage that has now ended.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Alexis Petridis

Ipswich grime-metal artist Native James is profiled for blending nu-metal riffs with rap and a Black British perspective, shown on Fallen and his latest single Never Been Scared. He has played Glastonbury and Download and won One to Watch at the Independent Music Awards, alongside a roundup of other recommended new tracks.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Olive Pometsey

More than 600 Brazilian pop fan groups, from Billie Eilish to Anitta, mobilised online for Lula within hours of Flávio Bolsonaro winning the first round. The push grew into a site teaching fans how to campaign and helped fill Avenida Paulista, where organisers claimed over a million people, ahead of the 25 October runoff.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Felipe Maia

Superfan's Kali Flanagan was 18 when Julian Casablancas pulled him from an open mic to support the Strokes in Colorado, solo. Now 21, he's made My Piledriver Heart, a set of miniature coming-of-age stories built on drop-tuned acoustic guitars he calls "acousticellos" and cello work from Omeed Almassi.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Archie Forde and Ben Beaumont-Thomas

At 16 this writer read Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon back to back and stopped finding literature distant and slightly dead. Years later, Holden Caulfield went from whiny rich kid to a character who shattered them.

— via The Guardian: Culture, John Green

Paul McCartney texted Sam Mendes to complain that a promo shot made Harris Dickinson's John Lennon look taller than Paul Mescal's McCartney. Mendes blamed camera angles, but the panic fits decades of McCartney quietly rewriting his own legend.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Stuart Heritage

Duane "Keffe D" Davis gets 40 years to life for orchestrating Tupac Shakur's 1996 murder, closing a case that sat cold for decades. His own memoir and media boasts, not physical evidence, became the confession prosecutors used to convict him.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Uwa Ede-Osifo

Jess Williamson borrows a Joan Didion title to soundtrack her own LA ambivalence, swapping the glitchy drum programming of her breakout record for banjo, strings and a thick Texas drawl. The traditionalism sometimes dulls her edge, but the album's sparest moments turn plain country into something unsettling.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Aimee Cliff

Four songs, under 10 minutes, and a demand to start your own band: Exeter trio Pushbike's Little Bastard EP channels DC post-hardcore grit and Boyracer twee into fuzzy, throat-stripping hooks. Plus new tracks from Uniiqu3, Slayyyter and more.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Huw Baines, Michael Cragg and Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Haley Joel Osment spent three weeks freezing in the Japanese mountains to star in the Avalanches' first film, a 35-minute fever dream about memory, advertising and a giant iPod. The Sixth Sense star, it turns out, is a diehard fan who talked his way onto a shoot nobody quite knew how to make.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Jason Lamphier

This horror anthology's five shorts range from stop-motion puppet revenge to a narcotic-fuelled music producer chasing the perfect scream, hosted by Gwar cracking dad jokes in full costume. The gore is rubbery, the gags are hit-or-miss, and quality swings wildly from short to short.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Leslie Felperin

A detective hunts a missing singer in a storm-abandoned town where payphones save your game and cost a dollar to use. Rotoscoped noir visuals, breakable knives and a Badalamenti-Vangelis soundtrack turn a familiar point-and-click formula into something stranger.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Keith Stuart

Liz Harris calls her solo Grouper project "a bloodletting," but with her band Helen she says she finally gets to stop crying in the corner. Ahead of sold-out Town Hall shows, she explains why a ghost from her childhood, a volcano and a friendship fuel her most collective record yet.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Jenn Pelly

A copyright lawsuit accuses Grammy winner Olivia Dean's track I've Seen It of ripping off Bill Withers' Just the Two of Us, down to the melody. The catalogue owner hired a musicologist to back the claim and wants an injunction, though Dean herself isn't even named as a defendant.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Ramon Antonio Vargas