The Ordinary Boys are named after a The Smiths song. But which of your band’s tracks did Morrissey include on his ‘Songs to Save Your Life’ CD that he curated for NME in 2004?

“‘(Little) Bubble’.”

CORRECT.

“I think we were only on there because we were stroking his ego by calling ourselves The Ordinary Boys!”

“Alain Whyte [former Morrissey guitarist and songwriting partner]’s band are doing some gigs in California, where I’ve been living for the last three years, and I’ve been asked to sing for it – and be the Left-Wing Morrissey! Which is what I like to think of myself as these days anyway. Hopefully, I can fit it around my other commitments. Though I’m so disgusted by Morrissey’s politics, the music is deeply rooted in me and part of my life and musical journey – and I’m still proud of the tours we did with him. I’ve got a copy of ‘You Are the Quarry’ signed by everyone in the band, including Morrissey. ‘Vauxhall And I’ is a perfect record – and in competition for my favourite album of all-time.”

Moz cherrypicked The Ordinary Boys to play when he oversaw Meltdown Festival in 2004.

“We first played Later… With Jools Holland in 2004 with Morrisey and I was terrified. I went up to him and said, ‘Hello Morrissey, I’m Preston’. He replied: [adopts Moz’s withering tone] ‘Yes, I know who you are’. That was perfect! But he was very kind when we played with him.  I never saw him to do any of these diva-ish things he’s sometimes accused of.”

“I feel Morrissey was a surrogate father figure in the way that he [his music] taught me about the world, and I don’t believe that I was misrepresenting his lyrics. I think he just soured. John Lydon too. As someone who’s spent his life loving punk, it’s unimaginable to see them go down that pipeline.”

An easy one: which frontman did you interview for a 2004 ‘Heroes’ issue of NME, where bands met their idols?

“We asked for Morrisey, but at the last minute, Franz Ferdinand decided they wanted him. So we had Paul Weller.”

CORRECT.

“Who was also great. He made me an amazing mixtape that opened my mind to Northern Soul. On our second album, ‘Brassbound’, we were trying to make music for an audience that had appeared based on that NME front cover. It was a difficult record for us to make and a strange one. We had started as a hardcore band, and then our first album ‘Over the Counter Culture’ was written in a week as ‘Let’s try a Britpop thing’. Although I’m still proud of ‘Brassbound’, it was coloured by us trying to make a record for a fanbase that we didn’t understand yet.”

Name either of the two characters you played, as a child, in the 1992 series Jim Henson’s Mother Goose Stories.

“I was the son of the King who bumped his head in one of them, and was I The Knave of Hearts?”

CORRECT. The show featured puppets mixed with child actors telling the stories behind nursery rhymes. You portrayed The Knave of Hearts in ‘The Queen of Hearts’ and ‘Prince Freddy’ in ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’.

“We filmed all around Europe and with the money I earned from it, I bought my first electric guitar aged six. Without that, I would have never got into this mess! [Laughs] As a kid, I wanted to be a puppeteer and would make my own silicone puppets and moulds. I auditioned for other Jim Henson projects. I almost got Muppets Treasure Island, and I also auditioned for The Witches as the main kid – and got close to getting it.”

In the 2007 film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is heard in the common room of which of the four houses of Hogwarts?

“I have no idea. My six-year-old nephew would be very upset with me for getting this wrong! Slytherin?”

WRONG. Gryffindor.

“I’ve never seen the film. When they came out, I was in my real asshole rock-star mode and would say, I’m an adult and those books are for children, so I won’t engage. Lots of things I said during that era, I wouldn’t stand by, but that I probably would! [Laughs]”

What horror creature did Cher dress as when she performed ‘Dressed to Kill’, her cover of your 2009 solo single, on her 2014 tour of the same name?

“A vampire?”

CORRECT. Similar to your vampire-themed 2009 promo video.

“Every now and then, I think I should have released the solo album but I don’t know what was going on then. I keep threatening to throw the whole unreleased record up on SoundCloud and I might do it soon.”

One of its tracks, ‘Heart Skips a Beat’, ended up as a UK chart-topper for Olly Murs in 2011.

“A few of those songs got placed in the end and it led me to the journey of songwriting which has been the best thing that ever happened to me.”

You’ve written for the likes of Kylie and Jessie Ware. Any tracks you’re proudest of?

“There’s a song I did called ‘Pookie’ by the K-pop band FIFTY FIFTY which I think is really good, and another I think is great is ‘Is It Really Me You’re Missing?’ by Nina Nesbitt, which Rihanna was going to sing at one point.”

You also co-wrote the late Liam Payne’s 2019 cut ‘Live Forever’.

“The wild story about that is I’d had an accident [in 2017] where, because I was drunk and took too many Ambiens, I fell off a fourth floor balcony and nearly died. I broke every bone in my body. I wrote a song about it, ‘Live Forever’, at a songwriting camp a year after the accident. Liam heard it and ended up cutting it. The whole song is about me falling off this balcony and nearly dying. Then obviously what happened to him happened…”

In 2024, Payne died at the age of 31 after falling from a third-floor balcony at a hotel…

“It was an absolute gut-punch – a horrible thing that happened. I would go round to his flat and we would write songs and all the lyrics would be about how difficult he was finding everything. Sometimes being a songwriter is like a therapy session.”

When you appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, in a task involving the 11 housemates ranking themselves in order of fame, what number did you place yourself as?

“I reckon I would have put myself quite low. 11? Or ten?”

CORRECT. Tenth. Maggot from Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin Chain was 11th.

“With Big Brother, I genuinely believed that I could get inside the machine and control it from the inside. I didn’t realise how vapid and ridiculous the world of celebrity is, so I think maybe indie and the mainstream are never meant to combine. Maybe they are milk and orange juice – and that’s a good thing. Part of me being a songwriter for the past nearly-20-years was to prove that I could be a successful musician without having to be a ‘celebrity’ or even put my name to a project.”

Can you name the audience member “lookalike” who replaced you when you famously walked off an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2007?

“No idea.”

WRONG. Ed Seymor was brought out of the audience after host Simon Amstell sneeringly read extracts from your then-spouse Chantelle Houghton’s memoir Living the Dream.

“I was always confused about why everyone was angry with me sticking up for my wife, who was in the audience, to this posh guy. It was classist punching-down. If it happened now, people would be horrified, so I stand by it.”

“It was a turbulent time. The chaos and cruelty of the media at that time affected me. My phone was being hacked which made me suspicious of everyone. The papers would print, say, a picture of me and say: ‘Here’s Preston looking fat today’. It was just sniping and sadly, enough people have killed themselves because of it since then that people are starting to think that maybe it isn’t nice to hurl abuse at people in the papers and across the internet. I still feel we’ve got a long way to go – it feels very medieval out there.”

You’ve written songs for K-pop titans TOMORROW X TOGETHER, including ‘Higher Than Heaven’. Name all five of their band members.

“Nope! [Laughs] I could with some of the K-pop bands, but TXT, I only know them as a unit. I do like them and I really like the stuff I’ve done with them.”

WRONG. Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, Hueningkai.

“I’m ADHD, so writing K-pop songs suits me because it moves from one section to the other very quickly.”

What was the name of your “voodoo deity” from your 2007 Channel 4 documentary The Beginner’s Guide to Voodoo?  

“Fuck! I wish I could remember that. When I’m with people who don’t know me as Preston from The Ordinary Boys, one of my favourite things to say is I’m ordained as a voodoo priest! [Laughs] At that time, I would suddenly find myself doing things like this, not remembering to having agreed to them.”

WRONG. Your own voodoo deity was called Mamicica, who liked flowers, biscuits, perfume and tobacco.

“I wouldn’t have remembered that in a million years!”

In which sitcom does Matt Berry’s character look at a CD of yours and boggle: ‘The Ordinary Boys? Where do they get these crazy names?!’’

“The IT Crowd.”

CORRECT. The scene, involving Berry’s character Douglas Reynholm, appears in the series 2 episode ‘Smoke and Mirrors’.

“I met Matt Berry in what used to be the Ace Hotel London Shoreditch, and he was surprised at my knowledge of British comedy! Gavin & Stacey also referenced us, which was funny.”

Now, after a ten year hiatus, The Ordinary Boys are back with a new single ‘Peer Pressure’.

“It was purposefully like: ‘Let’s write an Ordinary Boys song in 2026 and see what it would sound like’. It’s heading towards an album, which we’ve already recorded half of. Lyrically, I’m curious how far I can push it in imagining what The Ordinary Boys’ ‘Over the Counter Culture’ would sound like in 2026. We were a political band with social commentary.  Now we have the manosphere, the alt-right pipeline, billionaires. AI – the world is a much richer place with things to be pissed off about. For humanity, that’s bad news, but for The Ordinary Boys, it’s good because it means we can write lots of songs!”

Bonus question! For an extra half-point: Mr Blobby features in the video to The Ordinary Boys/Olly Murs festive 2025 single ‘Christmas Starts Tonight’. How many weeks did Mr Blobby’s self-titled 1993 novelty single spend at Number One in the UK charts?

“He was the Italian brain rot of the ‘90s, so five?”

WRONG. Three.

“Next time he releases a single, he has to do better! The guy inside the Blobby suit is a big Ordinary Boys fan and brought his Blobby-guitar and we jammed afterwards. They say never meet your heroes, but in that instance, it worked out perfectly!”

The verdict: 6/10

“If that was a Rotten Tomatoes score, I don’t think I would go and see the movie!”

The Ordinary Boys’ new single ‘Peer Pressure’ is out now. For full band tour dates, see here.

The post The Ordinary Boys’ Preston: “I’m ordained as a voodoo priest!” appeared first on NME.

We meet Kneecap backstage at Kingston’s Circuit ahead of an intimate album launch show on St George’s Day (no reader, they do not celebrate). It’s been about a year and half since we last spoke. “A pretty uneventful few months I must say,” jokes Mo Chara, given the lifetime of headlines and controversy the Belfast rap trio have packed into that time, and the hours he spent in front of a judge for a now thrown-out terrorism charge at the hands of the UK government.

They fought the case with everything they had, and now again with their bold and ballsy new album ‘Fenian‘ – the term itself an act of defiance. “It originally came from Irish folklore,” Móglaí Bap offers. “It was a band of warriors in old Irish stories that date back 1,500 years. Then it was repurposed for several rebellions during the 18th and 19th Century, then in modern times it was used as a derogatory slur for Irish nationalists. When you call someone a ‘fenian’, you’re suggesting that they’re backwards or uncivilised. In the North or when Irish people came to London, they’d say ‘You Fenian…’.”

