Ships stuck in canals, vaccines, global warming, there’s a lot going on and it can be hard to keep up with music news on top of all that, so here’s a quick rundown of some of the big stories.
Elton John has said he has “done something with Metallica”! Now what he’s done with them exactly we don’t know but speaking on Apple 1 he said, “During this lockdown period, I’ve been working with Gorillaz and people like that. I haven’t been doing any Elton stuff, but I’ve been doing great stuff with other people.”
Brett Murray
Metallica are currently working on their follow up to 2016’s Hardwired….To Self Destruct so it’s possible he has contributed something to that forthcoming album but who knows? We’ll just have to watch this space.
Elsewhere some old favourites are back with new music, The Joy Formidable and Kele Okereke have both announced new releases.
Welsh outfit the Joy Formidable have been pretty quiet since 2018 when they brought out their fourth album Aaarth. New single, Into the Blue, is a cracking tune and shows that the band have lost none of their craft in lockdown. Ritzy Bryan’s vocals are still great and this uplifting tune comes out just as the clocks change, the evenings get brighter and everything is starting to look up. Perfect.
Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke is back with a new album. Set to be released on May 28th, The Waves Pt.1 is Kele’s fifth solo album and was written and produced entirely during Covid.
“We were due to start working on my second musical with the Lyric Theatre but when the lockdown came into effect those plans were thrown into disarray. I became a stay at home dad of a 3 year old and a 6 month old,” he said. “What also became clear was that I still had the desire to create… I knew I had to fill in the space of this record entirely by myself, which was daunting but also very liberating. This album is literally the sound of me.”
The first single from the album is out now (below) and is actually a cover of Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy.
It’s not all good news though, Alabama Shakes’ drummer Steve Johnson has been arrested and indicted on charges of “wilful torture, wilful abuse, and cruelly beating or otherwise wilfully maltreating a child under the age of 18.”
Unfortunately Johnson has previous and was actually serving a suspended sentence for domestic violence at the time of his arrest. Alabama Shakes have been on hiatus since 2018 while front woman and recent Grammy winner Brittany Howard concentrates on her solo career. Neither Howard nor the band have addressed the arrest.