IS IT HISTORY, THIS NEW ONE FROM ME?

Richard Ashcroft - presumably buoyed by being flattered by Chris Martin - is very, very pleased with his new album. He's happy to tell everyone all about it, and boy will he talk about:

"It's sounding shit hot. I'm pleased with it. It's got a good mix to it: there's some good raw rock 'n' roll on it, some moments of beauty and lushness, but there're some tracks that are pretty raw, pretty heavy.

"And I think, lyrically, for me it's hitting the spot. There's a lot of different topics and things I'm going into, and for a time I was thinking about that very English way of writing tunes back from '65 and '66. The Stones, The Beatles, [all the songs] have a bit of Dylan twisted-ness in the sound, but they retain an Englishness to them.

"That's what I wanna be, a great English songwriter. I don't want to be anything else, I realise that now. That's my job, that's my duty, to write tunes, not to fuck around."

Oh, great. Someone who think's he's the saviour of English songwriting harking back to a time when everyone had to smile whenever the Small Faces put a single out. And just when Paul Weller started to be cured of that, too...

music richard ashcroft paul weller