Dave Grohl spread the word about the ferociously funny quartet and now they’re supporting Foo Fighters in stadiums. Just make sure you switch off your phone’s flash if you go to their gigs …

They say brevity is the soul of wit and few bands have as much of both as Otoboke Beaver. Playing short, sharp songs packed with equal parts ferocity and black humour, next week the Japanese quartet will play easily their biggest UK gig yet, at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium supporting Foo Fighters.

“We met Foo Fighters at an overseas festival, and again in Japan,” says vocalist Accorinrin as we chat in a music bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, a couple of hours before Otoboke Beaver go on stage and eviscerate an audience at the nearby O-Nest. “Dave Grohl told so many people about us, which helped us a lot. He didn’t have to introduce a nobody band like us, but Dave is always looking for newcomers and he wanted to hook us up within the music industry.”

The Teenage Jesus and the Jerks frontwoman shares her hatred of sandwiches and pop culture, plus her wish to evaporate and return to ‘the ether’

What’s the most chaotic thing that’s ever happened to you on stage?

I’m still waiting for that. Maybe it’s the most chaotic thing I’ve ever put forth from the stage. Once a quite drunken man called out a rather rude remark for me to suck his you-can-imagine-what, so I invited him up to the stage and cracked him in the neck with a blackjack [club]. He fell to his knees and I told him to suck it himself. I’m always prepared!

(Pussy Riot)
On a disappointing record helmed by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova, corny guitars and generically moody synths undermine the activist group’s political acuity

Great music rarely makes for great activism, and the reverse is true on Pussy Riot’s official debut album. A scattergun mix of icy electronics, pumping EDM and whispered rap, CYKA (“bitch” in Russian) follows a decade of musical protest performances from the activist collective. Made by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova (she and Maria Alyokhina were imprisoned in separate penal colonies between 2012 and 2013), CYKA’s powerful point of view is diluted by weak delivery.

Lead single Candy Dopamine, with metal band Avenged Sevenfold, disguises its critique of big pharma with cutesy lyrics, corny electric guitar and inconsequential key changes. Generically moody synths and cliched siren sounds run through much of the record, as does blunt-force EDM: Nothing to Lose is both a cluttered trance track, and about being hated by Russia’s “liberal intelligentsia” for supporting Ukraine.

Fifty years ago this week, the Sex Pistols played their first Manchester gig – and upended pop culture. But what was 1976 really like before punk arrived? From swing bands to ‘spaghetti rock’, we discover a lost history

In January 1976, the cover of the NME didn’t feature an artist, but a photo of a room damaged by an IRA bomb: there had been a string of terrorist attacks in London the previous year. The headline: “Is rock’n’roll ready for 1976 … Is 1976 ready for rock’n’roll?”

In the accompanying feature, writer Mick Farren was to be found complaining vociferously about the state of music. Audiences are “prepared to tolerate just about anything”. Rock has “lost its guts” and “is on an unalterable course to a neo-Las Vegas”, because artists are “totally insulated from the real world” and thus making music that “seems so damned irrelevant to real life”. Farren reiterated these points in June in a piece titled The Titanic Sails at Dawn, by which point it was obvious that some new artists completely agreed with him.

(Mexican Summer)
The quintet add shoegaze, country and 50s rock’n’roll to their core indie-punk sound, resulting in songs that offset lyrical bleakness with gleeful, uplifting music

Iceage have always seemed like a band in a state of constant development. You might say that’s understandable, given the Danish musicians were in their teens when their debut album New Brigade was released in 2011: if you don’t change between the age of 18 and your early 30s, you’re probably in trouble. But rock music isn’t real life, and a less adventurous band might have been minded to stick with a good thing, given the reception New Brigade was afforded. Twenty-four minutes of hardcore blended with noisy Birthday Party-esque post-punk and a sizeable pinch of gothic gloom, it was praised so vociferously that the praise itself provoked heated debate, as claims any one band are the “saviours” of an entire genre are wont to do, particularly when said genre is punk.

