The Agenda arrives every Monday, designed to give you the low-down on what we’re expecting over the next seven days in music. From new releases to whispers of what may be about to drop, through to big tours and anniversaries.
There’s no doubt what’s about to dominate this week’s musical agenda. Over the weekend, Radiohead stepped their LP9 hype machine up a gear.
First, can the message in the mail. Fans of the band around the UK receiving single sided flyers in the post, claiming they “know where you live”. They also referred to long-time Radiohead song in waiting ‘Burn The Witch’ and the phrase “sing the song of sixpence”. Naturally, one of the most inquisitive fanbases around started reading everything they could into it.
A little over 24 hours later, on International Dawn Chorus Day, the band’s website started to fade out. Over the course of a touch more than two hours, it finally turned to white, with social media accounts and profiles then similarly blanking out – old messages deleted.
That’s how they remain now, at the time of press, with most of the music interwebs primed for what comes next. You’d be likely to get extremely short odds on us hearing new music from Radiohead within the next week.
New releases
This Friday sees the physical release of Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ – though if there’s much left to say about that at this juncture is open to debate. Completely fresh, White Lung’s ‘Paradise’ is certainly worth some time in the spotlight. You can read our 5/5 ‘Album’ of ‘the week’ review here. It’s a blinder.
Also dropping at the end of the week is ANOHNI’s ‘HOPELESSNESS’, Death Grips’ ‘Bottomless Pit’ and Julianna Barwick’s ‘Will’, as well as debut releases from LUH, former S.C.U.M. frontman Thomas Cohen and Kayranada.
Live music
In live music, this week sees Later… breakout Christine and the Queens capitalise on the buzz surrounding her dance-tastic TV appearance last Tuesday with a sold out show at London’s Roundhouse.
The Kills, Lush and Tacocat also take to the stage over the next seven days. Expect much more as the world’s best new bands descend on the UK for The Great Escape later in May.
David Duchovny is also playing London’s Union Chapel on Friday. Trust no one.
Stuff that happened this week in ‘the past’
Twenty five years ago today (2nd May) Nirvana booked into Sound City Studios with Bitch Vig for 16 days of recording. The fruits of that session would go on to become ‘Nevermind’
On May 5th 1992, Radiohead released their first record – ‘The Drill EP’ – recorded when the band were still called On A Friday. They changed their name the following month. Might that be when we finally see LP9 drop? Thursday is also Adele’s birthday – her label XL may be about to give her a nice present.