Time for a change.

After weeks of listmania it is time for a change. All the time spent thinking about my own lists and more recently reading those by others and listening to things thereupon that have piqued my curiosity have, when combined with the infinitely grey and gloomy weather of late, persuaded me to look for things away from the mainstream both new and old (sometimes both at the same time).
What transpired has several catalysts, one being my liking for bluegrass and things derived at least in part from it. If it includes some Appalachian old-time fiddle and banjo, or gypsy influences then that is not bad thing either. Neither is a foundation in the UK and Irish folk sound for that matter.

This post is going to mention some things that I have discovered so far during this ongoing quest. Though it has deep roots in my listening it is only really during this year that I have really taken note of how this adsorption (rather than absorption, though it may happen subsequently) of influences takes place. I define the turning point, for the sake of this post, as taking place on the evening of Thursday 30 July at Cambridge Folk Festival when I saw this band live and failed to take a single usable photo of it.
WTF, Richard? The answer is that I was totally distracted.
That band was Dublin four-piece Lynched. They played between Orcadian five-piece Fara and Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker and despite that there was something special and memorable about the set. Some of it came from their most recent recorded offering that contains some traditional, some dance-hall and some new material. Salonika may be familiar to many, not least from the version recorded by The Dubliners.

Lynched - Cold Old Fire (self released, 2015).

This is music for the coming, press-entitled, "Panic Saturday". It will surely rain again and all retail outlets and travel options are to be avoided at any cost - this is a day that is therefore destined to be spent with good, simple food and maybe a pre-season tipple whilst sat in front of the fire in the company of good music. Not a Christmas pop ditty to be heard; that said, possibly an exception might be made for 'Fairytale of New York'.
Other appealing options are available and I suggest this one from No Depression.com
Go on, treat yourself!

Irish music more generally is another thing that has returned to my attention in the second half of this year and here is an act that I haven't seen live yet, but now I really want to. This five-piece is also from Dublin.

I Draw Slow - White Wave Chapel (Pinecastle Records, 2014).

While this is the Dublin band's latest album I highly recommend its predecessor Redhills (2011) too. In both the American bluegrass/country influence is more apparent than it is on the above-mentioned work by Lynched.

This is 'Goldmine' from the LP Redhills.

Crossing the Atlantic I have already commented on my liking for The Newpart, which is the latest album from April Verch. As well as singing and playing fiddle she often provides clog-dancing accompaniment too. This Ottawa valley bluegrass is a distinct and seemingly thriving scene and I want to hear more of it.
Next is the Seattle based duo, Charlie Beck and Charmaine Slaven, that is Squirrel Butter. The latest full length offering is this and it is heading deep into traditional and old-time territory.

Squirrel Butter - Chestnuts (2015, CD Baby).

A suitable place to end this long ramble is in the rolling Piedmont landscape of North Carolina with the music of acoustic string four-piece Mipso and this little gem of an LP.

Old Time Reverie (2015, Robust Records).

All of this post is an antidote to the madness of the Christmas retail experience.

My Music in 2015 - Albums - Part 2

Here we are again, just over a week after my first foray on this subject. The rules are the same as in Part 1. I hope you find something to like or to argue about.
Critical comments are quite as welcome as positive ones just so long they are not offensive or defamatory. A fact is that a credited post always has more gravitas than an anonymous one and that applies even if the content of both were to be exactly the same. I reserve the right to publish comments on this post and will credit them accordingly.

• Ange Hardy - Esteesee
• Chantel McGregor - Lose Control
• Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
• Fara - Fara
• Girlpool - Before The World Was Big
• Heather Crosse - Groovin' At The Crosse Roads
• Mad Dog McRea - Almost Home
• Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Watershed
• The Rosellys - The Barn Sessions
• Stick In The Wheel - From Here

Part 1 was equally divided between acts from the UK and from North America and that only occurred to me after I posted it. This selection is much more UK biased, featuring just two acts from North America and an Australian. Specifically this one...

Courtney Barnett, Far Out Stage, Green Man Festival - Sunday evening, 23 August 2015.

Girlpool, Big Top stage, End Of The Road Festival - Saturday 5 September 2015.

Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin, Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Sunday 23 February 2014.

The Rosellys, Saloon Stage, Truck Festival - Friday 18 July 2015.

Fara, Stage 2, Cambridge Folk Festival - Thursday 30 July 2015.

You may be wondering why I often use links to my earlier comments in these lists; this is because they often contain more back-links to the artist, as well as to other related topics. It saves listing multiple links all over again.