Iceage seemed entirely unbothered about any ensuing weight of expectation. If they didn’t exactly sound like a completely different band on 2014’s Plowing Into the Field of Love, they were still doing things you would never have imagined the authors of New Brigade doing: piano ballads, country-rock and, on Abundant Living, attempting to join the dots between Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning and the ramshackle sound of frontman Elias Rønnenfelt’s favourites the Pogues. In 2018, Beyondless offered Dexys-style horns, New Orleans jazz and a track that sounded like mid-80s U2 equipped with a string section. By 2021’s Seek Shelter, they had a gospel choir on board and mixed anthemic songs – imagine Oasis mired in angst, gloom and distortion – with tracks that interpolated the Carter Family’s Can the Circle Be Unbroken? or bore the influence of French chanson.

‘It’s about loneliness, really. It was the total opposite of that “It’s Friday night, let’s have sex” macho mentality that was in most rock music at the time’

Most of the people who started the Mekons and Gang of Four were on the same fine art course at Leeds University. In December 1976 we went to see the Anarchy tour at the nearby polytechnic. I liked the Sex Pistols but the Clash, in their paint-spattered clothes, sounded particularly great. It was the first time I saw a band and thought: “That could be me up there.”

Before music, these women had worked as nurses, foster carers and ice-cream van drivers. Now, they’re booked solid at clubs and festivals. How did they become the real-life Riot Women?

When Sally Wainwright’s series Riot Women burst on to screens last autumn, the overwhelming critical acclaim was punctured by a few questions about authenticity. “There is a fascinating TV series to be made about a menopausal rock band – Riot Women isn’t it,” opined Tiff Bakker in the Guardian, denigrating the fictional group as a “bunch of middle-aged punk rockers who, until now, seem to have heard of only Abba”.

If Wainwright needs inspiration for the second series, she could do worse than head to south Wales to meet the real life version of the Riot Women. The NaNaz are a six-piece punk band formed last year by a group of women in their 50s and 60s. Their repertoire of songs tackles everything from unaffordable care home fees, to male attitudes towards older women, to the frustrations of recycling. And they are possibly the only band to have ever been featured on both the homepage of guitar.com and a poster campaign for Age Cymru.

Rudolf Proske war immer ein wilder Haudegen, Schiffschaukelbremser, Fernfahrer, Firmengründer – und Autor. Nun erscheinen erstmals nach vielen Jahren neue Gedichte von ihm. Besuch bei einem außergewöhnlichen Schriftsteller.

Yihwen Chen’s warm and galvanising documentary follows queer punk band Shh…Diam! as they battle discrimination with humour and raw energy

For queer Malaysian punk band Shh … Diam!, every live gig is a small miracle. Their name translates as “Shut up!”, a powerful and defiant cry in a country rife with homophobia. Favouring distorted riffs, heavy drums and swaggering lyrics, the band’s powerful sound seeks to drown out the noise of prejudice and discrimination. Their courage, as well as their simple joie de vivre, thrum through Yihwen Chen’s documentary portrait. Shot over six years, the film charts the monumental changes undergone by the band members and their home nation.

Always ready with a joke, lead singer and guitarist Faris is a proud trans man. Rejected by his own family, the charismatic performer finds a safe haven with his bandmates Yon and Yoyo, and their audience. Their songs turn up the volume on issues faced by the queer community, and also bristle with an anarchic sense of humour. One particularly tongue-in-cheek tune is titled Lonely Lesbian; a title taken from a hostile rightwing article citing ways to spot a lesbian, its playful and defiant lyrics reconfigure homophobic ideology into satire, an act of rebellious subversion cloaked in irony.

The emo kings on growing up in Arizona, making it big, and Jim’s annoying wake-up calls

Jimmy Eat World are an alternative rock band from Mesa, east of Phoenix, Arizona. Formed by vocalist and guitarist Jim Adkins, guitarist Tom Linton, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind in 1993, they have released 10 albums – including their 2001 breakthrough record, Bleed American. Its hit single, The Middle, peaked at No 5 in the US Hot 100 chart; it has now had more than 1bn streams. The band mark the 25th anniversary of the album with a series of shows this summer including UK appearances in August in Halifax, Cardiff and Crystal Palace Bowl, London.

Thriving punk culture seen as response to frustrations at unemployment, urban violence, police brutality and deprivation

As black-clad police combatants charged into the hillside favela and opened fire, a black-clad punk scurried out of the community in the opposite direction, his hands trembling from fright.

“Holy shit! All those guns! Things are getting ugly!” spluttered Rodrigo Cilirio, the founder and bassist of one of Rio’s most enduring punk bands, as he took cover behind a tree.