We assure Kneecap that swearing is acceptable on NME.

“C**t,” calmly offers the balaclava-clad DJ Próvaí. Fair enough. Now reclaiming ‘Fenian’ as a synonym for “the warrior”, Kneecap are once again showing that the most feared weapon in their arsenal is “the power of language,” as Móglaí Bap tells us, flipping how “certain language is used when you have a coloniser country and an oppressed people”.

Fresh from the hype around their stellar debut album ‘Fine Art‘ and acclaimed BAFTA-winning self-titled biopic, the band told us that they were making good progress with their sophomore record back in summer 2024, but it seems life had other plans. Their standard pro-Gaza rhetoric lead by the messaging of “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine” caught the attention of the wider world – and Sharon Osbourne – when they played Coachella 2025, causing one hell of a shit-storm and chain reaction that would lead to the terror charge from a past London gig and for the three trouble-starters to become a divisive talking point.

A whole album was scrapped, and they decamped to Streatham in London to spend two months on fresh material with “eccentric scientist” Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C., Wet Leg, Foals) to bring out “a musical complexity” to match the drama that was playing out in the headlines and the scale of attention the band were getting.

“Obviously we had the court case during all this and the Wembley Arena concert during the seven weeks we were in the studio,” recalls Móglaí Bap. “Dan was at the gig and trying to find sounds that would fill those rooms”.

“It hit that next level up as a more mature-sounding album, but still authentic to Kneecap,” Mo Chara continued. “Most artists when making an album maybe have most of it written or are able to go to the studio and lock themselves away for a few months, whereas we were getting dragged on the news to the magistrates court and had Wembley, which was a huge deal at the time. These things that should have been a hindrance on paper, it was more of an inspiration on the album.”

Watch our full interview with the band at the top of the page, or read on below as Kneecap open up about their battle with the government, the real issue of anti-Semitism, balancing their personal with the political on their best album yet, and who might play their pal Keir Starmer in the sequel to their movie.

NME: Hello Kneecap. The crosshairs really zoomed in on you after Coachella. How would you describe how things were going for you guys before and after that?

Mo Chara: “Things were obviously going very well. Things went well after Coachella as well. We never did anything different at Coachella – it’s the same gig we did all year. Obviously, we were in America, and there were thousands of young Americans shouting ‘Free Palestine’. The mainstream media in America have tried to hide away the Palestinian movement. There was no disguising the fact that there were young Americans in solidarity with Palestine, and that was something that the mainstream media could not handle.”

DJ Próvaí: “The people who were outside the court were the same people supporting Palestine Action. They saw censorship happening and abuses of power and went, ‘Right, if this is allowed to carry on, then who’s next?’ Not challenging those abuses of power would be a dereliction of their actions. As soon as you try to put a blockade on art and people expressing themselves, then it’s a slippery slope into fascism.”

Do you feel like the dialogue has moved on much? We just had The Strokes use their Coachella headline set to make a statement against the US government and the destruction of the last university in Gaza, and 1,000+ artists pushing to boycott Eurovision over Israel is no small thing…

Móglaí Bap: “The limitations of what bands think they can do has definitely shifted. Even at Coachella, there were other bands who spoke out for Palestine as well, but they weren’t in the news. There has been a shift because there’s more solidarity between the bands. It feels safer to put yourself out there. Before this, it was quite isolating if you spoke out for Palestine. That’s the whole reason for that: to make you feel more insecure in your job.”

As for the court case and the events that led to it: if there’s a potential would-be Kneecap fan out there who wants to be part of this but has a big question mark looming over what happened with the flag and the accusations, is there anything you’d like to say to put it in context?

Mo Chara: “We’ve spoken about this a million times and put out press statements. Let’s just say we don’t pick flags up anymore.”

And you said you don’t always know what’s going on when the lights are down?

Mo Chara: “Oh, Jesus, it’s impossible. It’s hard to even see what’s happening. A gig feels like it’s over before you know it; you fucking barely remember anything. I’m not going to get into it because we’ve talked about it already. Obviously, we won, and we expected to win. It just shows how ludicrous the whole case is. They threw millions of pounds at it, tried for an appeal and lost.

“When you take years and years of gigs and compact it into 20 seconds of a satirical band on stage… You can cut any comedian on Earth into a five-second clip, and they can look like the worst person in the world. You’ve got to put things in context. There’s never ever been an issue at a Kneecap gig, and a Kneecap member has never been convicted of any crime in any country ever, so we’ll start, surely but slowly, moving on.”

With the things you say at the gigs and the atmosphere there, combined with what’s really in the songs and the statements you put out, would you say you’re actually an anti-hate band?

Mo Chara: “Of course. We come from Belfast, we understand sectarian violence, we understand sectarianism, we understand that religious divide serves absolutely nobody. Anti-Semitism is a real issue, and it’s growing at the moment. It’s something that genuinely needs to be talked about and needs to be tackled, but what happens is when you have the Zionist lobby labelling bands and actors as anti-Semitic just because they speak out against Israel, you’re starting to water down that term. We need to be talking about that term a lot more because it’s on the rise all over the world.

“We are obviously not anti-Semitic. I think anyone with any right mind knows that. We don’t stand for any kind of hate at gigs or any kind of fascist ideologies. We’re from Belfast, we’re Irish, it’s not in our nature.”

Was it cool to be enemy of the state for a minute?

Mo Chara: “It’s [DJ Próvai’s] turn next.”

Móglaí Bap: “I think there’s a good tradition of English governments choosing Irish people as enemies, and there’s a good history there of Irish people being criminalised for crimes they never committed. So it’s pretty cool. We’re not the first Irish people to be called terrorists.”

Second albums are difficult enough as it is, but did the pressure enter your mind of all this going on and having to make a statement record that backed up your politics and the headlines?

Mo Chara: “I didn’t see it as pressure. Obviously, we do thrive in the chaos, and sometimes it’s easier to deal with things when it’s so chaotic, and you’re onto the next thing. We understood that there were a lot of eyes on this album. Second album syndrome is quite intense for a lot of bands.

“We knew if you were a Kneecap fan and had been watching what had been going on for the last year, you’d be very disappointed if there was no mention of it in the album. Of course there is, and we wouldn’t let you down.”

It’s an album that’s as political as it is personal. Let’s start with ‘An Ra’, where you thank the UK for their contributions to Irish life: “Jimmy Saville and HP Sauce, now that is a worthy cause”. That’s going to look good on a t-shirt…

Mo Chara: “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

Móglaí Bap: “I love brown sauce, though, on sausages and stuff.”

Mo Chara: “Brown sauce and free healthcare. Other than that, that’s it. We’re keeping that.”

Mo Chara: “It was written as a piss-take about how much we’re going to miss the United Kingdom when we eventually get a United Ireland.”

Móglaí Bap: “The joke is that when colonising countries talk about ‘civilising’ other countries, like they did with Ireland or Kenya – so we’re playing with that idea that we were actually quite civilised before they got there.”

DJ Próvaí: “There’s nothing more civil than genocide.”

Mo Chara: “Jesus Christ, there’s our t-shirt. If you translate the UK into Irish, it’s ‘RA’, which looks like the ‘RA so it’s a play on words for The IRA. We’re expecting people who don’t speak Irish to become outraged, thinking it’s a song about the IRA, when we can actually explain to them that’s actually a love letter for the United Kingdom. We thought you’d like that!”

And with ‘Smugglers & Scholars’, what did you want to tell people about the real Ireland?

Mo Chara: “It’s this idea that Americans have of Ireland that it’s all poetry and clovers, and the line is that it’s actually raincoats and police Land Rovers. That’s the idea that we had of Ireland growing up in an urban setting.”

Móglaí Bap: “It’s a reply to those American movies and what their perception of Ireland is. Wild Mountain Thyme or something. The whole movie, she had dirt on her face.”

Mo Chara: “Christopher Walken is in that and doesn’t even try to do the accent. He knows how shit that film is. Irish Wish with Lindsay Lohan, did you watch that? It’s offensive.”

‘Carnival’ is banger, dealing with your trial and subsequent reaction from the government and media in a very head-on way…

Mo Chara: “The ‘carnival of distraction’ is the term that we ran with. It was unfortunate and against our will, but we became part of that. We became a cog in the wheel of that distraction. Talking about us in that court case did highlight Gaza slightly, but that time spent talking about us could have been spent doing actual journalism and talking about the actual genocide in Gaza.”

Why do you think politicians are so obsessed with artists saying things rather than the origins of what they’ve said?

Mo Chara: “It’s the same thing as why is it more controversial when a band goes on stage compared to a genocidal regime where the prime minister of that country has an arrest warrant against them? We’re not the only people calling it a genocide, the ICJ are. It’s always, ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ They’re never asking politicians if they condemn the IDF.”

DJ Próvaí: “They’re always looking for their column inches as well and trying to latch on to anything in the news.”

Móglaí Bap: “It’s that need for sensationalism. Keir Starmer giving an interview about us playing Glastonbury to The Sun? Why would he do that? That’s weird. He gets to pretend to be outraged about something that doesn’t really have an impact or any repercussions for him, but it makes him look good. We have this dysfunctional symbiotic relationship with politicians.”

You went the mile on this album to write the song ‘Palestine’. How did you tackle the essence of capturing something so profound into a song?

Móglaí Bap: “Obviously, with everything going on, politics was going to be quite important for the album, and we thought it was quite important to have a representation from Palestine on there. We’d heard of Fawzi from Ramallah, and we connected with him. It was something we wanted to develop, to build on that connection between Belfast and Palestine.

“It’s been that way in Ireland for a long time: this international solidarity. Because we’re musicians and artists, this is a way for us to build that bridge. There’s no better people to speak about Palestine than Palestinians.”

One of the most personal songs on the album is ‘Irish Goodbye’, which is about Móglaí Bap’s mother’s depression, taking her own life, and the courage she gave you. What did it mean to you to put that into song, and what did you get out of it?

Móglaí Bap: “When someone passes away, someone close to you, it takes a long time to remember them with nice memories if they’re going through hard times. It’s been five or six years. I didn’t have a plan to make a tune about it, but somebody sent me a documentary with my ma’ in it and us as children. It was the first time I’d seen us happy in a video, and that had a profound effect on me. It helped me remember the happy times, so this song was reflecting on those. All the happy times are the boring, mundane stuff where you miss somebody, never the big moments. It’s always just walking around a park and the small things that become really big.

