Laura Barton

1 week ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Laura Barton

On a warm Tuesday evening in mid-May, the music industry was out in force in central London. First, to see Dove Ellis play a support set at the 100 Club, followed by Tyler Ballgame, a short walk away at The Social. Both are hotly tipped young artists. The former a Galway native, and student at the Royal Northern College of Music, whose music carries shades of Van Morrison, Joan Armatrading, Jeff Buckley, a touch of Prince, perhaps, a little Talking Heads.

1 month ago | independent.co.uk | Laura Barton

State of the ArtsAs three male writers are announced as the people behind the new, four-part Beatles biopic – along with director Sam Mendes and stars including Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan – Laura Barton asks why women, despite propelling the band to glory, are rarely considered an authority on themFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing.

1 month ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Laura Barton

Once, standing in the weaving shed at Queen Street Mill in Burnley, Lancashire, I listened as an employee turned on the steam engine, setting loose the sound of 300 dobby looms. They moved at a canter, these vast machines. Each loom running at 180 picks a minute, the wooden shuttle leaping from one side of the device to the other. It was the biggest thing I had ever heard, and when the engine stopped and the room fell still, I did not know what to do with all of the silence.

2 months ago | uncut.co.uk | Laura Barton

Last autumn, the Wisconsin band Bon Iver released a new song named “Speyside”; a pared-back and rueful composition in which Justin Vernon’s voice clung only to guitar and pedal steel. It was an astonishing piece of songwriting, but its demeanour was familiar; many wondered whether it might signal a doubling-back to the folky and forlorn terrain of the band’s first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, after so many years in the experimental wilderness.

2 months ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Laura Barton

There was something rather apt in the tussle that followed the announcement of this summer’s Oasis reunion shows: websites crashed, prices soared, the scene grew frantic and unseemly. It was altogether in-keeping with the temperament of a band who split in the wake of a post-gig fight in Paris, then embarked upon 15 years of near-poetic acrimony. This energy—swaggering and somewhat splenetic—has been an essential part of both Oasis’s story and their sound.