Richard Ashcroft and his new band...the United Nations of Sound

In short, fuck you.

When is the Black Ships album due out again?

NOT SOON ENOUGH

Oh dear:

details emerging about the united nations of sound lp! there will apparently be a track called "how deep is your man."

It's even better when you read his followup tweet

i had characters left in that last tweet but i had NO IDEA what to do w/ them.

He's right there.

Oh well done there.

Ashcroft has now reportedly been "ordered not to speak or sing for 72 hours" by a doctor. http://www.nme.com/news/richard-ashcroft/52316
So hey it's not all bad.

This is still one of my fave bits of music press of the last few years: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jan/20/popandrock.shopping5

HMV were playing his new album when I was in there last week. Fucking hilarious.

Roffles:

“Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist too, I feel so damn free I don’t need all of you” he hollers, hoarsely, on ‘Are You Ready’. “I ain’t a Christian, I ain’t gay or straight, I am just living life in my own peculiar way”. Okay, crap lyrics are one thing, but some gravel-voiced berk turned way up in the mix incessantly growling the type of revelation most of us received upon the partaking of our inaugural spliff... basically, if you understand English, it seems inconceivable that you could sit through the whole thing without at least fleetingly praying that you didn’t. “Ah yeah, the whole damn human race, I wanna put you in my arms, And give you a love embrace”. No Richard, please, please don’t touch me. It’s ‘Born Again’, though, that absolutely takes the biscuit: in the end phases he goes full on Sunday devotional on us, imploring us to “Come on!” before starting a chant of “one life, one life, oh! Yeah! Oh yeah! One nation! One nation!”. A choir takes up the chant, but, nightmarishly enough, it actually appears to just be layers and layers of his own vocals. It’s just plain WRONG.

And from here:

The lyrics are Ashcroft's uniquely lazy blend of pseudo-pugilism ("I got the crown and I'm never gonna pass it on or lay it down / You gotta fight me"), sentimentality ("let's do this thing called life"), religious imagery ("I'm out here in Babylon, come on out with me") and bumper-sticker counter-culturalism ("I got the real style / Steve McQueen vibe / I drive for miles").

how did this guy help make one of my favorite records ever? did he have better drugs on 'a storm in heaven'? or was it john leckie who slapped him down?

That and judicious mixing.

keep misreading this thread title as Dr. Richard Ashcroft and...

...the Electric Mayhem?