“It was really nice for me to go back in my memory and recreate that in my head with the song. It was a nice way to reinforce those memories.”

Your parents crop up a couple of times on the record for their activism with the language. There’s been a nearly 400 per cent rise in pupils in Irish-medium education over 25 years, and over 1million active learners on Duolingo learning the language. What does it mean to you when people talk about ‘the Kneecap effect’ with people picking up their native tongue?

Móglaí Bap: “On the opening track ‘Éire go Deo’, this is an ode to the people that gave Kneecap this opportunity, who set the framework, who started the schools and the cultural centres, the youth clubs. We just feel like Kneecap is part of the wider movement. We’re working with kids, sports teams and all this stuff. If I were 16 years old now and saw an Irish language film in the cinema, it’s very important that you feel that your culture is valued and seen in these mainstream areas.”

Before the band started, Móglaí Bap was active in promoting the Irish language through music, DJ Próvaí was a teacher, and Mo Chara was training to be a youth worker. What was it about the spirit of who you were before Kneecap, why you needed this outlet, and how much of that you still carry today?

DJ Próvaí: “Those three things you mentioned all kind of align in the language movement. When we all started out, we all loved the language. We were in our early twenties, and all found each other. Something happened in Belfast, and we were all drawn towards it. We became this big friendship group. Lots of people were leaving school and didn’t get the chance to speak the Irish language in a social setting. We found each other just at a time when we needed that in a social outlet.

“Music, partying and talking in Irish was what it all revolved around. All of those things lined up nicely.”

Mo Chara: “With the youth work and stuff, there was that need for a social space. Any kind of movement needs social spaces. People were going to school, a lot of people were leaving school with a basic grasp of Irish, and then weren’t really using it again. We were kind of creating that social setting. That’s when I started volunteering, and it was out of that ethos that Kneecap grew: that need to see the subculture represented. Once we all bumped heads, this was the natural progression to go.”

Móglaí Bap: “It was a grown collective self-esteem that Kneecap came out of – this idea that we do deserve the same rights as everyone else. Because we had these jobs as youth workers, teachers or working in events, we thought that we should have art and culture in the Irish language. That seed was planted.”

What do you want now? How do you imagine the future for Kneecap?

Móglaí Bap: “I’m happy to be making music and having the opportunity to go around the world and meet with people from different indigenous cultures. That’s such a cool thing. Not just in Ireland, but people all around the world are going towards their native, indigenous language. That’s something that we can hopefully connect more with.”

Mo Chara: “I’m just hoping that we can keep doing what we’re doing and not think too far ahead. We’ll keep reminding ourselves of how lucky we are and long may it last.”

Do you feel like the next to undermine you could be just around the corner?

Mo Chara: “I don’t know. I try not to think about these things. If it is, it’s going to be out of our hands anyway. We’ll just do what we can. As long as people listen to us and as long as long as there’s a demand there, then we’ll just continue to create.”

Móglaí Bap: “We started Kneecap with a lack of self esteem. We thought nobody would be interested in Kneecap outside of our 10 friends. Maybe something was changing and people were looking for something more authentic. Over the years our confidence grew and Kneecap is something that we’ll continue to work on and bring us to new places around the world.”

DJ Próvaí: “Hopefully new generations will take some more self esteem and take it to the next level as well.”

Móglaí Bap: “If we’re an inspiration for other bands to do a similar thing in Irish, then even better. That will be a great conclusion.”

In the very least, you’ve got some great material for Kneecap: The Movie 2.

Móglaí Bap: “And we’re going to franchise it like The Fast And The Furious, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”

Mo Chara: “If the money’s right.”

Who’s going to play Keir Starmer?

DJ Próvaí: “Quasimodo.”

Móglaí Bap: “Sharon Osbourne.”

‘Fenian’ by Kneecap is out now. 

The post Kneecap on ‘Fenian’ and fighting back: “We understand that religious divide serves absolutely nobody” appeared first on NME.

Failure frontman Ken Andrews has spoken to NME about the band’s past, present and future, shortly after the release of their new album ‘Location Lost’. Check out our full interview below.

The alt-rock trio, completed by bassist Greg Edwards and drummer Kellii Scott, shared their seventh full-length record last Friday (April 24). It marked the fourth LP since their 2014 comeback, after the ’90s-formed outfit disbanded in 1997 following addiction issues within the band and mistreatment from their label. In their absence, the 1996 album ‘Fantastic Planet’ became a revered cult classic, and the group gained notable admirers, including Paramore’s Hayley Williams and actor David Dastmalchian.

Since their triumphant return 12 years ago, Failure have enjoyed a second stint of recording, touring and renewed appreciation, but the road has nonetheless presented obstacles. Most recently, a sudden back injury resulted in Andrews undergoing surgery, shortly after he finished the gruelling editing process for their decade-in-the-making documentary, 2025’s Every Time You Lose Your Mind.

“It’s pretty much back to normal,” he told NME of his injury. “I’m a little bit slower now, but that’s also age. That was a rough ride, but I’m out of it now.” After the time-consuming impact of both the film and his recovery, he explained that reuniting with Edwards and Scott to write ‘Location Lost’ was challenging at first.

“[The documentary] ended up taking the place of what could have been an album cycle, and that maybe had a little bit of a negative effect on morale,” he said. “When we got together, there was a little bit of stress. We were all wondering, ‘What does it mean to be in this band at this point?’ When Greg suggested the title ‘Location Lost’, it really resonated.”

From the trip-hop intro of ‘Crash Test Delayed’ to the art-rock of ‘Someday Soon’, the album pushes Failure’s traditionally moody, pensive sound into uncharted territory. Check out our full interview below, where Andrews unpicked the band’s two eras, discussed how Williams came to feature on ‘The Rising Skyline’, seeing a “big shift” in their audience, and what the future has in store for the “rebooted version” of Failure.

NME: Hello, Ken. ‘Location Lost’ means you’ve now released more albums in your second chapter than in the ’90s. Does it feel like you’ve reclaimed the narrative over your legacy, after the manner of Failure’s breakup and the acclaim you increasingly gained in your absence?

Ken Andrews: “It’s been a ride. We’re pretty surprised that we’re still going, I thought it would be one album. The real challenge has been keeping the band’s sound while actually trying to move forward at the same time. If we’re going to call it Failure and try to keep a consistency through the records, you have to retain something. I’m pretty proud that I think we were able to do that.”

Is moving forward important to you now in a different way to during the ’90s?

“In the ’90s, it was more about getting it right. It wasn’t until ‘Fantastic Planet’ where we felt, ‘OK, this is what we want to sound like’. Cut to the rebooted version of the band, and that wasn’t really a problem anymore. We weren’t fighting with labels; it was more about figuring out where we wanted to take the band and how far away we wanted to go from ‘Fantastic Planet’.”

Does it feel like you’re still riding the wave of appreciation that came with your 2014 comeback, despite the obstacles along the way?

“There’s been a really big shift in our audience since we rebooted. In 2014, it was a lot of people coming back from the nostalgia of the ’90s, and that’s faded somewhat. Now, it’s mostly younger people who are into the band, and they’re coming without having the baggage of us being a ’90s band versus a current band. We saw a breakdown of our streaming listenership, and the largest [age group] was 18-30.”

Why do you think young people are resonating with Failure?

“They connect with the emotion of the music. A lot of people, they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s depressing music’. It’s dark, melancholy, and not what they want to hear. But for people who are tuned into the darker or more melancholic side of their emotions, there’s a catharsis there. The overall effect is uplifting, even though the music isn’t overtly uplifting itself.”

Your documentary, Every Time You Lose Your Mind, took a decade to complete. Was it a difficult process, in terms of both the workload and revisiting the ’90s with such brutal honesty?

“They started filming in 2015, but in 2020 they abandoned the film because of COVID. When I finally saw the footage, especially [comedian] Margaret Cho’s interview about the connection between art and addiction, that piqued my interest, and so we bought the footage. In 2022, I turned my focus back to the documentary… it was cathartic. There were moments where all those memories of the bad times were rushing back. It hit me a few times, the tragedy of the first half of the band’s existence.”

Your former guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen appears in the documentary. What stands out from your time with him in 1996 and 1997, when the band wasn’t in the best place?

“There was an initial excitement about him joining. But the touring on ‘Fantastic Planet’ ended up being pretty fraught because of Greg’s addiction, wondering every week, ‘Are we going to finish this tour?’ It was bittersweet to have Troy join at that moment. It could have been more of a joyous thing, but it ended up being frustrating.”

Would you consider working with him again, much like how his current band, Queens Of The Stone Age, brought out former bassist Nick Oliveri last week?

“We actually took Troy back out on tour [in 2015]. Nobody was having any drug problems at the time, so it was cool to hang out. I would definitely consider working with Troy again. Queens Of The Stone Age work a lot, so his schedule is tough.”

Hayley Williams has publicly been a long-standing admirer of Failure. How much have you got to know each other over the years?

“I was up for producing one of their very first records, but it didn’t pan out. Their self-titled album [2013’s ‘Paramore’], I ended up mixing that. They were having trouble making a decision. [Justin Meldal-Johnsen] was producing the record, and he suggested five mixers [anonymously] mix the same song. They all unanimously picked my mix! I always look at that as a fateful thing, because Paramore had been influenced by Failure.

“Hayley and I text every once in a while. Recently, she hit me up to perform at this benefit show for the LA fires, and that’s when I told her about the new Failure record. After that, I sent her four songs, and she instantly gravitated towards ‘The Rising Skyline’. She said, ‘This is a very different song for you guys, but it’s very delicate’. That’s when I [realised] she could sing on that song, and that would make sense. She was like, ‘Send it to me quick, because we’re wrapping up my solo album‘.”

What did you connect with about her vocals?

“It felt really special. I love the way she sang it; there was a real subtlety to her performance. She knocked it out of the park.”

Have you discussed an opportunity to play the song live yet?

“I don’t really know what she’s up to, but if our schedules somehow synced up, that would be amazing.”

What’s next for Failure? Have you worked through the difficulties that came at the start of creating ‘Location Lost’?

