In this week’s Soundbites – our look back at the past week’s news, reviews, features and occasional tabloid nonsense – The Rolling Stones emerge from their slumbers, some top new album releases are reviewed, Muse use Pink Floyd as inspiration for their new tour, and the most popular video of the past seven days is highlighted.
It’s been a long old wait for Rolling Stones fans – and Keith Richards – but with gigs in London and New York all but confirmed, and a new single released this week, the band themselves are now finally starting to join in with the many celebrations organised to mark their 50th anniversary. Speaking to Q, Richards showed his idea of ‘being gagged’ differs from most of us, responding to the rumours of live shows by remarking: “We’ve got some shows in London, I believe, and in New York, but I really can’t talk about any of that at the moment. They’ve put the gag on me on this. You can hint!” And then the single – their first bit of new material for seven years (let’s face it, a mere drop in the ocean for the Stones) – was rush-released on Thursday. “It’s fair to say Mick and Keef always had their finger on the pulse in terms of pseudo-political awareness, as has been evident since they first strutted onto the scene back in 1962. And ‘Doom and Gloom’ proves that, even after years of excess, they have lost none of their edge in that respect,” Live4ever said in our review. Check it out in full here.
You have to hand it to Lee Newell – for a band whose career basically consisted of a few snigger-inducing headlines and a pretty duff debut album, the interest that the frontman had managed to generate in Brother in such a short space of time means the intrigue surrounding his latest incarnation – Lovelife – has remained substantial. We sat down with Lee, and fellow Lovelife leader Ally Young, to dissect all the finer points of their shift from Britpop plunderers to humble electronic mysteries. Don’t miss it.
We might just have seen two of our favourites albums of 2012 get their reviews this week. Jake Bugg first hit Live4ever’s radar way back at the beginning of 2012 with his strikingly Fifties-inspired debut single ‘Trouble Town’. Eight months or so on, and the resultant album has not disappointed. Like Oasis nearly twenty years earlier, it all sounds so familiar, and yet undeniably original at the same time. You can either spend hours trying to decipher where you first heard that key change, or chorus melody, or you can sit back and lose yourself in some of the most instantly memorable tunes of recent years. And for Tame Impala, the vehicle for the hugely talented Kevin Parker, their psychedelic, late-Sixties era Lennon output has been further enhanced with another stunning release, described as displaying, “…a cohesion through experimentation that makes the album succeed as a whole, as greater than the sum of its parts.” Both albums, and all the other latest reviews, can be found here.
Muse‘s live productions have never failed to delight, and according to the band’s frontman Matt Bellamy this week, their imminent world tour in support of new album ‘The 2nd Law’ is going to be their most ambitious to date – on a par with Pink Floyd‘s The Wall no less. “I think it’s going to be our best tour so far. It’s like our version of The Wall,” he said. “We’ve built this upside down pyramid structure which is full of video screens.” More pyramid tales at this link.
Over forty years on from the end of The Beatles, and nearly twenty from their last new release, Paul McCartney has this week revealed there could yet be another Lennon-McCartney collaboration to work on. Speaking on the new Jeff Lynne documentary Mr. Blue Sky, McCartney explained how one track under consideration during the making of the Anthology documentary films back in the Nineties could be resurrected in the near future. More details from Sir Paul, and his thoughts on the track, right here.
There were so many good things about the White Stripes, not least of which being their consistently stripped back, superbly re-imagined versions of past classic tracks. And Jack White‘s been at it again for his debut solo album, getting all ‘noivous’ for a cover of a Little Willie John blues staple. The single’s promo, unveiled this week, is the most popular on Live4ever of the past seven days. Check out all the latest new and classic cuts in our Videos section and news round-up.