There's a new Coldplay album, everyone

At first, I assumed this from the BBC website was an early review of A Head Full Of Dreams:

- but then I realised that there's going to be a lot more boring songs on the album than that.

There was a useful capsule review on Twitter, though:

You guys Noel Gallagher is on the new Coldplay album. This tweet is our review.

— Norman Records (@normanrecords) November 6, 2015

Horrifying as this news is, it makes a bit of sense and you can't help wishing that maybe Coldplay and Oasis had merged back in the early days of the century, so we could have concentrated on avoiding just one lumbering beast.

Could the prospect be made any less appealing, though, than this hooking up of Gallagher with Coldplay? Oh, yes. Yes, it can:

Coldplay have explained how Guns N' Roses influenced their new track 'Adventure Of A Lifetime'.

Now, you're probably thinking what I did - "presumably like Guns N Roses they realised they'd reached the end of what their basic talents would allow, and decided to try and disguise it with overblown pomposity?" - but that's not quite it:

Martin continued: "I’d been begging Jonny [Buckland] our guitarist for years to make a riff that I like as much as 'Sweet Child O' Mine' by Guns N' Roses, then he showed me that one, and I was like, 'That's it!' So those elements all came together, and we just wanted to kind of embrace our love of joyful music and sort of let it free."

"Why don't you write something I like as much as Sweet Child O' Mine" shows a surprising level of self-awareness on Martin's part, assuming that he realises he's admitting that nothing Coldplay have yet recorded is as good as that. (To be fair, he could also ask Buckland why he doesn't do something as good as Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs for the same reason.)

So, a bright new Coldplay album out at the start of December. Start practising your "oh, this gift is just what I wanted" faces, gang.

Suede: Filmstars

Four-fifths of me is very excited about this:

One-fifth of me is thinking 'Broadchurch: The Concept Album".

Rose McDowall's solo album is coming back

You know what? It's thirty sodding eight degrees outside and I'm hot, so I'm going to paste a press release in here and that's okay because it's worth reading, alright?

Born in times of difficulty and adventure, Cut With The Cake Knife is the debut album from Rose McDowall, solo-artist and ex-member of cult pop group Strawberry Switchblade. Originally recorded in 1988-89 and now re-mastered and getting the re-issue treatment from Sacred Bones Records (U.S.) & Night School Records (UK, EU)

Marking the beginning of an extensive archive project spanning Rose’s 34 year career, Cut With The Cake Knife will include unreleased recordings alongside unseen photographs and detailed new sleeve notes.

Recorded in various locations around the UK and Iceland following the break up of Strawberry Switchblade, the original 9-track Cut With The Cake Knife album featured songs written and demoed for the group’s fabled second album.

Rose McDowall began her career in her hometown of Glasgow, operating within the nascent punk scene with her first group The Poems. After a meteoric rise to pop stardom, which saw Strawberry Switchblade achieve chart success, world tours and global fame, McDowall’s relationship with partner and friend Jill Bryson disintegrated. The aftermath of her pop career saw McDowall earn a new reputation as an underground artist, collaborating with Coil, Felt, Current 93 and Nurse With Wound among others. Cut With The Cake Knife was recorded against this tumultuous backdrop and is one the most affecting collections of direct pop songwriting committed to tape.

The album opens with one of McDowall’s most heartfelt, honest moments: Tibet; a simple song written with absolute truth about the loss of friendship. For errant Switchblade fans it’s a prime example of why McDowall’s legacy is so important: shorn of unnecessary ornament, it’s one of many songs here that speak loudly and clearly about universal emotional states. Production values throughout lie somewhere between glossy, 80s studios and home-recorded demos but it’s a sound that only heightens the poignancy in McDowall’s voice: her best instrument and one that can evoke vulnerability, as in the near-angelic harmonies on Sixty Cowboys or swirling excitement as in the number 1 hit that never was, Crystal Nights. But perhaps her prowess is best summed up by the album’s title track, written for the 2nd Switchblade album yet thriving here, in which Rose projects a powerful protagonist, tinged with violence but still playful. At the heart of even the most upbeat, transcendently “pop” moments is a beautiful melancholy, a nagging heartache McDowall can call her own.