“It’s definitely better than it was, but there’s still a little bit of, ‘What is the future for the band?’ It doesn’t feel like 2015, where everything felt brand new again. There’s a lot more at play in our personal lives now… I’ve always actually enjoyed not knowing my long-term plans, because it keeps things interesting. But everything gets a little bit heavier as you get older, and your time becomes more precious. When we get towards the end of [this touring cycle] is when we’ll probably start having conversations, if we want to keep going or not.”

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Conversely, do you find yourself taking stock of how far Failure have come?

“Not too much. We’ve been through a lot as a band. I try to take it all in my stride, because the part that I really enjoy is being in the studio and making new music. That’s my happy place. I don’t see that going anywhere. I’m actually scoring a horror film called Sigil right now. It’s pretty early days, but I’m really excited to be involved.”

Could that manifest into more solo material? Has Trump’s second term inspired you to write from the same creative place as your politically-charged 2020 single ‘Sword And Shield’?

“I’m a little burnt out on the whole political side of things. Between the documentary and my back surgery, I kind of lost the plot for my political expressions. I may come back to it, but as of right now, I’m taking a break, and also from social media. It saps your energy. I guess I feel a little bit of guilt, because people have to speak out and say what they feel. But at the same time, the whole energy spent on social media? It’s not healthy.”

Failure’s new album ‘Location Lost’ is out now via Failure/Arduous. Every Time You Lose Your Mind streamed on Hulu/Disney+ in the US, and the band are currently looking for a partner to stream or broadcast it in the UK/Europe.

Check out Failure’s full list of upcoming North American tour dates below. Visit here for tickets and information.

MAY
02 – Radius (SPACE ECHO), Chicago, IL
03 – Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH
05 – The Basement East, Nashville, TN
06 – Masquerade – Hell, Atlanta, GA
08 – Welcome To Rockville Festival, Daytona Beach, FL
09 – Eulogy, Asheville, NC
10 – Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
12 – Le Poisson Rouge, New York, NY
13 – The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA
14 – Space Ballroom, Hamden, CT
15 – Union Stage, Washington, DC
16 – Archer Music Hall (Arrow), Harrisburg, PA
17 – Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA
19 – The Shelter, Detroit, MI
20 – The Opera House, Toronto, ON

SEPTEMBER
30 – The Chapel, San Francisco, CA

OCTOBER
02 – Rickshaw Theatre, Vancouver
03 – The Showbox, Seattle, WA
04 – Revolution Hall, Portland, OR
07 – Fine Line, Minneapolis, MN
08 – The Waiting Room Lounge, Omaha, NE
11 – A&R Music Bar, Columbus, OH
13 – Warsaw, Brooklyn, NY
14 – The Met RI, Pawtucket, RI
16 – Town Ballroom, Buffalo, NY
17 – Headliners Music Hall, Louisville, KY
18 – The Pyramid Scheme, Grand Rapids, MI
20 – The Vogue, Indianapolis, IN
21 – Delmar Hall, Saint Louis, MO
22 – Bottleneck, Lawrence, KS
23 – Beer City Music Hall, Oklahoma City, OK
24 – Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, TX
26 – Bluebird Theater, Denver, CO
28 – Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix, AZ
29 – Music Box, San Diego, CA
30 – The Belasco Theater, Los Angeles, CA

The post Failure tell us about longevity, working with Hayley Williams, and uncertainty for the future: “Everything gets a little bit heavier as you get older” appeared first on NME.

Sean Ono Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, is very busy right now. When he pops up late to our scheduled Friday afternoon Zoom call, the first thing he does is apologise.

“Sorry this was all a bit last minute. I had to squeeze you in because I have an album coming out with my band The Delirium – and I’ve been doing a lot of stuff to finish it off.” Add to that a feature documentary premiering at Tribeca Film Festival, tour dates scheduled throughout May and June, as well as his dad’s special Record Store Day ‘Love Meditation Mixes’ vinyl (which he’s produced) and we’re surprised the prolific, curtain-fringed musician turned up today at all.

He’s eager to chat about yet another of his projects though. It’s the upcoming concert film Power To The People: John & Yoko Live In NYC, in which footage of his parents’ famous 1972 charity gigs at Madison Square Garden has been exquisitely restored to crystal clear quality. Seriously, you can make out every single follicle of those iconic sideburns.

Sadly, the two shows (one evening, one matinee) ended up being John’s only full-length performances before he was murdered by Mark David Chapman in 1980. Sean, whose ongoing job as custodian of his dad’s legacy he takes extremely seriously, says this makes Power To The People even more special.

Hey Sean, tell us about the new concert film

“Well, it’s been a very long time in the making. The concert was originally filmed in 1972 and for decades the footage was being restored to high quality digital. But I didn’t oversee that process because I know nothing about it. I wasn’t really involved until more recently.”

What was your role in it all?

“My main job was the sound quality. I worked on the ‘Imagine’ album [re-release] mixes [in 2018] and there wasn’t really much to do. But here… there was so much work to do.”

Did it sound really terrible?

“I grew up listening to the live album [of the same concert] – ‘John Lennon Live In New York City’. I used to hear that on my mum’s stereo all the time because she was putting it out when I was a kid. [Ono produced the posthumous record in 1986]. And I always thought it sounded a bit, you know, mushy.”

But your dad sounds incredible in the film…

“I think everyone who listens to it gets chills from how good his voice is – and it’s good in a way that is totally un-Beatles. It’s like he’s finding a new way of singing.”

Where did that come from?

“He and my mum had famously done a lot of work with these ‘primal scream’ people. I actually have a book that [The Who‘s] Pete Townsend sent my dad – it’s called The Primal Scream [by Arthur Janov]. Anyway, my dad got into it but the whole thing turned out to be kind of bullshit. I mean, it’s not good to just scream and cry to solve your childhood trauma. It actually reinforces those feelings.”

What did your mum say when she saw the footage of them performing together?

“Well, she’s had to deal with people not understanding her particular musicality for so long. She did a show at Glastonbury [in 2014] that was kind of misunderstood. I was really impressed that when she got that negative feedback, she was just like: ‘Well, they don’t understand me.’ She is invulnerable to people not understanding that part of her because she just thinks that they aren’t hip enough.”

In this film, she gives some of her most traditional vocal performances…

“You could say that… I think my mother got an unfair amount of negativity because of all The Beatles stuff. They thought she broke up The Beatles – and then she starts wailing like a crazy person (in their minds) and it upset them a lot. But what she was doing was very avant-garde and cool and punk and weird. She essentially invented punk. [Sex Pistols manager] Malcolm McLaren said that my mum’s Plastic Ono band, not my dad’s Plastic Ono Band, made the first punk album.”

The song ‘Open Your Box’, which is in the new film, was banned in America…

“Because the euphemism is too sexual. But I honestly don’t think she meant ‘your box’ in that sense. She’s actually a real lady. I think she meant ‘don’t live in a box’.”

There’s a great bit where your dad sings ‘Come Together’ and apologises for the “silly” lyrics – do you think he was reluctant to perform The Beatles tracks then?

“Oh, for sure he was. He was the kind of person who didn’t want to look back. It wasn’t that he didn’t like The Beatles. He loved The Beatles. He was The Beatles. But they were people who really lived in the moment. He had to move on to the next thing quickly or he panicked.”

Are you like that too?

“I think it actually gave me the opposite personality. I don’t want to burn bridges and cut off the past. I’m very much still friends with people from my childhood and my early school years.”

Power To The People comes out on your mum and dad’s 57th wedding anniversary – is that something you still observe?

“I might mention it. I try to be a good son. There’s a lot of stuff to remember, man. The thing that my mum has always cared about most is New Year’s Eve and Christmas.”

Do you always spend those dates together?

“I’m not bragging but I’ve been with my mum for 49 Christmases. I’m 50 years old. And there was one year that I missed it because I went with my friend to Australia instead. I think I was 15 or 16 and I had the best time. But then every year after that, my mum would say at Christmas dinner, ‘Do you remember that time that you went to Australia?’ And I would say, ‘Yeah, I remember.’ And she goes: ‘That was very bad.’ [Laughs]”

Why did she care so much?

“I’m the youngest child, so I have to take care of the elders. That’s sort of how it is in Japanese culture.”

Did you ever introduce her to Fat White Family when you were working together?

“Yeah, they hung out. In fact, my mum sang a vocal on a Moonlandingz track which is one of our adjacent projects.”

What were those sessions like?

“When you’re recording someone like Yoko Ono, you make sure it’s just a very quiet time in the studio when no one’s around. You bring her in and you say ‘will you sing on this track?’ She says, ‘yes’. She does it once and that’s it. So it wasn’t like they were sitting there jamming with the band.”

You got into a fight on Twitter last week defending your parents from trolls – why bother?

“I think what people don’t understand is that when they say that stuff [on the internet], they’re basically insulting my mum. And if you’re going to insult my mother, I’m not going to be nice about it.”

It feels like the kind of thing your dad would be doing if he had social media in 2026…

“I think you’re right actually. He wrote some very, let’s say, energetic letters to critics who reviewed his albums badly – and they were always really funny. He would tear them apart and be like, ‘you pseudo-intellectual arsehole!’ but then at the end: ‘peace and love, John Lennon.’ I thought that was really sweet, and that is my model for how I defend them to people. I’ll do it – but I’m also kind of kidding.”

There is zero irony in letting a maid do her job. Thinking otherwise is a very goofy take. They were not protesting maid service.

— Seán Ono Lennon (@seanonolennon) April 22, 2026

I’ve got to ask you about the Sam Mendes Beatles films – has anyone reached out to you?

“Yeah, I met everyone on the film set. I think Harris [Dickinson, playing John Lennon] is amazing. I think he’s really smart and I did hear him do my dad’s voice a little bit – and it was so good. It was kind of spooky actually. But there’s also something really funny about meeting someone half your age who is supposed to be your dad.”

Did you get to meet Anna Sawai, who’s playing your mum?

“Yeah, I know Anna. We kind of hung out a little bit. She’s a very studious person. She would ask me questions about my family and she was really serious, you know, taking notes and thinking about it. They both understand the craft. I have a lot of faith in them to play those roles.”

Did Anna speak to your mum as well?

“No, not really. She’s retired now. She’s 93. She’s not going to micro-manage this project.”

Are there any more John and Yoko jobs on the horizon?

“I can say that we’re going to do [Lennon’s 1974 album] ‘Walls And Bridges’ probably next year. I don’t like promising things though.”

And what about the extended Beatles family, do you see much of them?