The Dutch ex-punk and Jim Jarmusch bandmate talks about his passion to free up a hidebound repertoire and make its strings ‘a real pop instrument’

Nobody can accuse Jozef Van Wissem of doing things by halves. The musician, very likely the world’s most notorious contemporary lutenist, owns a sonic arsenal of eight of the string instruments: some bespoke, and all boasting remarkable features. With them he has created a huge body of work, nearly 50 titles to date. Another album, This Is My Blood is released this May.

Each Easter, Van Wissem settles down to compose a new record. He finds the peace of Warsaw, where everyone has “gone away for the holidays”, more amenable for work than “noisy” Rotterdam, where he also has a flat.

Mould’s fearsomely loud power trio Sugar rode the wave of grunge, but called it quits when the scene lost its innocence. Now the band are reuniting – before it’s too late

The beating heart of Sugar was always the sound of Bob Mould’s guitar: a colossal, metallic, thunderous thing, like a sonic boom you could whistle. “It was incredible, being engulfed by that wall of sound,” remembers bassist David Barbe from his office at the University of Georgia, weeks before the group are due to play their first shows in more than three decades. “Bob was so loud, there were times on stage when I could see Malcolm drumming, but I couldn’t actually hear him.”

“I didn’t wear earplugs when I started playing with Bob,” adds Malcolm Travis, the aforementioned drummer, from his home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. “But soon afterwards, I did. It was just deafening.” And while everyone involved is 30 years older than the last time they played together, age has not withered them; anyone who’s caught Mould playing solo in recent years will attest that his guitar is still fearsomely loud.

Brady Ebert, a former member of the Grammy-winning US hardcore band, allegedly hit the father of Brendan Yates with his car

Brady Ebert, the former guitarist of the Grammy-winning US hardcore band Turnstile, has been charged with attempted second-degree murder after allegedly hitting the father of the band’s frontman, Brendan Yates, with his car.

On 29 March, police found William Yates outside his home with “trauma to his lower extremities”, with a broken bone protruding from his leg, according to the Baltimore Banner.

The self-destructive bad boy, now 70, looks back on his life with a humorous shrug in Jonas Åkerlund’s warmly sympathetic film

Swedish film-maker Jonas Åkerlund has been attracted to the wilder edge of rock’n’roll and I found myself grudgingly admiring his gruesome true-life death-metal horror thriller Lords of Chaos. So he was probably the right choice to direct this lavish docu-tribute to British postpunk legend Billy Idol, which combines a kind of humorous shrug at his outrageous excesses with something warmly sympathetic.

With that certain type of luck indistinguishable from talent, Billy Idol rode the tide of punk to new wave in the late 70s and early 80s, and then gambled on a move to the US; there he found fledgling 24-hour music video channel MTV, avid for content and always turned on by a self-destructive bad boy, which made him a big name. The film compares Idol to Elvis Presley, but there is something in that reflexive snarl-sneer that he used to do that has something of Eddie Cochran.

Opening in May, Camden museum has 100,000-item archive telling story of British youth subcultures, from mods and rockers, to ravers and emo

• Teenage kicks: Camden’s Museum of Youth Culture – in pictures

In the basement of a new-build housing block in Camden, the ventilation system is working flat out. The fans whir like a chainsaw orchestra bouncing around the concrete room as they attempt to deal with a slight damp problem. “This is what it’d sound like if there was a fire!” shouts Jon Swinstead, the driving force behind the Museum of Youth Culture, as he tries to make himself heard above the din.

It’s hard to imagine but in a few weeks this empty, slightly soggy space will be transformed into an institution dedicated to all things teenage – a project Swinstead has been working on in one way or another for almost 30 years.

In his first newspaper interview after fathering a child outside his marriage, Grohl discusses his changed outlook, his grief for Taylor Hawkins, and the 430 therapy sessions he’s had

‘I’m just going to recline.” Weighing up the seating options in a luxury London hotel suite, Dave Grohl opts for the sofa. He lays his head and swings his legs round until his black leather boots are resting on the upholstery, and clasps his hands across his stomach. Punk-rock disregard for shoe etiquette aside, it’s the classic pose of the psychoanalysed. “I’ve been in therapy six days a week for 70 weeks,” he says. “I did the math the other day: over 430 sessions.”