As Rose writes in the 2015 edition sleeve notes: “They’re real sad songs, about real life.”

Cut With The Cake Knife is out September 18th on Sacred Bones (U.S.) / Night School (UK / EU)

Could I make this 'exciting news/half-arsed post' even more so? Yes. Here's a YouTube embed:

Listen with No Rock: Glockabelle

Meet - if you've not already had the pleasure - Glockabelle. I think this might be the first track I've ever come across which could have the power to give syanathesia to people who aren't synesthesic:



That's the lead track from her new Wolf BBQ EP. I suspect not everyone will like it, but if you do, you'll like it very much.

She's going to be in the UK supporting The Go Team in June before doing some dates elsewhere in Europe. She also has website.

Coming soon: Bob Collins

Bob Collins used to (and from time to time, still does) lead The Dentists. He's been all this time in the business (if you can call it business) and never done a solo record.

Until now.

Or not quite now. It's out on June 16th, and here's the press release:

Remarkably, this is Bob Collins’ first album under his own name, despite his prolific and accomplished songwriting in The Dentists and other assorted acts over the years. Telescopic Victory Kiss brings together the finest songs from his latter day career performing as a solo acoustic artist or with the three piece Full Nelson combo.

The Dentists occupied a unique spot in the no-man’s-land between garage rock and nascent 80s indie pop. Thanks to a renewed interest in that era, and two reunion gigs in 2010, they are now receiving some of the recognition that eluded them in their heyday, to the extent that they are now a de rigeur presence on any self-respecting compilation of 80’s guitar-indie.

Bob’s signature passion-fuelled jangle is as in evidence on the new album as it is on any of his former band’s past catalogue, now combined with his own rich vocal delivery, doing justice to the lyrics like only the writer can.

Since their split in 1995 all members of The Dentists continued to be musically active if not prolific with recorded output, largely due to the continuation of a hesitant and dismissive approach to engaging with anything resembling the ‘music industry’.

After a brief respite Bob Collins supplied some guitar and songwriting craft to the self-confessed classic-pop MOR of Fortune West on a 2000 single, then appeared on an album and EP with Mick Murphy’s Fortress Madonna project in 2002. A collaboration with former Dentist Mark Matthews in the Great Lines, stormed SXSW 2005 before imploding and leaving a legendary album ‘in the can’.

Bob finally began performing in earnest as a solo artist in his native Medway Towns, in 2007 soon adding fellow ex-Dentist Rob Grigg on drums and ex-Ascoyne d’Ascoyne (another one of Bob’s former combos) Mark Aitken on bass as the Full Nelson.

Between co-authoring “The Kids Are All Square” a celebration of the early 80s Medway punk and garage scene, joining the extraordinary punk-pop-blues combo Stuart Turner and the Flat Earth Society, and co-promoting Medway’s Homespun independent music festival Bob managed to squeeze in the recording of this album during 2013 and 2014 with his Full Nelson colleagues.

Recorded in Medway’s analogue Ranscombe Studio, this ten-song assortment of self-penned material is as fresh, heartfelt and engaging a collection of guitar pop nuggets as you are likely to have heard in a long time.

Bob Collins And The Full Nelson's Telescopic Victory Quiz is just a month away.

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.

Blur are back, back, back (although we didn't realise they'd actually stopped being back)

So, much excitement earlier this week, with Sky News taking up the fact trumpet:

@SkyNews: Blur have announced they are going to reunite for the first time in 12 years

I'd love to share the actual tweet with you, but it has vanished from the world as, with one voice (and I suspect it was the voice of Phil Daniels) Twitter yelled 'they did Glastonbury in 2009, and had a single out in 2012, and it seems like they've never actually stopped working together.

Sure, from the news source which once declared that the entire eastern seaboard of America had been decimated by a terrorist attack, messing up a tweet about Blur is a step forward, but it's a pity that they're so thin-skinned they attempted to rewrite history rather than admit their error, correct it, and move on. An organisation which attempts to wipe out its mistakes isn't one to be trusted.

Still, Blur are having a comeback. Or, rather, Blur are still around. Although they have let themselves go a bit:

The album might be great - but it does come with trigger warning:

Initially conceived in Hong Kong, during downtime following a cancelled show in Japan, the band spent five days laying down ideas.