“I had dinner with Paul, Stella and Mary [McCartney] about a month ago. I don’t think it’s a secret but I’m one of the four directors at [The Beatles’ company] Apple, which includes Ringo and Paul, so we often have to interact… We’re like a weird family.”

Let’s finish by talking about your new album with The Claypool Lennon Delirium, ‘The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy’

“So it’s my band with Les Claypool from Primus, one of my favourite bands from back in the day – and it’s our third album. We decided to do an epic rock opera concept album which is about a robot that goes out of control and turns everything in the world into paper clips.”

That’s interesting! What does it sound like?

“It’s a fun record. The sound is, sort of, secondary. Basically, it’s quirky and weird.”

‘Power To The People: John & Yoko Live In NYC’ is in cinemas for a limited time from today (April 29). The Claypool Lennon Delirium release ‘The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy’ on May 15

The post How Sean Ono Lennon helped bring his parents’ greatest gig back to life appeared first on NME.

We are well and truly in the thick of a worldwide girl group renaissance. Heralded by the continued success of K-pop acts across the 2010s, this current decade has welcomed not only the return of all-female groups in the West, including NME Cover stars FLO and Say Now, but it has also given way to the ascension of those from Southeast Asia to the global stage for the very first time.

The latest act to break out of the region, and following in the footsteps of T-pop favourites 4Eve and Filipino stars BINI, are Indonesia’s powerhouse performers No Na. Comprising Baila (24 years old) and Shaz (23) from Jakarta, Christy (25) from Lombok, and Esther (24) from Bali, the quartet officially debuted last year and were named to the NME 100 of 2026 on the strength of their alluring blend of nostalgic R&B with their “island girl” roots, as they describe it.

Their heritage is front and centre in everything No Na release: traditional gamelan music is featured prominently in latest single ‘Rollerblade’, which also features lyrics in Indonesian; their music video for debut single ‘Shoot’ showcased the beautiful rice terraces of Bali; their group name is derived from the Indonesian word for young lady. “It always goes back to the reason why we’re here, like what motivates us and as we represent our country on the global stage,” Shaz explains. “That is what we hold on to strongly.”

That desire to wave their country’s flag high on the global stage has led the group to a bold direction, even this early on in their career. ‘Work’, their first single of 2026, eschewed their previous ’80s and ’90s influences for a modern, high-octane pump-up anthem – plus a video that kicked off with a viral feat of flexibility from Christy. “That switch-up was crazy for everybody,” Esther says. “When we dropped ‘Work’, everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they can do more than just sing. They can dance.’ We’ve always wanted to be known as versatile artists, and ‘Work’ is basically that.”

Given the long training process they’ve gone through – one that started in Jakarta after they were scouted by 88rising in 2022, and moved to Los Angeles in 2024 – it’s no surprise that every member of No Na has emerged as an all-rounder. “Our confidence and energy also comes with [the fact that] 88rising hired us when we were all adults,” Esther says. “We’ve already lived lives before we came into this project, and we’ve already known our own personalities.”

Esther and Baila, you were both already in the music industry before joining No Na, having been on Indonesian Idol and Indonesian Idol Junior, respectively. Being more experienced, how was the training process for you?

Baila: “I feel like it was super hard for me to switch from being able to work alone to having to work with other people. It was hard in the beginning, but at the end, I cannot see myself working without [gestures at the other members]. Now it’s like I cannot go on the stage alone, I’m not gonna fucking do that. And I’m not gonna make songs alone. I need my girls with me.”

Esther: “Exactly the same for me. I struggled in the beginning. They know my struggle.”

Baila: “Also, she’s an only child.”

Esther: “Yeah, I’m an only child, so I hadn’t worked with people before. But through this journey, I learned a lot from them about myself, and I learned the true meaning of sisterhood. Ew.” [The rest of No Na laugh] “But genuinely, I think I was meant to live this life with these three girls. I’m very thankful to 88rising for introducing me to these three sisters that I have now.”

And Shaz and Christy, you two come from dance backgrounds. How different was it for you two when it came to the training?

Shaz: “I learned a lot with my singing, and learning about [my bandmates] more. I actually liked it because I get to explore so much more of myself that I didn’t get to explore before. And doing a lot of other genres that I haven’t known and finding our sound together as No Na. It was really a unique experience for me and I loved it.”

Christy: “For me, it was a really hard part [of] my life. The hardest part, because I started singing from zero. But now I’ve found my voice because of the training.”

Baila: “And us.”

Christy: “Yeah, they help me a lot.”

“We got to choose our songs, and we chose R&B. It’s just in our blood” – Baila

Even when you are exploring different genres, at the core of your sound is R&B. Where does that stem from?

Esther: “We grew up with R&B. And I think also [when we were] starting out, [during] the artist development three years ago, we were also singing a lot of R&B songs. We were paying homage to a lot of early-2000s artists as well. We practised TLC, we practised Ciara.”

Baila: “We got to choose our songs, and we chose R&B. It’s just in our blood.”

How did you work with 88rising to find and build upon this island girl sound and concept?

Esther: “We say ‘island’, they say ‘yes’.” [No Na laugh] “We communicate our wants, they communicate their wants, and we find a middle ground.”

Shaz: “We discussed a lot. We tried a lot of concepts. I remember before we debuted, we tried so many photoshoots just to see how we look in different concepts, but island girl was just what defined us, so that’s what we went for.”

Christy: “I remember, we were all together [thinking about what we] all have in common. And then, we said it together: ‘Island girl’.”

Baila: “Because Indonesia has like 17,000 different islands, so we’re all island girls.”

You really bring your Indonesian and Southeast Asian roots into your music. It’s in the lyrics, sound, outfits, dance…

Shaz: “Every time we do something, we always try to implement Indonesian elements. For example, before we make our [music videos], we have a discussion on what [we can add] that is very Indonesian or Southeast Asian. With ‘Work’, it was the traditional ceng-ceng instrument from Indonesia and the batik in our costumes.”

Being in a girl group isn’t easy, especially in this era of social media and parasocial relationships. How do you guys deal with the attention?

Esther: “I’m very into watching people’s reactions and what they like about it, what they don’t like about it. That way, we know for future releases and future projects what to do and what not to do, what people like and what people don’t like, while also protecting what we wanna do as artists. We’re very open to listening to what people say. But if it’s just coming from an ill-intentioned [place], we usually just…” [motions her hand over her head]

Baila: “Just know that we laugh at your hate comments.”

“Every time we do something, we always try to implement Indonesian elements” – Shaz

So what have you taken from what you’ve observed and how have you applied that to your releases?

Esther: “People really loved that we’re very Indonesian. We’ve shouted out our country multiple times. We’ve also showcased our beautiful cities and other places in Indonesia in our music videos, and that’s what kind of drove us into doing that more and making that a statement in every single release that we had.”

What parts of Indonesian culture have you not showcased yet, but would like to in the future?

Baila: “You know what I wanna try? I really want to try piring.”

Esther: “I was thinking the same thing!”

Shaz: “It’s a traditional dance from the Padang region and they do this…” [Esther passes Baila a plate to balance on her hand] “and they just dance with it on their hand.”

Esther: “I wanna showcase Indonesian food in our music videos. I don’t think we’ve done that before. More people need to know that we have really good food.”

Shaz: “For me, clothing. There are so many [types of] traditional clothing that we have, and because we have it different[ly] in every region, we just wanna show more and more.”

Christy: “I want people to know [that in] Indonesia we eat with our hands [without utensils]. People [are] gonna [be] like, ‘What?’”

Baila: “‘You eat with your hands?’ Yes, we do.”

Esther: “It’s [more] fun that way too.”

No Na will be turning one in less than a month. Did you ever imagine the group would be so successful in such a short time?

Baila: “This is all a surprise to us. Of course, we manifested for this to happen, but we didn’t actually think that it was gonna happen.”

Shaz: “And this soon!”

Baila: “Yeah, and we haven’t even turned one yet. We’ve barely started walking, but we’re so grateful for all the love and support.”

Esther: “And we still have a long way to go. As much as we feel like, ‘OK, this is a great start’, but we’re coming back for more.”

Baila: “Don’t get tired of us. We promise there’s more.”

No Na’s single ‘Rollerblade’ is out now via 88rising.

Photography: Toshio Ohno
Photography Assistance: Yumika Ikeda, Ryo Yamanaka
Producer: Shin Ohira
Production Management: Ippei “Tory” Fukuda, Rintaro Ito
Production: CEKAI
Retouch & Colour Grading: Defamer

The post No Na: the fiery R&B girl group bringing Indonesia to the world appeared first on NME.

Gaze out from the city quayside in Belém, Brazil, and there’s a lot to take in. To the north, the sprawling Baia de Marajo estuary stretches towards the mighty Atlantic Ocean. To the south, an epic blanket of green – the uppermost tip of the Brazilian Amazon, 60 per cent of all the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. To the east, in contrast, is the concrete skyline of the region’s urban capital. Home to 2.5million people, Belém’s waterside colonial old town is soon dwarfed by high-rise apartment blocks. Cutting through it all, and oozing Main Character Energy, the muddy Guamá River. More than a mile wide, it shapes both the landscape and the culture of Belém. Home to fishing canoes and monstrous cruise ships, its choppy waters represent a life-sustaining artery. This is life on the equator; life at the “gateway to the Amazon” – where modern human living and ancient biomes are locked in an increasingly heated bear hug.

It’s an oppressively humid Monday lunchtime in mid-November 2025. A rickety passenger boat, transporting a group of musicians, makes the short journey across the Guamá from Belém to Ilha do Combu. Three times the size of Glastonbury Festival, Combu is a forest island abundant in wildlife. Along the palm-lined banks, local Ribeirinhos – indigenous people – welcome visitors to boat-stop restaurants that rise out of the waves on tall wooden stilts. Bowls of thick savoury açaí and fresh guava fruit are handed to tourists – when the native howler monkeys don’t get there first.

For some of the diverse group of musicians that make up the newly formed multinational, multi-genre collective Flow, this could not feel farther from home. For others, this is their backyard. More, in fact – it’s ancestral soil they’re fighting to protect.

An interchanging number of songwriters, all distinguished in their own right, this mission-driven sisterhood has linked up with a unifying commitment to lift up stories of women and water worldwide. So it’s very deliberate they’re here in the Amazon right now. Across town, in a vibeless temporary conference centre, 50,000 besuited delegates are amassed for COP30 – the UN’s flagship climate change conference. A political forum intended to carve out a safer, healthier and fairer reality for every human on the planet, not just here in South America. [Hardly a spoiler: it’s not excelling]. But while the circus of power is in town, Flow are determined to have their message heard – in the corridors of power and the cultural communities of the city.