My Music in 2015 - EPs and mini-albums - Part 1

Not wishing to get into a debate about what is or is not an EP this category is something of a cop-out. That does however leave an open question concerning quite when does a mini-album become a full-blown LP. In so far as is possible I use the distinction that the artist chooses and if that is indiscernible then I make the decision myself.
In the new order this is however one of the most interesting places in which to dwell: just ten years ago who could have foreseen that the then moribund concept of the EP would find a whole new meaning - whether that be digital only, on CD, vinyl or now increasingly so also cassette. The list is, as usual, alphabetical by artist:

• Aurora - Running With The Wolves
• Clara Engel - A Little Slander, A Little Lace
• Francis Pugh and The Whisky Drinkers - A Place Back West
• The Japanese House - Pools To Bathe In
• Joni Fuller - Letters From The West Coast
• Sound Of The Sirens - All We Have Is Love

It's a mix of things that have grabbed my attention. In this case I have only seen two of these acts live  - the first and the last. This is the first.

Aurora - Walled Garden stage - Green Man Festival -  23 August 2015.

This was long before the John Lewis Christmas advertisement in which Aurora Aksnes' cover of Oasis' 'Half The World Away' happened. That has certainly bought her a great deal of attention. Her own music deserves more than that.

Clara Engel is a Canadian that is criminally ignored by most. That is a great shame and not least for the would-be listeners. Her music maybe somewhat challenging but it repays the effort many times over and, while the above EP is short, there is a sizeable body of work to discover. Do it.

Francis Pugh and The Whiskey Singers I pretty much summed up in my post back in September. This, for the purists, is a true EP. Three tracks - the first and last are their own with a cover of Hank Williams' 'I Saw The Light' sandwiched between them. Another stalwart of the Oxford roots music scene is likely to feature in part 2 of this thread.

Sound Of The Sirens. a duo from Exeter, has had quite some year. Here they are playing The Lights, Andover back in March.

That was before Chris Evans, presenter of the BBC Radio2 Breakfast Show, was revealed as a fan. One thing led to another and ultimately the duo of Abbe Martin and Hannah Woods played live at the relaunch of his classic late 1990's Channel 4 show TFI Friday.

New Music 2016 - Part 3 - Paul McClure - Songs for Anyone

'Songs for Anyone', which will be released on the estimable Clubhouse Records in January, is the second solo LP released by Paul McClure, the self-styled Rutland Troubadour. This is a rather appropriate moniker for, while the UK as a whole is small in comparison to some US states, I'd wager that a large part of the UK population couldn't describe with any certainty where Rutland lies in our little island.

The Clubhouse stable encompasses Americana-related artists from both sides of the ocean and the songs on this album have universal themes rather than specifically American or British ones. It continues the thread from his previous release 'Smiling From The Floor Up' in being for the greater part man-and-song-and-guitar. All songs on this LP are self-written but there are subtle textural changes, including the use of harmonica from time to time and backing vocals from Hannah Elton-Wall (Redlands Palomino Company), lap steel, piano and other instruments, as well as skilfully discrete production duties, all by Joe Bennett (The Dreaming Spires). The track listing is as follows, despite the fact this is a CD:

Side 1:

1. Gentleman's Agreement
2. Unremarkable Me
3. I Could Be A Happy Man
4. Don't Take Me Under
5. Everyday Is Mine To Spend
6. Holding A Ten Ton Load

Side 2:

1. So Long
2. My Big Head Hat Of Dreams
3. Yesterday's Lies
4. My Little Ray Of Sunshine
5. A Song For Anyone
6. Lady Flossington

The best way to enjoy this music is of course live. In my opinion there is no place better to do that than The Saloon stage at Truck Festival. It is as far from the seething masses of some festivals as one could possibly imagine.

Paul McClure, Saloon stage, Truck Festival, 18 July 2015.

The Blog Sound of 2016 - long-list

This has been run since 2012 as a companion to the BBC Sound Of 2016. It takes a different perspective on seeking the same sort of information and sentiment. Rather than explain the background to this I shall refer you to enabler-in-chief Robin Seamer of Breaking More Waves.
I have had the pleasure to participate in this poll once again and the long-list of fifteen acts was revealed (in alphabetical order) today. I am not allowed to reveal my nominations and I'm not even going to say if any of the three featured in the list. The publisher included a one-sentence resumé of each and so I felt it was incumbent on me to offer a slightly different perspective:

• Aquilo
• Aurora
• Billie Marten
• George Cosby
• Haelos
• Liss 
• Loyle Carner
• Mabel
• Mura Masa
• Mt. Wolf
• Nao
• Pleasure Beach
• The Big Moon
• The Japanese House
• Yak

I have attempted to provide links, as diverse a list as suited my inquisitiveness, to the artists. I hope that you will find that useful and I also recommend that you might like to try some of the other blogs that contributed their votes to make this list a reality. There is a complete list of them here.
The Top-5 Blog Sound of 2016 acts will be be published on 5 January 2016.

