Kate Jackson's named, if not ready to release, her album

From the Bury Free Press:

Kate Jackson, former lead singer of The Long Blondes, has revealed the title of her long-awaited solo album – British Road Movies.

Kate, from Bury St Edmunds, began working on the project with Suede’s main songwriter Bernard Butler back in 2009.

The album was completed in December and Kate is hoping to release it at the end of the summer.

On Saturday, Kate is performing a hometown gig at the Hunter Club in Bury St Edmunds.

Jackson continues alone

Following the Long Blondes split, Kate Jackson has announced she's going solo:

"It's the first time I've talked about it but that's my plan," she said. "I'm just beginning but I think it will reflect my personal music taste a bit more than the Long Blondes, which was a collaborative thing.

"I've only just started and a lot of the influences will overlap so hopefully fans of the Long Blondes will like what I do."

She's also told 6Music about Dorian's stroke and its effect on him abnd the band:

"It was actually two days after we got back from our American tour and we have no idea what caused that," Jackson told 6 Music.

"Obviously, it was a complete shock for all of us, something that we've had a bit of time now to come to terms with.

"It does mean that he's unable to play the guitar at the moment and we don't really know when he'll be able to do that again. Unfortunately we've had to take the decision to split up."

The quintet have released two albums and were critically praised for their latest offering, the Erol Alkan-produced Couples.

Jackson said that Cox, who wrote a lot of the music, was having daily physiotherapy and was is making "vast improvements".

The band might, apparently, reunite if Cox recovers enough to pick up guitar duties again.

Ditto, op cit

Beth Ditto has shared the benefits of her wisdom with the Daily Record this morning. It's interesting that the other two out The Gossip are condemned to a Rest-of-Razorlight low profile - and, while we understand that the editors probably seek an audience with Beth alone, we're not sure that it's particularly punk to have one member grab all the limelight.

Anyway, today it's the "did I mention I'm up for sexiest woman against Kate Moss" thing again:

Beth is not keen on people trying to pit her against other women in the public eye.

She said: "They like to put you up against one another, but I'm not like that. They did it with me and Kate Moss, saying you're fat and she's skinny.

"My only issue was that the editors would rather put a model in a musicmag than afemale musician."

Hang on a minute... the NME editors haven't put you and Kate "up against one another" - you've been shortlisted for sexiest woman with four other people, based on an reader's vote, and nobody (apart from you) has arranged the women based on body mass index. You're also up against Lily Allen, Karen O and Kate Jackson, and yet you don't keep on banging on about that, do you?

"I don't have anything against size zero as such, but as a feminist, I ask why aspire to be a zero? A zero is a nothing.

"When women aspire to be a nothing it says something about our culture. You should be glad for what you have."

Um... you do realise that size zero is merely a dress size and there's more pressing concerns than the semiotics of the word.

First night: The Long Blondes

The Long Blondes started their UK tour on Friday night. Popstarz was full of indie kids wearing berets (we bet), the odd journo and a smattering of bloggers.

The NME was there on expenses, and went to the effort of compiling a set list:

'Lust In The Movies'
'Weekend without Makeup'
'Once And Never Again'
'Giddy Stratospheres'
'Five Ways To End It'
'Separated By Motorways'

Obviously not the full set, as this was one of those halfway-through-a-clubnight jobs.

Dave AP got a little skin-on-skin action:

stood at the very front,
was literally 2ft away from the band
an directly in front of kate jackson
an she sang to me
an held my hand while she was singing motorways!
it was great

Mind you, that was nothing compared to what Lubey's mate got at the first night proper in Brighton:

Wow tonight was just wow! Me and Vix went to see The Long Blondes at the Old Market and we were highly impressed, Brilliant live!!! was so so random though seeing as Vick interupted a butt sniffing junkie in the toilets haha getting a whole eye full.

That's the sort of thing you seldom get in a Daily Telegraph review, isn't it? But considering nothing's meant to happen in the world without it being blogged from sixteen different angles, it's slightly disappointing that there's barely a word about their twin opening nights.

Luckily, Flickr doesn't let us down: Stephen Burch supplies some gorgeous shots of the band on stage at the Brighton Old Market. And, if you're really keen, there's some cameraphone footage, too - although, erm, with no sound.