Forget supergroups, “we’re building a ‘super dynamic’” says Zimbabwean-British powerhouse Shingai, ex-Noisettes, champion of African artivism, and one of Flow’s members.

There’s the willowly Jaloo – a self-produced DIY artist and pioneer of Sci-fi Brega (an updated synth-pop and electronica take on northern Brazil’s ’60s rhythms) whose vulnerability, style and allyship for queer communities have earned her a devoted Latin American following. “There’s no straight white man behind me and what I do,” she asserts. “Particularly when I share my difficult times, I think people connect with me through those emotions.”

Madame Gandhi, former MIA drummer, from LA via Mumbai, whose innovative drive to promote social justice and nature connection has taken her to stages at TED to Burning Man. Rising Brazilian star Bebé Salvego, the youngest of the family, injects the soul of jazz and the spirit of rap. Celebrated British-Bangladeshi vocalist Sohini Alam, songwriter and vocalist with bands Khyio and Grrrl, meanwhile, explains why she’s here: “I don’t want my daughter to be fighting the same battles I am.”

And, Keila – energy commander-in-chief – vocalist from Belém, Brazil, is known for her high-octane tecnobrega, whose bold style and campaigning (against exploitation mining companies and industrial agriculture) means she’s a firm local hero.

“I don’t want my daughter to be fighting the same battles I am” – Sohini Alam

They make for a formidable crew. With five shows in four days, Flow’s women are here in Amazonia to make a noise. Briefly, though, here on Combu, there’s a rare moment to take a pause.

“We’re very used to being near this water at all moments in our lives,” says Keila. “When we’re happy, when we’re sad. When we need something. To us, it is recovery. When I speak, I think a lot about Indigenous communities, about the original peoples, about the genocide, suffering, and struggle of those who protect the forest and protect these places.”

Rewind 12 hours, and the scene is the opposite of nature’s restorative calm. Where other cities are tucked up in bed early on a Sunday evening, Old Town Belém is bouncing. It’s approaching midnight at Casa Apoena, an old converted mansion and legendary cultural venue usually found hosting carimbó and samba nights. Tonight, it feels like a rustic backyard party – buckets of iced beers passed between people. And it’s packed – at capacity before soundcheck.

Locally, word has spread rapidly about Flow. Following a short spell of rehearsals in São Paulo, their weekend kicked off with shows and talks in the official “blue zone” at the climate conference. The musicians’ presence was met with a mixture of bewilderment and excitement from blazer-wearing delegates more used to being handed free coffee from an information stall than having a singer crash-land into their lap (a Friday gig highlight is Shingai clearing the assembled crowd to somersault across the conference room floor). These spaces are not used to the women of Flow, and that’s the point. They depart, with an invite from organisers to the next global gathering in late 2026.

Online, chatter about their provocative presence grows – driven by the fanatical followings of the Brazilians in the group. Jaloo, for example, can’t walk a few metres without a selfie request. On TikTok, someone cheekily brands them the ‘Spice Girls da COP’, which soon catches on. “Which Spice Girl am I?” responds Keila with a wicked smile, “Which is the crazy one?”

All that means anticipation for their Casa Apoena appearance is high. The house lights go down, and 300 camera-phone lights go on as Keila, Sohini, Bebé, Shingai and Jaloo walk from a backstage balcony down through the audience to the stage.

The show is a vibey celebration, each artist taking a turn to lead while the others become their backing band. A team, sure, but also a healthy competition. It peaks with Shingai cartwheeling and Keila conducting the crowd from the heart of the dancefloor.

The music is as diverse and wild as its theme and creators. When the recorded Flow album arrives in November, it will also feature contributions from Nadine Shah, Maxine Peake and Charlotte Church. Shingai’s track ‘Mhondoro’ is the infectious first taste – all ‘Mhande’ handclaps, distorted guitar and a mountainous chorus – and will be shared this week (April 30). “Flow gave us the freedom to explore our cross-cultural experiences,” she says. “I recorded my piece in Zimbabwe with local musicians. Shortly afterwards, I was rehearsing it with the other artists here in Brazil, which felt quite magical.

“My hope is that the music created through Flow becomes something joyful yet impossible to ignore” – Shingai

“My hope is that the music created through Flow becomes something joyful yet impossible to ignore,” she continues. “Something that resonates across cultures and conversations. We are building our own ‘Ancient Futures’ and the soundtrack is already cooking nicely.” A documentary film – there’s a crew out here in the Amazon – will also arrive in the autumn, before touring around the world.

There’s one final stop on their Brazilian adventure, a show at Casa Mídia Ninja. In tune with the change-making spirit of Flow, the venue is an activism and content hub formed as a response to the exclusion of youth and underrepresented voices in traditional Brazilian media.

The performance, once again, shifts up a gear, with the centrepiece a chest-beating speech from Keila chiding the absence of major musicians speaking out on behalf of people and the planet. As the crowd continues the party into the night, backstage, the Flow artists fall into each others’ arms. Mission-accomplished – for the moment.

“Flow shows what can happen when women are given the space to write about subjects beyond the narrow expectations often placed on them in mainstream music,” says Shingai later. “It’s refreshing. It’s necessary. And honestly, it’s about time.”

Flow’s ‘Mhondoro’ is out on 30 April via EarthSonic. 

The post Flow: the multinational, multi-genre sisterhood dubbed the ‘Spice Girls of the Amazon’ appeared first on NME.

Milburn’s Tom Rowley has spoken to NME about how his time as a touring member of Arctic Monkeys inspired his debut solo album ‘Moses And The Drones’, which features a song produced by Alex Turner.

• READ MORE: Every Arctic Monkeys song ranked in order of greatness

As a founding member of Milburn in the early ’00s, Rowley was a central figure in the Sheffield indie scene that also birthed the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Reverend & The Makers.

“Everything was unknown back then at that age,” Rowley told NME when he met us in a pub near King’s Cross in London. “It was just, ‘I like playing music, you like playing music, shall we just hang out together?’ It was just exciting. People did look out for each other. Then things started kicking off. It’s all a bit of a blur after that.”

After releasing their first two albums, ‘Well Well Well’ and ‘These Are The Facts’, Milburn split in 2008, leaving Rowley at something of a loose end.

“I did various other things, like playing with Reverend [& The Makers] and being in a few bands of my own for a bit, but I had to get a job so I was working as an electrician; PAT testing, just putting stickers on kettles – reyt boring,” he recalled. “I was working in this scruffy fucking factory in Leeds, then got a phone call from Jamie [Cook, Arctic Monkeys guitarist] saying, ‘We need a keyboard player for the tour for this album’, which was ‘AM’.

“The week after, I was in America trying to figure out the songs then that went on for 10 years.”

Rowley then spent 12 years as as a key touring member and collaborator of Arctic Monkeys – performing on their last two albums and with co-writing credits on ‘The Car‘ –  providing guitar, keyboards and backing vocals, as well as auxiliary support for the band’s ongoing evolution. During that whole period, he was working on his own material in backrooms while on the road with the Sheffield indie giants.

“In the space between ‘AM’ and ‘The Car’, I carried on writing for myself, ” he said. “I’ve always been writing songs, but over the last two years I finally got an idea of what it would be. We were on tour and there was this piano and instruments knocking about, so I got this body of work together. At the end of ‘The Car’ tour I thought, ‘Reyt, what can I do with this?’”

After years of knocking ideas back and forth with acclaimed producer and musician Loren Humphrey (Tame Impala, Lana Del Rey, Cameron Winter), they decamped to Los Angeles and New York to produce ‘Moses And The Drones’ – released yesterday (Friday April 23). It’s an album with a loungey cinematic mood as well as bags of attitude and swagger.

“There’s one song called ‘Something Strange’, when after I wrote that I knew that was what it should all sound like,” said Rowley. “I’ve never had a piano in the house, but there was always a piano in the tune-up room on tour. If you were bored, you could go and sit at that and start messing about. ‘Something Strange’ was the first song and then everything had to sound like that.”

Not only that, but ‘Something Strange’ was also produced by Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner.

“I played him that song ages ago when I first wrote it and he really liked it,” Rowley remembered. “The version that we did while we were in LA was quite different. He wanted to get involved so he came along and we did another version which made it onto the album. He said, ‘I just want it to be better than it is and the version that you’ve done’, and he was right in the end.”

Describing the sound of the album as a whole, Rowley said that it was “definitely rooted in the past”.

“You don’t want it to sound like a cover band and it needs to sound relevant now, which is hard to do,” he admitted. “We were trying to find a balance, and I feel like we’ve accomplished that.

“It’s called ‘Moses And The Drones’, which is almost like a made-up band. It’s like an exaggerated version of the life I was living at the time. You come across some fucking mad people, so the obvious thing to is to write about them. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek at the same time. You can’t take it too seriously.”

As for what Humphrey brought to the table, Rowley explained that his eccentricity and attention to detail brought out the best in him.

“I’ve always been an admirer of the way he plays drums and produces, so who else was I going to do it with?” said Rowley. “It was the obvious thing to do. He’s mad, but in a good way. He knows what he wants it to sound like and he won’t be happy until he gets that sound – which when you’re ready to do a guitar part can sometimes be frustrating. But ultimately it ends up being worth it. He always gets the right sound and I can’t say enough about it.”

It’s been quite the journey for Rowley, from Milburn to being an electrician to filling stadiums with Arctic Monkeys and now to be landing his solo debut. Now, he’s driven and set on the future.

“I feel like I just want the album to be out,” he said. “It feels like it’s been forever. We’ve been playing gigs now for about a year and I’m just happy to release it. Once it’s out, it’s there for everyone.

“I constantly write. In the space between finishing this album and now, I’ve got another album’s worth. I’d gladly go and do it now, but it just doesn’t work like that.”

As well as some solo headline gigs and dates lined up supporting Inhaler, you’ll also find Rowley back on stage with Milburn this summer, playing a smattering of festival shows as they roll on low-key touring since their 2016 reunion – but don’t expect any new material from them.

“It’s just about doing them shows,” he revealed. “Everyone is doing a 20th anniversary show. I was looking at the line-up of this festival we’re doing and it was The Kooks, The Vaccines, The Fratellis, all of them are doing albums in full after 20 years. We’re just doing a few gigs.”