My Music in 2015 - Albums - Part 1

So, with December 2015 almost upon us, it is time to kick off the season-of-lists. I'm not really convinced how important this all is despite the fact that so many of us take part in it. My rather simple reason is that it helps me take stock of the year and also that I rather enjoy putting the effort into doing the same.
I was going to keep this back for the start of December but since it was essentially complete I thought that I would share it now.

There are no systemic changes from last year. The acts in each list are grouped in alphabetical order and the number of entries in each list is ten. There is no attempt to 'rank' acts in each list, or indeed between lists (there will be at least three such lists of LPs). One thing that has changed not a jot is the influence that music I have seen live during 2015 or previously has had on the overall outcome but then perhaps remarkably there are actually four in this list that I have never seen live. Needless to say all those are very much in my sights in 2016.

• Danni Nicholls - Mockingbird Lane
• Don Gallardo - Hickory
• Flo Morrissey - Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful
• Free the Honey - Fine Bloom
• Gwenno - Y Dydd Olaf
• Hattie Briggs - Red & Gold
• The Honeycutters - Me Oh My
• Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free
• Lindi Ortega - Faded Gloryville
• Marika Hackman - We Slept At Last

I am happy if people would like to make comments and suggestions. I will be equally so if this leads anyone to find music of which they were previously either unaware of had forgotten about. If it tempts you to head out and see some live music then that is a real bonus. It is also, truth be told, quite simply the music that I really liked.
Here are the photos that I promised - one each of four artists that I took at four different festivals this summer.

Don Gallardo and Friends - Saloon stage,  Truck Festival - 18 July 2015.

Flo Morrissey (solo) - The Den stage, Cambridge Folk Festival - 2 August 2015.

Gwenno - Far Out stage, Green Man Festival - 20 August 2015.

Marika Hackman - Garden stage, End of The Road Festival - 6 September 2015.

It is fair to say that Jason Isbell comes very close to the top of the list of artists that I wish to see live in 2016. If the recorded music is not reason enough then this is why.

If you wish to look further into the music of 2015 that is in my mind then, following on from these and as I promised, here is Tracks of 2015 #3.
The second selection of LPs will likely be preceded by a selection of EPs and mini-albums sometime later this week.

New Music 2016 - Part 2 - Lissie - My Wild West

By this time of year I would usually be a dozen, perhaps more, posts into music forthcoming next year. That I am not is not a reflection on the lack of music, nor even on my ability to spot it coming. It is rather more a necessity borne of the sheer quantity of new music I have been introduced to in 2015. Of that more soon.

When she appeared on these shores in 2010 after a couple of very promising EPs, with début album 'Catching A Tiger' in tow, Lissie Maurus found a UK audience surprisingly receptive to her particular brand of alt-country inspired guitar rock. She and the band started playing tiny UK dive pubs and ended an eventually much extended tour with a headline gig at Shepherds Bush Empire that was recorded and released on DVD. The album was top 10 in the UK and certified 'gold' by BPI. It was followed in 2013 by a sequel 'Back to Forever', also on Colombia. I for one never got to like this as much as 'Catching a Tiger'. It was, in some ways, a little flat - it seems as if something or somebody had ironed out the quirks that made her so likeable to start with. Now we get to LP #3 and some speculation on my part as I haven't heard very much of it yet.

There are a two reasons why I have particularly high hopes for this. The first is that she is now free of any shackles, real or imaginary, imposed by Colombia Records. 'My Wild West' is released on 12 February 2016 by Cooking Vinyl Records, a label with a long history of nurturing bands that have an independent streak. The second is that between 'Back to Forever' and this release she has relocated from California back to The Quad Cities on the Iowa/Illinois border, a move that I suspect is reflected in the title of the LP. Much of 'Catching a Tiger' was or at the very least hinted at being about her time spent growing up there.

Lissie - My Wild West:

1. My Wild West Overture
2. Hollywood
3. Wild West
4. Hero
5. Sun Keeps Risin'
6. Don't You Give Up On Me
7. Stay
8. Daughters
9. Together Or Apart
10. Shroud
11. Go For A Walk
12. Ojai

She is playing Shepherds Bush Empire again in 2016 and it is very tempting indeed.

Lists...

I'm still here and still very much listening, watching, and reading too.  The lists seem to start earlier each year, or maybe that is just me becoming older each year. On the other hand, if I'm honest I actually start thinking about them at the time I first go to an outdoor festival, so late June!
I've looked through a few already and, with mine in more-or-less in the bag now but they will not be revealed until about the start of December, the common ground and the contrasts are interesting to me and in some cases rather surprising.
In the meantime here are two playlists, each about the length of a typical CD album, that compile some of my favourite songs of 2015:

• Tracks of 2015 #1
• Tracks of 2015 #2

These playlists represent a mixture of all those things and also other things that I have liked along the trail this last year. It is quite likely that 'Tracks of 2015 #3' will follow in the next week or so. There is no implied ranking-by-merit by list or indeed within them. 

