Richard Ashcroft will return with new music later this year. Yesterday he was on BBC Radio 6 to announce he's playing an upcoming acoustic set July 20th at the U.K.'s Latitude Festival, and during the interview he revealed he's been busy creating new music. According to Ashcroft a new song should be released in September:
"Should be getting the first potential tune out in September and we'll see where we go from there but, you know as always that I'm just putting everything into it and see what happens."
Ashcroft briefly mentioned his last music output The United Nations of Sound and claimed the record didn't get much attention because it "wasn't written by Damon Albarn or someone like that," but he's ok with that:
"Richard Ashcroft's never been in fashion. I never wanna be in fashion I always want to be out with time and the bond I have with my fans because of that is so strong that there ain't many other artists who have that. Because a lot of other artists, they feed off, they feed off being in the right place at the right time and it's very important. But sustain yourself to still be able to play a gig 15, 20 years later, and have people sing your songs. There's something beyond fashion, flavor of the month, so for me it's really exciting to to have been in such a big band...you know, the right people know who I am, the right people dislike me, the right people like me. I'm in a really good place at the minute so it's exciting."
Don't go expecting a Verve reunion - when the BBC's Lauren Laverne asked about the possibility of a Verve reunion, Ashcroft shot that down and explained that he's not a fan of nostalgia acts, mostly because it's making things harder for newer bands:
"No it's not happening...the whole nostalgia thing is getting very suffocating and it's difficult for younger acts, especially the festivals, if you look at some of the lineups you know, the lineups - I'm not ageist by any means - but what I'm saying is if it's dominated by nostalgia then we need the youth to create their own version of what potentially may be nostalgia but they don't have a place to do that...the big monster dinosaur acts mopping up all the money."
Listen to the archive of the five minute Richard Ashcroft interview here (starts at 2:09:00 and is only available to stream for one week). Fans in the U.K. area can get tickets to see Ashcroft perform at Latitude Fest, which takes place July 18 - 21, here.
UPDATE: The full interview has been uploaded and is available to enjoy below:
"History" (Hop Farm Festival, July, 2012)
"On Your Own"
More video from the set posted here.
MTV documentary on the Verve
Published on July 10th, 2013 @ 8:15 AM