Arctic Monkeys currently have nothing in diary since the surprise release of ‘Opening Night‘ from the ‘Help(2)’ charity album for War Child. Has Rowley been given leave from the band for the foreseeable future with no tour plans on the cards?

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I do know that until the end of the year it’s solo stuff, a few Milburn gigs and then we’ll see what happens next year.”

‘Moses And The Drones’ is out now. While Milburn will be playing London’s Lexington on Saturday May 30 before playing Rock’N’Roll Circus in Norwich and Sheffield in August, Rowley’s upcoming tour dates are below. Visit here for tickets and more information.

APRIL
25- Sheffield – Crookes WMC
30 – Manchester – YES

MAY
2 – Liverpool – Sound City Festival
3 – Glasgow – King Tuts

JUNE
20 – Gent De Vooruit with Inhaler
22 – Groningen Oosterport with Inhaler
23 – Heerlen Parkstad with Inhaler

AUGUST
2- Kendal Calling
28 – Victorious Festival

The post Tom Rowley on how playing with Arctic Monkeys shaped his debut album: “You come across some fucking mad people” appeared first on NME.

The first song I remember hearing

Dean Martin – ‘That’s Amore’

“My dad was Bulgarian, my mum was Greek and they used to sing this together. Because it sounded like an Italian song, they could relate to it as well as that whole Rat Pack era – Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr.. I grew up in Hollywood, so it was very showbiz. When I was younger, we would be driving and some song would come on the radio. My mum would say, in her Greek accent, ‘That song [is] going to be a hit.’ I would think, ‘How do you know? You don’t know anything about pop music!’ Cut to a week later: that song’s at Number One.”

The first album I ever owned

The Beatles – ‘Meet The Beatles!’

“There was a woman in our neighbourhood who worked at Capitol Records. She was so cool and whenever a new album came out by The Beatles, she would bring it to us. So we had this on vinyl and my brother and sister and I just fought over it. We played it over and over and over. With [Beatlemania], you felt like you were part of something that was so new and so fresh. I knew that this was not my parents’ music. This was definitely our stuff.

“I’m very grateful for the friendship I’ve had with Paul McCartney. I said to him one day, ‘You were so young and you were writing these really deep, profound songs. I can’t wrap my head around it!’ He was like, ‘I know! Like, ‘Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so far away.’ From when – when I was 10!?’”

The first gig I went to

Led Zeppelin at The Forum in Los Angeles, 1972 or ‘73

“This was at the height of Led Zeppelin. They played The Forum a lot in the ‘70s, but it has to have been ’72 or ’73 because I was still in high school. The shoes that were popular at that time were wedges called Corkies. We were so excited to get to the concert – we didn’t want to miss anything – that we were running from the parking lot to the venue. I took a tumble and landed – boom, boom, boom! – on the ground.”

The song that reminds me of home

Joni Mitchell – ‘California’

“Joni was travelling a lot and goes to Greece in the song, but [says that] nothing compares to California. When she mentioned Greece, I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m from Greece! We should be best friends!’ The funny thing is that my high school graduation was at the Hollywood Bowl in 1974. The only other time I’ve ever set foot onstage at the Hollywood Bowl was in 2024, 50 years later, when I performed at the Joni Jam [the star-studded tribute show at which Mitchell also performed]. It was Elton John, Annie Lennox, Allison Russell, Jon Batiste, Jacob Collier, Meryl Streep – and me!”

The song I wish I’d written

Bob Dylan – ‘Make You Feel My Love’

“We were on vacation and it was on my husband’s [Tom Hanks] iPod. I didn’t want to go all the way back [to the hotel] to get my iPod, so I picked up his and put on his headphones. This song comes up on shuffle and I thought, ‘I’ve gotta play that again!’ I just couldn’t believe this song. I thought it was perfect. It’s so romantic. When he hits on his romantic side, that’s my favourite Bob Dylan.”

The song I can’t get out of my head

Rita Wilson – ‘Sound Of A Woman’

“I’ve been rehearsing and performing the title track from my new album, so I can’t get it out of my head! The album is about the experiences that women have. I can come to that because I’ve lived a life. It wouldn’t be believable for me to be writing heartbreak songs or falling-in-love songs because I’ve been in love for quite a long time. It’s taken me a really long time to even get to my own voice – metaphorically and literally because I came to songwriting late.”

The song I can no longer listen to

“I can’t answer this one because I love music so much that even if it’s bad, I’m gonna find something good about it!” [NME plays Wilson ‘The Birdie Song’ to test the theory and she doesn’t even find that annoying!]”

The song that makes me want to dance

Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – ‘Uptown Funk’

“I’m sorry but if I hear that song, it’s like, ‘Let’s go! Stand up!’ I just love that song. It does so many different things musically – it’s like three different vibes happening in one. If I’m driving, I’m like, ‘Lemme pull over – I’ve gotta dance to this song.’”

The song that makes me cry

CeCe Winans – ‘Goodness Of God’

“It has to be CeCe’s version because the way she sings it is just heartbreaking. It’s about how God has never let you down and as a person of faith, I really do think that’s true.”

The song I do at karaoke

Naughty By Nature – ‘Hip Hop Hooray’

“I’m gonna spit some flow for you. It took me about a month to learn that song for a movie [2019’s Boy Genius] and it really impressed me how intricate rap and hip-hop is. There are so many different rhythms over the course of that song and the phrasing is so complex. That’s why it took me so long to learn it!”

“[In 2020] Tom and I got Covid and were quarantined. When we got out of it, there was talk of brain fog. I thought, ‘I’d better start refreshing my mind. I wonder if I can still remember all of ‘Hip Hop Hooray’’? I recorded myself doing it and posted it on social media. It went completely viral! The Naughty By Nature guys did a remix of the song and all the profits [more than $10,000] went to the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.”

The song I want played at my funeral

Rita Wilson – ‘Throw Me A Party’

“I wrote this song because I had breast cancer in 2015. When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know what the prognosis was going to be. You start having those really deep conversations with the people that you love. I said to Tom, ‘If I should go before you, you’ve gotta be sad for a really, really long time. [Laughs.] Extraordinarily long. Uncomfortably long. Really prove it to people!’ The other thing was that I wanted to have a party. I wanted it to be a celebration of my life. I wanna be remembered as somebody who was about joy and laughter. I’m crying – I’m gonna blame this on jetlag!”

Rita Wilson’s sixth album ‘Sound of a Woman’ is out on May 1 via Sing it Loud Records

The post Soundtrack Of My Life: Rita Wilson appeared first on NME.

Ringo Starr has spoken to NME about his new Americana album ‘Long Long Road’, the resurgence of country music, the energy it brought to The Beatles, and the upcoming Sam Mendes biopics.

• READ MORE: The Beatles: every song ranked in order of greatness

Released today (Friday April 24), ‘Long Long Road’ marks the Fab Four icon’s 22nd solo album but his third in the country and Americana genre, after his classic 1970 sophomore effort ‘Beaucoups Of Blues’ and last year’s acclaimed ‘Look Up’. His second collaboration co-written and produced by T Bone Burnett, the 10-song record also includes collaborations with Billy Strings, Sheryl Crow and St Vincent.

NME had a quick catch-up with Starr via Zoom, when he started our conversation with a focus on shelves of vinyl in the background. “In 2014, we actually brought the suitcases to LA,” Starr remembered. “We sold our house in England and I had all my albums. I said, ‘I’m just going to give them to my three kids at random’. One by one, whatever they get, they get, but I looked and went, ‘I’m not giving them these, I love these!’ I’ve still got them in storage.”

He continued: “I remember when my son Zak [Starkey, former drummer of The Who and Oasis] was young and he came running up to me and says, ‘Dad, you’ve got to hear this record. It’s this guy, Ray Charles’. I did the whole father thing, ‘Oh, you kids. I’ve been listening to him for years!’ We’ve had a lot of fun with vinyl.”

We asked if his children ever made him listen to anything terrible.

“I’ve never thought that, actually,” Starr replied. “I was taught that by my stepfather – the best stepdad in the world, who loved music and had his own little room to play his music. He never once said, ‘Get that crap off!’ He’d say, ‘Oh, what are you listening to, son?’ I did that with my three children. They’ve changed as the years have gone on, just like I did. That’s an inside family story for you there, brother.”

It was that curiosity in music that saw the young Ringo – born Richard Starkey – as he came of age, joined his first bands and cut his teeth on the scene in late 1950s Liverpool. For as long as he can remember, country music has “had a big place” in his heart, “but so does the blues, Motown, Buddy Holly and the gang”.

“Country came to me first and it’s the first time I realised I was trying to collect the records,” Starr remembered. “Pop was all going on, but there was very little pop in England. Thanks to Gibraltar or somewhere having the biggest antenna in the world, at 4pm on a Sunday, they would play the Alan Freed show on the BBC. You’d hear everyone that was coming out of America – hundreds of people. My friend Roy [Trafford] and I, whatever happened on Sunday, that’s what we did together.”

He added: “It just came down the radio, came from the guys who were in the Merchant Navy, it built itself as a part of my life like the drums did. I only went and practiced once, and the language from the neighbours I can’t repeat. They were screaming at me! If you didn’t shut up, a couple of them would be coming to see you and give you some more advice.”

He formed his first skiffle band with Trafford and his next-door neighbour, Eddie Miles, before joining Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and later The Beatles. Paul McCartney once credited Starr as being “the first guy in the Beatles to really turn us on to country music”.

When asked how that came about, the 85-year-old remembered: “I would have the one song to do. Sometimes they’d write one, sometimes they didn’t have one, and sometimes they wouldn’t give me one!

“I would bring other people in to play tracks for, because when I first started writing songs I would sing them and play them to the other three, and they would fall on the floor laughing. They were only doing that because I was re-writing and well-known song and hadn’t noticed! I’ve been writing with other people for a long time now and occasionally on my own.”

Now, after introducing the “emotional storytelling” spirit of country to The Beatles, Starr is 22 solo albums into his career with his second in as many years. He put his longevity down to simply a “love” of music, and the need to collaborate – especially with his ongoing supergroup, the All-Starr Band.

“I’m a drummer, so you need a few guys around you,” he told us. “I’d like to go on tour with just me and the drums! [At one point] I thought, ‘Now I need all these other guys’, and then I thought to put this All-Starr Band together [in 1989]. I had a phone book in those days, and everyone I phoned said yes.

