Laura Snapes

“Are you sure I don’t sound mad and unhinged?” Jessie Ware asks, again. We have spent two hours discussing hypnotherapy, impostor syndrome and her fears about failing as a mother as she tours her third album, Glasshouse, with her one-year-old in tow. No, I tell her. She sounds like a new mum who apologises too much because people like to make new mums feel they’re failing. Babies cry, that’s what they do – her daughter was meant to be asleep in their Berlin Airbnb all afternoon, but did a gia...

This article originally appeared in issue Q377, October 2017.
Theo Ellis walks up to Seattle’s Sunset Tavern, pointing to his heart and shaking his head. “I just got tattooed in the stupidest place.” In a few hours, his band Wolf Alice will play the minuscule club, and his bass strap will feel like a lawnmower shearing the shamrock from his skin. Drummer Joel Amey escaped lightly with a new earring. “Any time we have free time, people panic and are like, ‘Gotta get something tattooed or pierc...

Liam Gallagher was made for viral stardom. His flawless insults anticipated an era where celebrity reactions became shorthand for shade, and they’ve mostly been his internet currency until recently. Gallagher started promoting his debut solo album, As You Were, in a very early interview with Britain’s Q magazine last August. It wasn’t his jabs at older brother Noel (“that cunt”) that orbited Twitter, but signs of a more meditative outlook. “I was running on [Hampstead] Heath and I thought, ‘T...

Tegan and Sara are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their vanguard fifth album with a compilation of covers from Hayley Williams, Chvrches, Bleachers, Grimes, Kelly Lee Owens, and more.
Tegan and Sara released their fifth album, The Con, on July 24, 2007, but the original reviews read more like misogynist clippings from the 1970s. NME called the sisters “little more than twin airbags.” This website offered a confusing and offensive attempt at a compliment stating that “Tegan and Sara shoul...

I profiled Annie Clark for BuzzFeed!

Wrote about Shirley and Dolly Collins' Anthems in Eden, and Laura Nyro's New York Tendaberry.

Op-ed for Elle US.

Wrote about the amazing Disneyland Dream for this Guardian list.

Covered Kitty Empire and reviewed Grizzly Bear for the Observer.

Short profile for The Observer's new music spot.

I wrote about Friday Night Lights for the Guardian Guide's Jump the Shark series.

A report from a playback of Kesha's new material.

An op-ed for The Pool on Lucinda Chambers' Vogue resignation interview.

I wrote about seeing Mount Eerie at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for NPR's mid-2017 best-of.