Weekly News Round-Up: PJ Harvey, Prince tributes 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.

Maria Mochnacz

Critical acclaim and Mercury prizes have always been forthcoming, but for the first time PJ Harvey has topped the UK Album Chart thanks to her new record ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project‘.

Santana is the only other new entry in the Top 10 this week, with The Last Shadow Puppets‘ ‘Everything You’ve Come To Expect’ – a previous UK chart topper – at #16.

Noel Gallagher has revealed David Holmes is the man producing his third solo album.

Gallagher made the admission during an interview on Belgian radio before his performance at Vorst Nationaal in Brussels. As with many other interviews this year, the former Oasis guitarist spoke of having around five songs completed for the new record, but for the first time publicly named Holmes as the man with whom he has been pursuing ‘a brand new way of working’ by writing exclusively in the studio.

On September 29th, Mystery Jets will kick-off a tour of the UK with The Big Moon in support.

Pushing this year’s excellent ‘Curve Of The Earth‘ LP, the band opens on that date in Reading and then continues on to cities including Leicester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Cambridge before closing in Bath on October 14th.

Gaz Coombes‘ wonderful 2015 solo LP ‘Matador‘ has been nominated for the Best Album prize at the 2016 Ivor Novello Awards, whose nominations were announced on April 19th.

Coombes will compete with Villagers and Jamie xx for the award, while Wolf Alice are in the Best Song Musically and Lyrically category thanks to ‘Bros‘.

The Happy Mondays spent the final weeks of last year celebrating their generational soundtrack ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches‘ 25 years on.

They’ve now announced just such a gig on Saturday, September 17th this year at the newly reopened Hastings Pier as part of a One Inch Badge run of anniversary concerts.

Prince

Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and countless other stars have been paying tribute to Prince as the music world faces up to life without another of its greatest icons.

“I am deeply shocked to hear of Prince’s passing,” Mick Jagger said on Twitter. “Prince was a revolutionary artist, a great musician, composer, a wonderful lyricist, a startling guitar player but most importantly, authentic in every way.”

Catfish & The Bottlemen have added two nights at the Electric Ballroom in London on May 23rd and 25th to their UK touring.

Tickets for the shows are priced at £20, allocated to ballot winners only and limited to two per person.

It’ll be over a decade since ‘Keys To The World‘ when ‘These People‘ is released next month, but in contrast Richard Ashcroft is this time already thinking ahead to his new solo album’s follow-up.

Speaking earlier in the week to Steve Lamacq on BBC 6Music, Ashcroft reflected on album closer ‘Songs Of Experience‘, describing it as ‘not the absolute full stop’ as he aims for his next release sooner rather than later.

Johnny Marr‘s autobiography Set The Boy Free has been set for release on November 3rd.

It’ll be out on hardback, eBook and audiobook, going back to Marr’s early life and the formation of The Smiths, through to his many different career junctures since he quit that band in 1987, including Electronic, The Cribs, Modest Mouse and his more recent solo project

Roger Daltrey has seemingly made The Who the first name to be officially confirmed for a mega festival being put together by the organisers of Coachella.

If all goes to plan, rock titans such as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Roger Waters will be on the bill, which is reportedly planned for Indio, California between October 7th-9th.

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