News Round-Up: The xx, The Strokes and more

The xx live in Manchester (Gary Mather for Live4ever)

You’re in the right place if you’ve missed any of the week’s top news stories – here Live4ever’s News Round-Up presents a recap of the biggest and best headlines we featured during the last seven days…

After spending the final throes of 2019 remembering ten years of their debut album xx, The xx have started 2020 by revealing their hope to release a brand new album soon.

“Looking forward to 2020,” the band said on social media. “We’ve all been working on new music, can’t wait to share it with you! Hope you have the best new year!”

After signing a publishing deal in 2017, Jarvis Cocker is set to release his first book later this year.

This Book Is A Song has been given a release of October 1st, and will apparently ‘explore the subject of creativity and how to quietly make amazing things happen in a world of noise’.

Massive Attack have said they will tour Europe by train to play their part in the fight against climate change.

Speaking to the BBC, Robert Del Naja, better known as 3D, said the ‘high-carbon lifestyle’ which musicians have enjoyed needs to change. “As a society we’ve all existed in a fossil-fuel economy for a long time and had very little choice in that,” he continued.

The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr. performing solo in New York (Photo: Paul Bachmann for Live4ever Media)

The Strokes have signalled their intention to release a new album this year by starting it with a fresh cut entitled Ode To The Mets.

The song was played during the band’s new year gig at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, when frontman Julian Casablancas is reported to have told the crowd that they’re ready to follow-up 2013’s Comedown Machine after ‘taking the 2010s off’.

If there were any lingering doubts, Rage Against The Machine‘s reunion has been officially rubber-stamped for the Coachella Festival in April.

The band’s first gig since 2011 will take place on Coachella’s opening Friday of April 10th, while Travis Scott and Frank Ocean are also set to top the US’ premiere festival. Among the other leading names on the bill are Lana Del Rey, Calvin Harris, Run The Jewels, Thom Yorke, FKA twigs, Idles, Lewis Capaldi, Charli XCX and Anna Calvi.

Trent Reznor can look back fondly on the 2010s as a decade in which he forged a new path as an acclaimed film score composer. It all started with David Fincher and the 2010 movie The Social Network, and Reznor has revealed he is ready to begin the new decade in much the same way by collaborating with Fincher again on the director’s upcoming movie Mank.

“We’re not gonna be using the modular synthesizer on that one,” Reznor has said in an interview with Revolver.