Even by US standards, that is a lot – but if anyone needed to work out who they are and why they were doing what they were doing, it was Grohl. Nirvana ended traumatically after the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, but their drummer Grohl quickly formed a new band, Foo Fighters, stepping up to frontman and turning them into the definitive stadium rockers of the new century with hits such as Everlong, Best of You and The Pretender. Grohl was often described as “the nicest man in rock”, a label his team tells me he dislikes, but he was certainly genial and seemed to be settling into middle age with hobbyist projects – documentary series, memoir, horror-comedy film – between a series of world tours and middle-ranking Foo Fighters albums. He had married second wife Jordyn Blum in 2003 and they’d had three daughters together. Bassist Nate Mendel tells me: “When we were first rehearsing in the mid-90s, Dave said: I just want this band to be low-drama, and for it to be fun.”

As she releases her new solo album, Play Me, the former Sonic Youth star answers your questions on acting for Kristen Stewart, doing Basquiat’s photocopying, and who really invented punk rock

Did you plan to change rock music for ever? Were you envisaging a decades-long career, or was it all a bit more haphazard? Nepthsolem
When Sonic Youth first started, there had been such a high bar set for music that achieved something that people hadn’t done before, it was difficult to know how to add to that. There was the Velvet Underground, who cast a huge shadow, and then all the no wave bands, and when you’re faced with all that coolness, and you feel like you don’t belong, how do you make something happen? You have to focus on the thrill of making something that is like nothing that existed before. It sounds pretentious to say, “We wanted to do something new”, but that was it, and then you have to see what happens. And that’s still my approach. Honestly, I had no intention of doing solo records – I’d been playing in an improv-based project with Bill Nace, Body/Head, but that was all. And it was this producer in LA, Justin Raisen, he kept bugging me to make a solo record. There was no plan; in the end, again, I was like, let’s see what happens.

Your memoir, Girl in a Band, is one of my favourites. It reads almost like a novel. Have you ever considered writing a novel? timwthornton
I’ve thought about it. I consider myself more as a visual artist who writes, rather than a writer. I won’t say I won’t ever try to write a novel, but writing is always a challenge, just the getting started part, and I’m such a procrastinator. But once I get into it, I really, really enjoy it. It’s the thinking I love. A lot of times I actually don’t know what I think about something until I start writing about it.

Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard’s music is as hybrid as they are, with their Protestant-Catholic and English-Irish heritages. They explain why they still need to counter hate

In Belfast’s Kelly’s Cellars, a bar that has been bringing the city’s people together since 1720, trad music bleeds from somewhere deep within as Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard arrive mizzle-damp from the street. They settle into a corner alcove and reach for two pints of stout.

Together they form the duo Chalk. As Kneecap have exploded out of Belfast, Chalk’s longer fuse has been quietly burning alongside them. Formed when the pair met studying film at university, they have spent five years building a live show that can compete with the best in the UK and Ireland: imagine Underworld’s rave beatitude and the coiled menace of Nine Inch Nails but rooted in Belfast music, from the punk of Stiff Little Fingers and Rudi through to the beats of David Holmes and the Sugar Sweet-era rave scene. “We wanted to make as much noise as we could with just two people,” says Goddard. “But we never wanted to be limited by that.”

Cheeky and rebellious, the Netherlands’ own brand of ‘ludiek’ zaniness thrived in the 1960s protest era. Now, the New Dutch Naivety movement is bringing it back with songs about chocolate, good transport and no-smoking policies

Imagine a song about the noisy centre of Amsterdam turning magically into chocolate, prompting children to go wild and eat it. The edifice then melts away, once you get the train from Amsterdam Lelylaan to Haarlemmermeer. This is the story of Amsterdam is opeens van chocolade (“Amsterdam is suddenly chocolate”), a song written by the young alt-pop musician, Thor Kissing. It is an example of a cheeky and rebellious aspect of 20th-century Dutch popular culture, ludiek (“playfulness”), which may be on the rise again.

Kissing is a central figure in a new project that tries to capture what ludiek music means in the 21st century: two compilation albums called Nieuwe Nederlandse Naïviteit (“New Dutch Naivety”), promoting a disparate bunch of contemporary alternative Dutch-language pop artists. In October 2024, the first volume was launched in a spartan youth centre in an out-of-the-way Zaandam suburb. Volume two is set for release this March, in “hip” Amsterdam.