Don McLean will play his final concerts in the UK and Ireland in May 2027, closing out an eight-date run at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The tour opens at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on May 11 and wraps at the Royal Albert Hall on May 22, a venue McLean first played in 1972 following the chart success of “American Pie” and “Vincent.”

Tickets go on sale September 18 for all dates except the Royal Albert Hall show, which opens October 2. McLean, who will be 81 when the tour begins, said he wanted to choose where and how he says goodbye to audiences he credits with sustaining his career for 55 years.

The setlists are expected to span McLean’s catalog, from early tracks like “Castles in the Air” and “And I Love You So” to material from his 2024 album American Boys. The announcement traces McLean’s long history with British and Irish audiences, including a 1975 Hyde Park concert the promotion says drew more than 85,000 people, and his 1980 UK number one with “Crying.”

Based on a press release provided to Music Industry Weekly by 2911 Media Alert, 2911.us.

Octave Records has released Vantage Point, an album from guitarist, composer and educator Jason Greenlaw. The collection includes eight original compositions spanning contemporary jazz, Afrobeat-influenced material and ballads, alongside covers of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Children’s Games.”

Greenlaw plays electric and slide guitar on the record, joined by Adam Bodine and Sonya Walker on acoustic and Rhodes piano, Braxton Kahn and Gabriel Gravagno on drums, and Andrew Rose and Kevin Johnson on acoustic and electric bass. The album was recorded live at Octave Studios in Boulder, Colorado, by Callum Bair using the label’s Pyramix Pure DSD recording system, with Greenlaw producing and Paul McGowan serving as executive producer. Gus Skinas handled mastering.

The release is available on Octave’s gold SACD/CD hybrid disc, playable on standard CD, SACD, DVD or Blu-ray players, with a high-resolution DSD layer accessible via SACD-compatible equipment. Master DSD and PCM files are also available for download in formats ranging from DSD 64 to DSD 512 and PCM up to 352.8 kHz/24-bit. The disc carries a suggested retail price of $29.

Based on a press release provided to Music Industry Weekly by Frank Doris, psaudio.com.

Cape Town singer-songwriter Esspi (Sarah Pearson) has released her new album ‘FAUXstalgia,’ led by the focus track “Retrograde.” The album’s title comes from a term Esspi coined herself, describing the feeling of mourning a time never lived through, or understanding an emotion never personally experienced, according to the announcement.

The record draws on the production styles of the 1970s and 80s, with Esspi citing Kate Bush, Depeche Mode, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and Queen as reference points while filtering that sound through folk-pop, alt-pop and indie-country influences. According to the announcement, the album took shape over six years, beginning when Esspi was 13, built from voice memos transferred across multiple phones and recorded during school holidays in a home studio with producer David Jones.

The focus track “Retrograde” centers on the exhaustion of appearing strong while quietly struggling, a theme Esspi says grew out of a difficult period surrounded by the wrong crowd. Other tracks on the album include “Darkness at the Disco” and “What Am I Supposed To Do,” the latter written from a child’s perspective during a friend’s parents’ divorce. The album follows Esspi’s previous single “Tainted Heart.”

Based on a press release provided to Music Industry Weekly by Eric Alper, thatericalper.com.

Skyhorse Publishing will release “Kurt Cobain: Forever in Bloom: The Legacy Beyond the Tragedy” on September 22, written by journalist Kelly Catlin. The book draws on interviews with musicians, photographers and others connected to Cobain and Nirvana, aiming to move discussion of the late frontman away from his death and toward his creative output, activism and influence on outsider communities, according to the publisher.

Catlin says the project was shaped in part by her own experience losing a friend to suicide in 2017, and that she wanted to push back on narratives that treat suicide as an inevitable outcome of an artist’s struggles. The publisher says all of the author’s profits from the book will go to charity, with an emphasis on mental health and suicide prevention causes.

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore provided a blurb for the book, describing it as a loving portrait of Cobain that captures his kindness and empathy for marginalized people.

Based on a press release provided to Music Industry Weekly by Eric Alper, thatericalper.com.

Southeast Ireland traditional group TULUA has released a new single, a three-tune reel set titled “Michael Relihan’s / Rigney’s / Cap and Bells (Reels),” taken from the band’s second album, ‘In The Snug,’ which is out now. The band recorded the 12-track album over a nearly two-week live session at a studio in the Comeragh Mountains in Waterford, according to the band.

The album mixes historical and traditional material, including a song referencing the 1798 massacre in County Wicklow and a tune learned from a Finnish accordion player, alongside original compositions by guitarist Cian O’Grady. The lineup features Kayleigh Moran on fiddle and vocals, Diarmaid Murphy on flute, low whistle and mandolin, Ella McGrory on keyboard and synth bass, and O’Grady on guitar and Irish bouzouki, with additional contributions from Evan O’Grady and Donnchadh Gough on bodhrán and Billy Sutton on shaker and mixing.

TULUA, formed in 2019, says its 2023 debut album ‘No Coming No Going’ has sold more than 5,000 copies and surpassed 80,000 Spotify streams. The band has performed at Folk Alliance International in Montreal and the National Celtic Folk Festival in Australia, among other international dates, and will launch an extensive Canadian tour this fall, with stops across British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada from mid-October through November 2026.

Based on a press release provided to Music Industry Weekly by Eric Alper, thatericalper.com.

Hanson frontman Taylor Hanson made his debut on the new season of “Dancing With the Stars,” performing a quickstep routine with professional partner Britt Stewart.

The 43-year-old musician showed a confident, well-rehearsed performance in his first outing on the competition series.

Read the full story at Billboard.