Now, the band say they've had time for perspective to develop, and look at the tracks with a cold, hard, eye.

Maybe.

But let's just approach this record with the awareness that this is a project born of being bored in a hotel room.

And so it's on a par with this sort of thing:

Speedy Ortiz: This is how you launch an album

New album from Speedy Ortiz is called Foil Deer, and it's out at the end of April. But - more importantly - their press release takes the form of a comic from Michael DeForge:

Sara Lowes has an offer for you

You can preorder Sara Lowes' forthcoming album. If you spend thirty quid, you get a delicious vinyl version, with a download code, and a CD of the last album. There's only 300 on offer, so be quick.

Madonna releases new music; the world tries to sound interested

Of course. Of course, Madonna's new stuff is working with Nicki Minaj. It fits the pattern of the last couple of decades where she appears to have a six-month old copy of Billboard delivered (perhaps she has them sent to her via Yodel) and she hooks up with whoever was hot back then.

She couldn't look more like a desperate tourist if she films the video using a selfie stick.

One of the songs is called Bitch I'm Madonna, which does at least manage to release Robbie William's She's Madonna from the long-held shame of 'the worst record with Madonna's name in the title'.

These songs are being released now because of the leak earlier in the week - you'll probably have heard her describe this act as "artistic rape" and being like "terrorism", showing that she's still got the power to be outrageous, just not in a positive way any more. It might seem odd back then these tracks were dismissed by Madge:

She dismissed the leaked versions as "unfinished demos stolen long ago" and thanked fans for their "loyalty" in "not listening" to the unfinished material.

... because now she's describing the same songs as a gift. Apparently they've been finished:

"I was hoping to release my new single 'Living For Love' on Valentine's Day with the rest of the album coming in the Spring. I would prefer my fans to hear completed versions of some of the songs instead of the incomplete tracks that are circulating. Please consider these six songs as an early Christmas gift."

They're not actually a gift, as to get them officially you have to preorder the album, so it's more of a fire sale. And if they're finished, it's puzzling how many of them don't even have a title.

New artist alert: Molly Wilkinson

So there's a lot of music demanding your attention at the moment, and you might have missed Molly Wilkinson, who slid out a beautiful guitarry-with-smidge-of-electricity a short while ago. Oh, and the voice. The voice.



Look, you could listen to it here, but it's only a fiver so why not buy the thing, eh? It's excellent.

Hold on and stop what you're doing

November 17th. Bo Ningen & Savages collaborations of the last couple of years are resulting in an album.

Bo Ningen and Savages announce a collaborative recording as a co-release by Stolen Recordings / Pop Noire Records on November 17th. ‘Words To The Blind’ comprises of one 37-minutes long track. Taking their cross fertilisation a step further, following occasional live appearances together and Savages’ Jehnny Beth guesting on Bo Ningen’s current album ‘III’, ‘Words To The Blind’ is an astonishing piece of work, a ‘simultaneous sonic poem’ inspired by the Dadaist concept of the ‘Simultaneous Poem’

That's later this month. That's just over a fortnight away.

What do they sound like together?

Sleater-Kinney: So this happened yesterday

Yes. That's a new Sleater-Kinney single. And, yes, there's a new album, No Cities To Love, right at the start of next year.

Bono almost notices his positon

Bono was talking to Zane Lowe:

Bono has suggested that U2 are "on the verge of irrelevance".

He's right, but what he doesn't realise is which side of the verge he's on. To reach irrelevance would be a comeback.

By the way: Zane Lowe? Really? Isn't 'U2 release another album' more a Simon Mayo type of offering?

Listen with No Rock: Slum Of Legs

An email arrives, suggesting I might want to listen to a thing. That happens a lot, but the thing is a cassette/digital album from Brighton. And they describe themselves like this:

I never know how to describe ourselves other than pop-noise and we love the Velvet Underground. The tape is super lo-fi and was recorded on 4 track over an old Jim Reeves cassette by Tom House from Charlottefield.

Obviously, recording over Jim Reeves will add the sound of distant drums to your final mix.