“I realised I had to close my book or otherwise there would be 40 people on stage! We got a good band together and I was a little nervous about it as it was the first time. Beyond me and Levon [Helm, The Band] as drummers, I had Jim Keltner, my favourite drummer, up there for security. We had three drummers.”

Are drummers the best musicians to hang out with then?

“Yes, but not just because they’re drummers,” Starr replied. “I’ve known Jim for years and he’s a good friend to me, and I’m a pal to him. We played on a lot of records together so we got to know each other. We realised that if I do the fill, he’s got the next one. Then I won’t do one until he’s done his, so we’re not on each other’s feet. We’re both banging away.

“I play with the singer. If a singer’s singing a beautiful line then you don’t need me bashing about. I feel where there’s a break and I can lift it or simmer it down. That’s the way I play.”

‘Long Long Road’ is another testament to Starr’s love of collaboration, not just with true “country guy” T Bone Burnett but also with the likes of Billy Strings and St Vincent.

“Everyone on there brings something different because they’re all great players and singers,” said Starr of this record’s guests. “They’re great musicians who have been at it a while, and they all came through T Bone. In my eyes, he’s never made a mistake on my records.”

While it may be a lifelong love affair for Starr, country music has seen an unexpected resurgence across the world and with new generations in recent years, blowing up on TikTok, filling stadiums, topping festival bills and smashing genres together thanks to the likes of Beyoncé, Post Malone, Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan.

“The sound of country now is getting a bit more country,” Starr said of its returning appeal. “I felt they went through their rock passage with pedal steel. It was very pop-y for a while.

“All the country I started with was emotional. A bit like ‘She’s Gone’ on this album: ‘She waited in the station while I waited in the train, as I travelled down the tracks, she was standing in the rain‘. That’s so country! I do love country for the stories and the emotions.”

His original love of Americana and those songs from his early days come full circle in several ways on ‘Long Long Road’. There’s a cover of Carl Perkins, one of The Beatles’ biggest heroes, in the form of ‘I Don’t See Me In Your Eyes Anymore’, now decades after the Fab Four covered ‘Honey Don’t’ and ‘Matchbox’ with Starr on lead vocals.

Then there’s ‘Choose Love’, with a self-referential Beatles nod in sound and lyrics as Starr offers: “The long and winding road is more than a song/ Tomorrow never knows what goes on“. Starr coyly put much at that in the hands of his Nashville collaborators, aside from the signature line: ‘No matter what you choose, choose love’. “That line was mine, but they’d probably say it wasn’t,” he laughed.

• READ MORE: Zak Starkey on being sacked from The Who, dreams of playing with Oasis, and advice for Barry Keoghan playing Ringo Starr

Once ‘Long Long Road’ is out, the legend will be hitting the road with the All-Starrs before sitting down with collaborator Bruce Sugar to “write a few more songs”, just ahead of an increased spotlight on Starr thanks to Universal putting together a new ‘Best Of’ Starr album, and Sam Mendes’ upcoming biopics about each of The Beatles (where Ringo will be played by Saltburn star Barry Keoghan).

“Well, it’s a film,” Starr told NME of the movie focusing on his life. “I had to really change my attitude, as I was looking at it documentary-ish. Sam was great. We went to England, sat around for two days going through my script; he had Paul’s script, John’s script and George’s script. We’ll all be in each other’s, but there’s a storyline that he’s got these writers writing. That’s all I’m going to tell you about it.”

Starr continued: “He was so great because there was a section I didn’t like and he just took it out. Now something I did outside of the studio is something I did in the studio. The actors acted it out in the studio. I went up to the set, which is like eight acres of covered land, and it was so great. Sam is such a great guy and so direct.”

Just as The Beatles eternally regenerate new generations of fans, Starr has also found younger and younger audiences at his shows – with that only set to increase when the films hit the big screen in April 2028.

“I’m glad you said that because with the All-Starrs, we’re seeing a teenage crowd come in,” he added. “We’re seeing a lot of people from my age down, but you’ll be playing a gig and hearing a lot more higher voices shouting at you.

“We just do what we do, and my philosophy is that if three people turn up, then you play. That’s what we do.”

‘Long Long Road’ is out now. Starr will embark on a US tour from the end of May throughout the summer, before his annual ‘Peace & Love’ birthday event on July 7. Visit here for tickets and more information.

He also features on ‘Home To Us’, from Paul McCartney’s new album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, due on May 29.

The post Ringo Starr tells us about the resurgence of country music – and the energy it brought to The Beatles appeared first on NME.

The strange limbo between your late teens and looming adulthood colours the entirety of ‘Restless In Bloom’, the just-announced debut EP from London four-piece Tooth, who capture the anxieties and struggles of coming of age through a palette of grungy garage-rock and angsty second-wave emo. Penned as the band themselves were experiencing the trials of that period in life, it swirls with the innocent melodrama of relationships, growing up and finding your place in the world.

“It was a reflection of where my head was at then,” frontman Tom Pollock tells NME now, as he and his bandmates dial in from sun-splashed bedrooms and gardens on the UK’s hottest day of the year so far. “When I was writing the lyrics, I was at that fork in the road moment when you turn 18, and you notice that your adolescence is falling behind you. You hit this strange point where there’s no real certainty of what will happen in the future, but you’ve got to keep moving on.”

The band’s urgent debut single, ‘Age Of Innocence’, perfectly encapsulates this sentiment. Set against a backdrop of fuzzed-up, aching guitars, there’s a vibrant rush of youthful malaise and nostalgic warmth as Pollock delivers a vocal that feels ripe for the biggest festival stages: “I didn’t think youth would get so complicated / It’s a certain fate, I’ll never think straight”.

The track effortlessly lives up to the word-of-mouth buzz that the band have built through a heavy touring approach over the last three years, making the most of opportunities to play after forming during the pandemic. Although Pollock and guitarist Ben Ashley had been playing together since their early teens, the singer notes that period of enforced lockdown “was really important for us because it offered an opportunity to pick up instruments and really learn”.

Like many other budding young bands around the world, the pair instantly bonded over legendary touchstones like Sonic Youth, Interpol and Pixies, and decided to start their own project after some initial jam sessions. Soon, the lineup was completed by Charlie Arnison (bass) and Roy Lowe (drums), and as soon as lockdown was lifted, they threw themselves onto the London gig circuit, taking on a residency at The Blue Posts in Soho. “Those nights were messy and sleazy but a lot of fun,” recalls Ashley. “The place was the size of a bathroom with leopard-print carpet, and we’d just get really drunk every Friday. “It was important for us, though, because we got to play every week and it was a great testing ground.”

Inspired, rather than daunted, by the vast bustling music scene on their doorstep, the band, who all grew up in the capital, immersed themselves in the wider community. They lined up gigs at venues like The George Tavern and The Windmill – spaces that have become a rite of passage for any alternative band, in London and beyond, serious about their future.

“Some people often see London as quite an intimidating place culturally, but that wasn’t our experience,” says Pollock. “As soon as we started branching out and trying to play in different venues, we found so many like-minded bands. There was a real sense of belonging when we started playing around the city.”

“Even as mates, we’d just go to shows every week and having that constant pool of music there did shape us,” adds Ashley. “I remember seeing Wunderhorse opening for Fontaines D.C. in 2022, and that was such an inspiring moment. You’re so impressionable in your teens that each new band we saw each week took our sound in a new direction and made us quite versatile.”

Given Tooth’s songs grapple so directly with relatable themes around the turmoil of growing up, it’s understandable that – despite only being a handful of singles in – the band have already built a devoted youthful community of their own. Listening to freewheeling alt-rock anthems like ‘Medicine’ and it’s not hard to see why the songs have struck such a chord. There’s a sense of abandon as moody, driving guitars cascade under Pollock’s lyricism, which captures the enormous weight of young romances: “She sells stimulation, I feel it in my chest / It wounds in ways I can’t explain”.

“There’s people who turn up to every show now, and that only started happening last year,” says Ashley. “It’s so cool because you start seeing people’s reactions and how much they care. I remember that feeling of finding something that was special and your own, and it’s really wild to suddenly be on the other side of that.”

Pollock says it’s something they’re hoping to build on, “We really hope that people can relate to those feelings of confusion because it’s such a universal set of emotions that everyone goes through in life. It’s a rite-of-passage as you face this realisation that adulthood is waiting for you.”

While they might still be at the very start of their journey, the band do see ‘Restless In Bloom’ as the closing of a chapter now they’ve navigated their own coming of age and entered their early twenties. “We’re very proud of these songs, but moving forward, we want to push the boat out and reflect on who we are as people now,” Ashley muses. “I see the EP as a diary – we’ve left that note in, and now we’re going to move forward onto the next thing.”

“When you turn 18 […] you hit this strange point where there’s no real certainty of what will happen in the future” – Tom Pollock

“That’s the bit that excites me the most,” adds Pollock. “We’re all experiencing new things all the time. I’ve got a vast pool of inspiration to write about through being a young adult in London and all of the highs and the lows that come with that. It really excites me because we’re not closing any doors, we’re chasing whatever feels fun.”

With the EP on the horizon and a big summer ahead following their inclusion in 2026’s NME 100, including performances at tastemaking festivals like The Great Escape, the band are determined to soak up every moment through this breakthrough year. Given the subject matter they’ve written about so far, a set at Reading – a festival that’s long marked moving from adolescence into the early days of young adulthood for British youth – will carry extra significance for the band.

“A lot of people who come to our shows are the age we were when we first started the band, and Reading will be no different,” says Pollock. “Songs like ‘Age…’ and ‘Medicine’ are written about that point in life, so it really does resonate with people, and platforms like Reading are brilliant for striking that connection. It will be a really nice full-circle moment.”

As things dial up, they’re determined not to lose sight of who they were from day one. “When things started to feel a bit more serious, I think we were quite overwhelmed by it all,” suggests Ashley. “We had to take a moment within the group and identify the reason why we all started playing together in the first place. We decided that having fun was the most fundamental thing within the group that we needed to maintain at all times.

Considering Tooth entered this project under a cloud of uncertainty, moving into their own futures, you can’t help but feel like the road ahead suddenly seems so much clearer. As Pollock concludes, “If we stay together and focused, that will give the best chance for magic to fall at our doorstep.”

Tooth’s ‘Restless In Bloom’ EP is out on June 12 via Soil To The Sun Recordings

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