Sigrid live at Leeds Festival 2021 (Gary Mather for Live4ever)
New music from Sigrid and Hot Chip were among our biggest headlines last week.
Sigrid is back with a new single entitled The Hype.
“We’ve all been there, when you wonder if you’ve lived up to the expectations,” she’s said. “I thought about the term Hype, in love and at work, and the questions you ask yourself of did you really live up to the hype.”
“So I wrote a song about it! With my artist job, I’ve sometimes felt that I’ve tried to live up to myself in a way – but a version of myself that looks like me, but cooler, more confident and touring the world. I’ve probably brought that into my private life, and all those things is what Hype is about.”
The death of influential songwriter and guitarist Robbie Robertson has been announced in a statement from his family.
“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine and Delfine’s partner Kenny,” it reads. “He is also survived by his grandchildren, Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel and Seraphina.”
“Robertson recently completed his fourteenth film music project with frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, Killers Of The Flower Moon. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Centre.”
slowdive have continued the build-up to the release of their new studio album on September 1st with its latest preview ‘the slab’.
The band started their touring around Australasia last month and will next be at Ypsigrock Festival in Sicily before an appearance back in the UK at Green Man Festival on August 18th.
A North American tour is booked for the autumn, leading into more UK dates in Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol, London and Belfast.
Hot Chip playing the Brixton Academy in London on September 22nd, 2022 (Adam Hampton-Matthews for Live4ever)
Hot Chip have followed up last year’s eighth studio album Freakout/Release with the release of a brand new single entitled Fire Of Mercy which is related to, ‘the central concept of William Blake’s Songs Of Experience’, according to Joe Goddard:
It bemoans the corruption that inevitably comes from adulthood and longs for a return to the purity of childhood.
Meanwhile, the band were due to play European festivals in Belgium and Spain last week before they return to the UK on August 25th for Live At Scorrier House in Cornwall.
Hotel Lux have followed up their debut album Hands Across The Creek – released at the start of 2023 – with the brand new single Vice.
“Vice had been a staple on the Lux set list since very early doors,” the band said. “Sadly, it never had its time to shine in a studio and it we didn’t feel it quite sat with what we were trying to do with previous releases.”
“At the latter stages of the Hands Across the Creek sessions, we started bringing this rehashed version of the track back into the mix. We added a new intro, Lewis changed his vocal attack slightly and we played with the pacing of the track a little bit. Alas, it didn’t quite fit with our ambition of the album but we felt it a shame to allow the track to disappear into the abyss.”
English Teacher have signed to Island Records and marked the news with the release of their latest track The World’s Biggest Paving Slab.
“I wrote and recorded the demo in my bedroom in one day, during my final year of university in 2018,” Lily Fontaine said.
Moving to a city for university forced me to reflect on how my experience of growing up in and around Pendle, how witnessing the social, economic and political issues that exist around there in juxtaposition with the beauty of the landscape and the characters that live within in it, has shaped me into the artist and person that I am.