New Music 2010 - albums, festivals and things

Don't second guess your feelings

you were right from the start.
And I noticed she's your lover
but she's nowhere near your heart.

This city is for strangers
like the sky is for the stars.
I think it's very dangerous
if we do not take what's ours.

It is true that I have written little in the last fortnight but that is in large part because I have been listening to and reading about new music. But not just new music, as the above lyric implies...

Some cities come round again and again; and New York is one of them. Only by luck did I happen to catch some of Jamay (Jaime Seerman) at Latitude 2007 - I had never heard of her then but the lyrics above are from 'Blue or Gray' on her album Autumn Fallin'. One that I then bought and have never forgotten. In many ways I am far better informed these days, which is mostly good, but the thrill of discovering quite unknown acts at a festival is not something I would wish to forgo. Another New York band, that I am already aware of so the foregoing does not really apply, is this:

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, recently added to the line up for Latitude 2010, is one I'd much wished to hear live though did not expect to and this was, in my opinion, one much under-rated album of 2009. 
Levelled against it is that it is not particularly original - shoe-gaze circa 1986 being something I read as a criticism. Well the band members are certainly not old enough to remember that first time around and so, although it seems to have passed me by, I see no reason not to take it at face value now and given the more recent EP (the excellent 'Higher Than The Stars') it is something that I'm now even less inclined to concern myself about.