Weekly News Round-Up: Richard Ashcroft, Idles 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.

Richard Ashcroft plays the Albert Hall in Manchester (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever Media)

Richard Ashcroft was honoured with the Outstanding Contribution To British Music award at the 2019 Ivor Novello Awards last week and used the occasion to announce that one of its most famous songwriting disputes has finally been resolved.

“It gives me great pleasure to announce as of last month Mick Jagger and Keith Richards agreed to give me their share of the song Bitter Sweet Symphony,” he said.

The Sonic Youth live album Battery Park, NYC: July 4, 2008, which was originally available as bonus item on the band’s 2009 final studio LP The Eternal, will get a standalone release on June 7th.

Recorded during Sonic Youth’s appearance at Battery Park in New York for the River To River Festival, the album boasts a setlist which dips into most parts of the band’s 30-year career, opening with She Is Not Alone and containing other cuts such as World Looks Red, Hey Joni, Hyperstation and Making The Nature Scene.

Kaiser Chiefs have announced their seventh studio album Duck, which is ‘undeniably fantastic and undeniably Kaiser Chiefs’ according to frontman Ricky Wilson.

Set for release on July 26th, it’ll be the third since the departure of chief creative force Nick Hodgson and is being previewed by Record Collection.

Gruff Rhys and Tom Grennan will be among the supports for Stereophonics when the band plays Singleton Park in Swansea on July 13th.

The gig has been arranged to help Stereophonics remember the 20 years since their gig at the city’s Morfa Stadium venue during the success of Performance & Cocktails, and is currently scheduled to be the last of the on-off UK tour which opened at Eden Project a few days ago.

Idles playing Brooklyn Steel on May 10th, 2019 (Paul Bachmann / Live4ever)

Idles‘ life-affirming second studio LP Joy As An Act Of Resistance received one of its biggest accolades to-date last week by being named Best Album at the 2019 Ivor Novello Awards.

Elsewhere, The 1975 went home with two prizes – for Best Contemporary Song and Songwriters Of The Year – while Best Song Musically And Lyrically went to Ben Howard with Nica Libres At Dusk.

The Murder Capital have confirmed their debut album When I Have Fears will be released on August 16th.

It’ll be available on gatefold colour LP, CD and digital download formats, and includes recent singles Feeling Fades and Green & Blue, and a first studio recording of More Is Less, all produced by Flood.

Marika Hackman‘s next album Any Human Friend will be out on August 9th.

“This whole record is me diving into myself and peeling back the skin further and further, exposing myself in quite a big way,” she says of it.

Underworld will release a new album entitled Drift Songs on October 25th to conclude their year-long Drift series which has seen Rick Smith and Karl Hyde creating and publishing music, film and text pieces in a public recording space.

The aim for Drift Songs is to ‘expand and enhance’ a selection of the recordings which have been laid down since the Drift series began in November 2018.