End Of The Road Festival 2011

With my tickets  for Latitude 2011 and End Of The Road 2011 already booked, only yesterday was I thinking which artists I currently anticipate (or would like to see) populating the stages at them. In due course I will post my thoughts...
In the case of EOTR 2011 I can go a bit further than that for today the first tranche of confirmed acts was announced and here it is:

• Bo Ningen 
• Bob Log III
• The Deadly Syndrome 
• Doug Paisley 
• Dry The River
• The Fall
• Gordon Gano and the Ryans
• John Grant
• Jolie Holland
• Josh T Pearson
• La Sera
• Lanterns on The Lake
• Lightning Dust
• Micah P Hinson
• Midlake
• Mountain Man
• Treefight for Sunlight
• Twin Shadow
• Wild Beasts
• Woods
• Young Man
• The Walkmen
• Willy Mason

Tickets are on sale from www.endoftheroadfestival.com/tickets and if you purchase before the end of 2010 you save £5 due to the impending increase in VAT.

It is too soon to really digest the above list, let alone expound even my first thoughts on it, but two that would have been on my 'want to see in 2011 list' without a doubt are these.
 'Lightning Dust'I have never seen but shares Amber Webber and Joshua Wells with 'Black Mountain', which I saw at both Latitude and EOTR in 2010.
The return of 'Lanterns on the Lake' is fantastically well deserved and verges on or into New Music 2011 territory in any case. One of my revelations of EOTR was this six-piece, in the Tipi Tent on Saturday evening: it was more than a misfortune when their final song of the set, the wonderful 'I Love You, Sleepyhead', was cut short after only seconds by a total power failure.  Not only are they returning to EOTR the band announced yesterday, on its website, that it is now signed to Bella Union Records.  Regular readers will know that is a huge thumbs-up in my book.