It all ended up sounding like this:

You don't have to go with the tape version, but you should at least make sure you buy the demo in some format, because it will improve your life. Guaranteed.

Slum Of Legs. A buzzy, fuzzy wake-up sound. Yesyesyes.

Beyonce springs a Christmas surprise

'Releasing records without prior announcement' is the new 'putting a record onto the torrents, pretending it's leaked, making a fuss, and then "bringing forward" the "original release date" in line with the marketing plan'.

Beyonce has just blitzreleased a new album, just in time for Christmas - although, you'll note, way too late for Hanukkah.

Sorry, did I say album? I forgot that this release come pre-wrapped with some old bollocks:

Beyonce Unexpectedly Releases New Self-Titled 'Visual Album' on iTunes

Yes, this is a 'visual album' which you might want to see as an astonishing new development in music, or else something that Thomas Dolby did in 1994 with The Gate To The Minds Eye.

It's fair to say that while the world is thrilled to have a new Beyonce album, and impressed at the idea of lobbing the thing out when it's ready, rather than running a long build-up campaign, the "visual album" aspect is going down like a high concept in a low crowd.

Here's how Beyonce describes it:

"I see music," Beyonce said in a video announcing the album on her Facebook page, dubbed "Self-Titled, Part 1." “It’s more than just what I hear. When I’m connected to something, I immediately see a visual or a series of images that are tied to a feeling or an emotion, a memory from my childhood, thoughts about life, my dreams or my fantasies. And they’re all connected to the music.”

CMU's Andy Malt was unimpressed:

In the PR, Beyoncé talks about the experience of listening to music triggering images in her mind tied to memories, emotions and dreams.

— Andy Malt (@andymalt) December 13, 2013

They missed off the end of the quote where she says "Because I am the only person this happens to, I made videos for ever song on the album"

— Andy Malt (@andymalt) December 13, 2013

There is a possibility that Beyonce has rushed this one out because she was feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of six months of marketing meeetings where everyone else in the room tried not to snicker as she outlined her vision.

Swervedriver return. But wait, there's more.

Swervedriver came back last year; this year, though, they're releasing music for the first time in a decade and a half.

That would be enough to get us all giddy. But can you make us giddier, Line Of Best Fit?

“Deep Wound” was previewed live last year and finally experiences a standalone release this week. The track features Ride‘s Mark Gardener on backing vocals too.

Giddy-to-falling-over-levels.

Gary Barlow: How deep is your self-love

Gary Barlow really isn't bothered how many copies his solo album sells:

‘This is going to sound wrong, but I couldn’t care less (if it’s not successful). I’m not looking to sell 10million albums,’ he told ES Magazine.

If only there was some way we could measure just how unconcerned Barlow is about selling records.

The 42-year-old is said to have spent thousands of pounds to promote his forthcoming release by paying for advertising posters to appear on the streets of ITV hit soap Coronation Street.

Ah, yes: nothing says "I am unconcerned about sales" like a hugely expensive campaign to shove product placement onto one of the most-watched programmes in the country.

Embed and breakfast man: Placebo

Let's come back up to date. Here's the new Placebo single.



I think the kindest thing to say is that at least Brian's rhyming dictionary is up-to-date, isn't it?

Gordon in the morning: In which Mr Smart attends an album playback

Beady Eye have, thrillingly, unveiled their new album to a crowd in a dingy room beneath a Soho flophouse (sorry, a "cinema beneath the posh Soho Hotel"; I forgot they only pretend to be a rock band these days.)

Gordon's written a review so gushing that when he says "Austin Powers would love this track", he's saying that like it's a good thing.

But he also appends Liam's own evaluation of the songs. Which really tells you all you need to know:

Fookin’ tune, man
You’re welcome!
Have that! Tune!
F****n’ tune!
Come on! What a tune.
Have a go on that!
Have it! Tune!
F***ing tune!

The most important thing to note is that two tracks there's no Gallagher, um, insight into because he went to the toilet. Twice. Either he's already bored to tears with the record, or his bladder's giving out and he would have said some combination of fuck, tune, and have.

Anyone surprised that he's even incoherent and lazy when talking about his own work? Anyone?