Weekly News Round-Up: Alt-J, Paul Simon and more

Missed any of the week’s top news stories? Live4ever has it covered with our Weekly News Round-Up, looking back at ten of the biggest headlines we featured during the last seven days in British music.

Alt-J @ Leeds Festival 2015 (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever)

Alt-J will release their gig at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre last summer as a live album and DVD on June 24th.

The gig will be preserved in DVD, CD, Blu-Ray and double vinyl formats. What to expect can be seen in the full article with ‘Left Hand Free‘.

Whether it was the “duh-duhs” of ‘Chelsea Dagger‘, the Hot Fuzz soundtracking of ‘Baby Fratelli‘ or the UK Top 10 success of ‘Whistle For The Choir‘, there was a time when you couldn’t move for The Fratellis‘ ‘Costello Music‘.

Ten years on, the band will head out on a celebratory tour this coming November and December, playing their 2006 debut album in full starting at Nottingham Rock City.

Bill Ryder-Jones has won the 2016 GIT Award thanks to his wonderful ‘West Kirby County Primary‘ solo album.

The award annually recognises the best of Liverpool music – judges had a particularly strong year to pick through, eventually choosing Ryder-Jones over other shortlisted acts such as Hooton Tennis Club, Clean Cut Kid and Stealing Sheep.

The Divine Comedy will dedicate plenty of time to European touring after the release of new album ‘Foreverland‘ on September 2nd.

Neil Hannon‘s latest record, about ‘meeting your soul mate and living happily ever after and then what comes after happily ever after’, sparks October tour dates throughout the UK and on to France into November.

Blossoms will be hoping their self-titled debut album continues the momentum built by a succession of well-received singles during the past twelve months.

Radio support from BBC 6Music and beyond for tracks like ‘Charlemagne‘ and ‘At Most a Kiss‘ have put the spotlight firmly on the band, and both will be a part of the LP which is due for release on August 5th after sessions at Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios with producers Rich Turvey and Coral frontman James Skelly.

Paul Simon will play his first UK shows since Hyde Park in 2012 after the release of ‘Stranger To Stranger‘ on June 3rd.

Simon is promising classic songs along side tracks taken from the new record. Tickets for the tour which will take him to Bournemouth, Cardiff, London, Manchester and Nottingham were made available from May 20th.

Jake Bugg‘s video for ‘Love, Hope and Misery’ is here.

It’s a track you’ll be able to get as a download by pre-ordering his new album ‘On My One’, released on June 17th. “I wanted something with an epic pop chorus because I hadn’t done anything like that before,” Bugg has said. “Along the lines of Harry Nilsson, or Bill Withers.”

There was a final present from Richard Ashcroft last week before his new solo album ‘These People‘ was released on Friday (May 20th).

The video for ‘Hold On‘ was a late preview of Ashcroft’s first solo album proper in a decade and first album of any kind since ‘United Nations Of Sound‘ in 2010.

Catfish & The Bottlemen are almost ready to unleash their second album ‘The Ride‘, but are happy too to share a bit more of it before release date at the end of this week.

The band gave up ‘Twice‘ to Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show on May 19th, more evidence of recording sessions with producer Dave Sardy.

Villagers‘ ‘Darling Arithmetic‘ picked up the Album Award at the 2016 Ivor Novellos which were held in London last week.

More great work from Jamie xx and Gaz Coombes had nominations in one of the ceremony’s main categories, but it was Conor O’Brien who came out on top.

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