Weekly News Round-Up: Noel Gallagher, The National and more

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

Noel Gallagher playing the House Of Blues in Houston, Texas on March 3rd, 2018. (Lloyd Hendricks / Live4ever)

A video for the new Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds single Black Star Dancing has been premiered.

Dubiously giving airtime to Bernard Manning, the promo is helping to promote the forthcoming EP of the same name which is set to be the first of three released by Gallagher this year.

A video for Beautiful Stranger has been posted by DMA’s with their MTV Unplugged album due for release on June 14th.

Johnny Took has already remembered the session, which took place at the Memo Music Hall in Melbourne last October, as ‘the most fun he had in a while’. “Just rearranging the songs and hearing them in a different light,” he continued, “to be able to do this is a bit of a dream come true.”

An orchestral version of The Who’s enduring rock opera Tommy has been recorded to mark its 50th anniversary.

It’s been driven by Roger Daltrey, who spent time last year touring the album with a selection of symphony orchestras from North America. He and his band put this project to tape at studios in Budapest and Bethel in upstate New York (not far from the site of Woodstock) with composer and arranger David Campbell.

Nile Rodgers has revealed the first acts for this year’s Meltdown Festival, which will be returning to the Southbank Centre in London between August 3rd-11th.

As the event’s latest annual curator, Rodgers has said it is ‘an honour for me to step into the shoes of David Bowie, Patti Smith, Ornette Coleman, Robert Smith and so many more’.

The National live at Manchester Apollo. September 2017. (Gary Mather / Live4ever)

The National have added some end-of-year UK arena dates to their world tour which started in Paris last month.

The band’s big plans for their I Am Easy To Find campaign continue in June with a North American tour, and another visit to the UK has now been arranged for December when they’ll play shows in Brighton, Leeds, Cardiff and Nottingham.

One of the all-time classic British debut albums, Joy Division‘s Unknown Pleasures, is to get a reissue on its 40th anniversary next month.

Its release in June 1979 pushed Joy Division and their label Factory Records to the forefront of post-punk, its angular, straight-edged sound and often haunting lyrical content representing a painfully authentic insight into the troubled mind of frontman Ian Curtis.

The Raconteurs have slotted in a London date before their appearance at All Points East on May 25th.

The band will now restart live duties at the city’s Electric Ballroom venue on May 22nd after making their live return in Nashville for Third Man’s 10th anniversary and some subsequent gigs in Australasia and Japan.

Idles are streaming a new song online entitled Mercedes Marxist.

As they continue with their world touring behind last year’s Joy As An Act Of Resistance album in North America this month, this might just be giving us a taste of its follow-up, one which the band revealed they had begun writing back in January.