You have to hand it to Bradford’s Nia Archives. With her Mercury-nominated 2024 debut Silence Is Loud and her breakthrough EP before that, she helped put drum’n’bass back on the map, underlining the electronic style’s Black roots and women pioneers. Two years on and she’s evolved from DJ and producer into pop star, and on her second album unleashes some of the year’s most ambitious genre blends including teaming up for tracks with two stars of British soul, Sampha and Jorja Smith. On Emotional Junglist Nia unpacks feelingz (her spelling) using, variously, the horror stabs of classic grime instrumentals, the crunchy riffs of nu-metal, melodious guitars in the style of The Cure, pitched-up hyperpop vocals, hectic IDM textures and some songwriting from Smile-era Lily Allen over the top of great big thwacking, stuttering breaks. It’s quite an onslaught but it gives the sad banger artform a new energy. Will we be crying on the dance floor this summer? Let's see!

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

A haunted vacuum cleaner becomes an allegory for Thailand’s turbulent political past in this boldly fantastical, Cannes prize-winning comedy from writer-director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke. Witsarut Himmarat stars as March, a man grieving the death of his pregnant wife from dust pollution (a real and ongoing crisis in the country), who is comforted to meet her again – albeit in an unexpected form. March’s family and friends, however, are less elated by this strange reunion.  

Ellen E Jones, Nerve film critic

Scottish star Maureen Beattie follows in the footsteps of Glenda Jackson and Kathryn Hunter in taking on the title character in a gender-swapped version of Shakespeare’s craggy tragedy – and she is magnificent, unravelling from Thatcher-ish steeliness to slumped senility over three hours of riveting drama. Finn Den Hertog’s staging evolves from salubrious (Lear’s family and friends stood around in quilted gilets clutching property portfolios like Edinburgh estate agents) to stark (a thorn-crowned Beattie wandering across a desolate space like a spirit in a folk horror movie), and the blinding of Gloucester happens with delightful darkness at the sharp end of a stiletto. It is a lucid, lurid and profound interpretation – and the best show yet in Alan Cumming’s inaugural season as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival theatre.

Fergus Morgan, culture writer

After a string of terrible dates and having grown tired of dating apps, Cassie decides to hire a male escort, Jericho. But what happens to an arrangement when you start to actually fall for the person? In this funny, relatable read, Yeboah explores modern dating, family expectations and finding love in a world that is transactional by nature. Doing it for the Plot is a refreshing modern romance and an ideal beach read.

Michaela Makusha, culture writer

Harry Shearer and Tim Leopold’s satire on the life of FBI director J Edgar Hoover has been in the works for so long that its composer Peter Matz died in 2002. Told through deathbed visions and winking show tunes, it focuses on rumours that Hoover (played by Mad Men’s comically handsome Bryan Batt) was a closeted gay man and cross-dresser in a long relationship with his assistant Clyde Tolson (Hugo Bolton). This drives the camp pizzazz of director Josh Seymour’s production, which argues that the hoarder of the nation’s secrets was hiding a doozie of his own but it does make this serial ruiner of lives appear sweet and silly rather than dangerous. More interestingly, we see how Hoover constructed his own celebrity (Marc Elliott plays star gossip Walter Winchell) and blackmailed a series of presidents into letting him remain the US’s top cop for 48 years. Still, a comedy musical can never be a scrupulous biopic. Batt is terrific as the preening, paranoid Hoover and it’s always fun to watch a big show in a small theatre. I haven’t seen an audience hoot like this since the similarly exclamatory and history-queering Oh, Mary!

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

At this landmark textile exhibition featuring work by eight artists - four from South Korea and four from India - you are invited to walk through Jounghye Yoo’s Gilded Veil, a large-scale work inspired by a Varanasi temple, made from South Asian silk with Korean embroidery, and then in Young In Hong’s works, made in collaboration with an artisan collective in Kutch, India, imagine alternative worlds where animals and humans are equal. Don’t miss her cranes’ shoes woven from straw. All eight artists have used an 18-month collaboration, including research trips to India and South Korea visiting artists and artisans, to create the works for this thrilling show. The connections they’ve made are perhaps best symbolised by the work of Sumakshi Singh, currently representing India at the 2026 Venice Biennale, who has embroidered a bridge from thousands of delicate threads. In our increasingly globalised and homogenised world, these extraordinary contemporary works celebrate community, commonality and shared skills and beliefs, gently breaking down barriers of language and culture.

Susan Ferguson, Nerve events

THEATRE
August: Osage County
(Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2N, 18 January - 10 April 2027)

The magnificent talents of Lesley Manville and Anna Maxwell Martin unite for the first ever West End production of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer prize-winning toxic family drama.

MUSIC
Bob Dylan UK tour
(Starts 25 November Bournemouth BIC Windsor Hall and then Birmingham, Sheffield, Blackpool and London)

The inimitable Bob Dylan hits the UK for a set of shows including five nights at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Tickets go on sale 10am Wednesday 22 July.

PHOTOGRAPHY
Dark Tales: British Documentary Photography and the Gothic
(Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, 17 September - 20 December; free entry)

This fantastic-sounding group show delving into the relationship between the Gothic and British documentary photography is free entry, but with work by the likes of Bill Brandt, Robert Frank, Don McCullin, Lee Miller, Charlie Phillips and Akihiko Okamura, you’ll want to get it booked into your diary.

ART
Hurvin Anderson
(Tate Britain, London SW1P until 23 August)

Don’t miss Anderson’s stunning mid-career retrospective featuring luminous paintings spanning portraiture, barbershop interiors and luscious landscapes. (Before you go read art critic Emily LaBarge’s lovely interview with Anderson for the Nerve here).