In just two weeks’ time Liverpool’s newest boutique festival Hope & Glory will be taking over the city centre with a spectacular array of live music and entertainment across the weekend of August 5 and 6. The complete line-up across all three stages has now been revealed with some special new additions including Liverpool’s very own Space, plus Rale, Rich Ayre, We Are Catchers and the ferocious Sex Pissed Dolls, who will have the legendary Tony Christie guesting with them for a special rendition of ‘Amarillo’.

They will be joining the festival’s incredible line-up of top name acts – including headliners James and Haçienda Çlassical, Razorlight, Ocean Colour Scene, The Fratellis, Charlotte Church’s Late Night Pop Dungeon, The Lightning Seeds and more, plus some of the most exciting up and coming talent such as the Blinders, The Shimmer Band and Zak Abel. Embrace will also perform an anthems loaded set at Hope & Glory having just supported Coldplay, playing to 65,000 people a night at their recent stadium shows.

Also featuring on Saturday at the ‘In The Lady Garden Stage’ will be Charlotte Church and Lucy Spraggan ‘In Conversation With’ respected journalist and author Simon Price, as well as Liverpool’s International Air Guitar Competition, which will be taking place throughout the day, with entrants battling it out to show their best moves to the crowd.  Entries for the Air Guitar Competition should be made to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with their name, age and top three songs to rock out to.

There will be numerous more weird and wonderful things happening across the site, including pop up comedians, a Football Legends charity darts match, celebrity arm wrestling, The Victorian Acrobatic Team, Harminder the Elephant and Dinosaur Baby in the Pram and Lord Of The Lobsters, as well as a Foam Party, Prince Albert’s Little Secret (cocktail bar), Mothers Ruin (gin bar), Mr Edison's Electric Emporium, Dr Johnson's Clandestine Gathering, The Hoop & Stick and Darwin's Little Darlings.

Ticket buyers can also get involved in the festival’s Victoriana fancy dress competition, with one lucky winner walking away with £1,000 and two tickets to next year’s Hope & Glory, so expect handle-bar moustaches, bearded ladies and bloomers galore. All ticket profits will be donated to the victims and families of the Manchester attacks, so grab your top hats, bonnets, capes and cravats and join the fun in 2017’s hottest new festival.

All aboard Alessi’s Ark for a third studio album Love Is The Currency, released on  October 27. An album of self-discovery and a call to self-realisation Love Is The Currency is epitomised by lead track ‘Cut The Cord’.  A song written about Alessi’s own experience, unearthing fear and breaking free, to seek redemption in music, art and beauty, ‘Cut The Cord’ motors on a breezy groove with a host of hooks and enchanting vocals.

“The core theme of Love is the Currency is our limitless ability to heal one another though music, healthy love, healing frequencies and working through previously unprocessed grief.” says Alessi, explaining the driving force of her new album.  “With Cut The Cord, I wanted to make a song that could encourage people to save themselves from fear and the grip of toxicity's many guises.”

Produced by long term Maccabees engineer Jago Jago, and written in large part with Will White (brother of Maccabees’ Felix and Hugo), Alessi describes her new album as a “family affair”, blessed with the care of many friends and brothers.  Jago Jago’s brother Memby appears on drums throughout the album, and Felix White - whose recommendation brought Alessi, Jag and Will together - plays guitar on the single ‘Wives’.

A first taste of her new album released earlier this year, ‘Wives’ hinted at an evolution from the folk pop of her early releases, to the more ambitious and abstract palettes of the Cocteau Twins or Charlotte Gainsbourg. From uploading home recordings to Myspace to working with Bright Eyes in Nebraska and touring the U.K. with Jenny Lewis and M.Ward it’s been a long and winding road for Alessi which has no doubt shaped her songs. Her new album is full of very personal tales, self discovery and shared experience, told in a mixture of sonic settings; the California desert, alpine air, ocean sprays and the highland bothies all evoked in unfussy yet expansive production. 

Track listing:

1) Portal

2) Cut the Cord

3) River

4) Love Travels

5) Lovefly

6) Stray

7) Desert

8) Wives

9) DLD (Door Light Dream)

10) On till Dawn

Live dates:

July 27th - ‘Music for London', Grenfell Benefit show at St. Stephen's Church, Shepherds Bush

August 27th -Stroud Fringe Festival 

Oct 25th -Album Release Party - Paper Vintage Dress, London