The Art of Longevity

Being a longevous, ‘real deal’ music artist requires many things, but being pure in heart is certainly one. And there are few people on this earth as pure in heart as Rickie Lee Jones. 

With the compl…

It has taken Dave Rowntree ages to make his first non-soundtrack body of work outside of Blur, especially when you consider their last album Magic Whip, is almost a decade old. Then again, perhaps it…

Gavin Rossdale doesn’t think that Bush's longevity story in the music business as high drama - even though they have had their share of industry shenanigans, let-downs and, for nearly eight years, a …

The egoless band can go a lot further than most bands. A strong element of that is embracing creative changes of direction - agreeing on it and being brave about it. Let’s face it, something we know …

Let’s face it, there is a patchy record for solo artists that began in popular 90s bands. Some crossed the rubicon to a credible solo career and some didn’t. While Gaz Coombes enjoyed the full glare …

Rumer’s arrival struck a similar chord to that of Norah Jones some six years earlier i.e. refreshingly out of time. Those singles Slow, Aretha and their host album Seasons of My Soul arrived so fully…

The Delines’ world is a sprawling, blue collar soap opera. Flawed characters, aimless drifters, chancers and grifters, barroom fights, beat-up cars, parking lots, convenience store robberies, messed …

In this episode, Fenner Pearson chats to Neil Arthur about his writing process and how he works on the Blancmange albums, with Benge acting as his foil and producer, and his collaborations with Fader…

After fading from view in the UK after "Strange And Beautiful" (a top 10 hit in 2002), Aqualung was hardly consigned to the legend of the one hit wonder. Instead Matt Hales went to make his name and …

Suede (or, The London Suede for our friends in the USA) has reached 30 years in the business (well, minus the seven years the band was officially split in 2003). As singer Brett Anderson hits mid-50s…

How to characterise an American indie band over almost three decades and 10 albums, each with a subtly different flavour? One recent review I read described Death Cab For Cutie as “masters of dreamy,…

Before I spoke with Danny McNamara, he’d emailed me to say how much he loved Brett Anderson’s quote - the one we’ve set out to make famous on The Art of Longevity. Not only did he recognise it as cap…

Having helped pave the way, Alela remains at the heart of a very strong current movement for female troubadours - a scene driven by the success of the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Angel Oslen, Julien B…

Interpol have honed their craft over 20 years since they ‘blasted’ onto the scene in 2002 with Turn On The Bright Lights - another one of those infamous overnight successes (actually the culmination …

“I’ve recognised that music is sort of like an inner voice that is telling me what to do. When I was younger it was telling me what to sound like. As I became more sophisticated as a writer and perfo…

The music journalist Paul Lester described Everything Everything as “a riot in a melody factory”, a perfect description for a band positively clattering with ideas, yet on the new album Raw Data Feel…

After her second album Fires (2005) Nerina Pallot was hot property. She kissed the frog that is ‘fame’ in the music industry, with a BRIT nomination, Ivors nomination and even an appearance on Top Of…

Inspired by recent collaborations with some of America's coolest indie A-listers (Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, Danielle Haim, Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver, James Mercer, Jamila Woods) Bruce Hornsby h…

We spoke to Joey Burns on the eve of Calexico's recent European shows in Brussels and London. Calexico play bigger venues in Europe than they do on their home turf, despite inventing a sound that con…

When your host purchased The Divine Comedy's Fin De Siècle in 1998, I couldn’t quite penetrate it at the time. Listening again to the record in preparation for this conversation with Neil Hannon  I h…