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Richard Ashcroft returning to stage
Former Verve frontman will play concert at London's King's College in December and has a new record on the way.
That brief appearance by Richard Ashcroft at Live 8 in July was a sign of things to come.
Ashcroft's got a new record on the way and a concert planned for December 7 at London's King's College, according to a post on his Web site.
The former Verve frontman, largely out of the spotlight since 2002's Human Condition, popped up on stage at Live 8 in London during a performance by Coldplay. Lead singer Chris Martin introduced Ashcroft as "the best singer in the world" and the duo led Coldplay on a cover of the Verve's classic "Bittersweet Symphony."
Now, Ashcroft will play his first headlining show in London in three years, with tickets going on sale November 12.
Ashcroft's new solo record, Keys to the World, will be released on Parlophone Records on January 23, with the first single, "Break the Night with Color," coming out two weeks earlier, according to his Web site.
Ashcroft recently told Xfm Online that the new record is "s*** hot" and that, "It's got a good mix to it: There's some good raw rock-and-roll on it, some moments of beauty and lushness, but there are some tracks that are pretty raw, pretty heavy."
"And I think, lyrically, for me it’s hitting the spot," he continued. "There [are] a lot of different topics and things I'm going into, and for a time I was thinking about that very English way of writing tunes back from '65 and '66. The Stones, The Beatles, [all the songs] have a bit of Dylan twisted-ness in the sound, but they retain an Englishness to them."
"That's what I want to be, a great English songwriter. I don't want to be anything else, I realize that now. That's my job, that's my duty, to write tunes, not to f*** around."
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