Kalpesh Patel

“We’ve grown up together by now.” It is a simple observation from Amy Lee, but after more than two decades of Evanescence, it lands with extraordinary weight. This is a band whose songs have grown alongside their audience, soundtracking grief, heartbreak, anger, recovery and reinvention.

Passenger has shared his latest single, Boomerang, alongside a cinematic new video, as anticipation builds for his forthcoming album Wild Love, due for release on 6th November. The new track arrives after a remarkable week for the chart-topping, Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter, who recently attracted a crowd of hundreds for an impromptu busking performance outside Tate Modern before returning to his hometown for a huge homecoming show at Hove Park.

If Friday had been about The Long Road Festival fighting the weather, Saturday began with everyone looking at the sky and wondering whether we were about to do the whole thing again. Unfortunately, we were.

Last year, The Long Road Festival takes place a week earlier in August and, had it done the same this year, Stanford Hall would probably have been basking in the heatwave temperatures and sun-scorched grass that have defined much of the British summer. But The Long Road has become synonymous with the August Bank Holiday weekend and, right on cue, as thousands of country fans begin arriving in Leicestershire, the heavens decide to open.

Cult favourites The Samurai Seven have made their long-awaited return with the release of their new EP Make It Real, marking the Oxford band’s first new release in almost 25 years.

The Great Emu War Casualties return with their brand new single Cold Food Ave, unveiling a rowdier side to their sound just months after the release of their debut album Public Sweetheart No. 1.

There is something wonderfully disarming about seeing Natalie Imbruglia on a stage this small. At The Circuit in Kingston, the singer-songwriter is close enough to her audience to make eye contact with people in the front row, close enough to laugh with them and, crucially, close enough for the nerves of the evening to be impossible to disguise.

EELS have shared their new track Congratulations To Me, offering another glimpse into their forthcoming 16th studio album, Cookie Happened, which arrives on 16th October via E Works / Play It Again Sam. The latest song finds E, the creative force behind EELS and the stage name of singer, songwriter and producer Mark Oliver Everett, looking at one of life’s more unexpected turning points: the moment when you finally realise that some things simply are not worth taking so seriously.