An astonishingly good song, or even two, does not necessarily make an album; equally an album can be all the more astonishing for not having any particular stand-out track. This is why I am so much heartened by the resurgence of the EP, whether physical or digital. It allows the emphasis on quality over quantity. It is also much more affordable for new and independently minded artists. I shall be including a more in-depth list of EPs and mini-albums this year. The lists of LPs and EPs and mini-albums will be as heretofore presented in alphabetical order by artist.

I almost forgot to mention this - The UK Blog Sound of 2016. I am part of the voting for that for the fourth year and my three choices are now submitted; the resulting 'Top 15 list' will be revealed, here and on other participating blogs, on December 3. The winner (and the four runners-up) will be announced on January 5, 2016.
The considerable organisation and time that this involves is undertaken by Robin Seamer who is also responsible for new music blog Breaking More Waves, which I highly recommend that you visit.

New Music 2015 - Part 80 - Rainey Qualley - Turn Down The Lights

This mini-album has been bubbling under the surface since its US release back in early June. It is finally getting some exposure this side of the pond thanks to the recent release of 'Me and Johnny Cash' as a single and to promote that Rainey was live on RTÉ in Ireland to kick things off.

The track list is:

• Turn Me On Like The Radio
• Dead and Gone
• Watered Down
• Never Mine
• Me and Johnny Cash
• Kiss Me Drunk
• Cool, Wild, Whatever

At the risk of seeming to damn it with faint praise, which if I wanted to do I would have achieved by not writing about it at all, it is country inflected pop. Qualley is a co-writer on all tracks, usually with John Ramey. It is not needlessly ornamented or overproduced. Furthermore it has no obviously weak tracks but also bear in mind that this is not an up-tempo affair by any means.
Not all music needs to be a challenge. I like this for that reason and also for its lack of pretence, or indeed pretentiousness. The whistling at the end of opening track 'Turn Me On Like The Radio' is worth a mention in that respect.
I'd rather like to think that she will be playing live in the UK next year. I can think of several festivals at which she would fit in well. I intend to be at one of them.
Another strange thing about this release is that when I bought it some months ago I could have paid about £7 to download it from Amazon UK but instead I paid only very slightly more than half of that, including shipping, to have the original (Cingle label) CD delivered from the US!

New Music 2015 - Part 79 - Lanterns On The Lake - Beings

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the release of new studio LPs in the two months before Christmas was something of a rarity. That is not so much the case now and for a variety of reasons.

A band that I have followed, both live and recorded as well as with mentions in these scribblings, for almost as long as I can remember is Lanterns On The Lake. Hailing from Northumberland, Lanterns On The Lake comprises Hazel Wilde, Paul Gregory, Oliver Ketteringham and Bob Allan.

Beings - Lanterns On The Lake. Released  13 November Bella Union (UK) and PIAS (N. America).

The second and latest single taken from it is 'Through The Cellar Door'. Theirs has never been music to party to and probably never will be. It is perfect to share with a small group of friends and then remember that some of the best in things in life are the simplest and least extravagant. That approach, as beautiful as it is, doesn't square with the cult of ruthless self-promotion that the top-end music industry regards as normal.


It is certainly none the worse for that.

New Music 2015 - Part 78 - Aurora Aksnes - Running With The Wolves EP

This seems to have been one of the biggest 'stories' in a whole slew of UK newspapers for a couple of days. Yes, I am going to comment on it.
Whatever you think about pre-Christmas hubbub or the much-commented-upon John Lewis Christmas TV advertisement that isn't an issue for me. John Lewis Partnership, a UK chain of department stores, has a history of choosing an artist to cover a well known hit song as a sound-line to their annual campaign. The song and the artist chosen are often surprising juxtapositions. In 2012 it was Gabrielle Aplin covering Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the track 'The Power Of Love'.

That the press seems to think that the singer Aurora Aksnes, chosen to cover Oasis' 'Half The World Away' on it, is unknown is quite the issue for me. Where have all you supposed music sleuths been?

She released the 'Running With The Wolves EP' in May this year (Decca, Universal Music Group --- so hardly an underground release) and she certainly hasn't spent the time since then hiding in a cave somewhere in her native Norway.

Aurora, Walled Garden Stage, Green Man Festival, Sunday 23 August 2015.

I guess you just had to be there to realise that something beyond the usual was going on. Always keep your eyes and ears open, and not just for the music alone...
Don't worry about Oasis (they'll love hating the cover and blaming each other all over again), or indeed this saccharine version designed to serve a single purpose. I don't blame Aurora for taking this opportunity to gain exposure without having to allow any of her own music to be compromised by its use in the advertisement.
Her brand of Scandinavian electro-pop might have been a bit too dark for the target market anyway...  This is the title track.

Unless that is you fancy spending Christmas dancing in a deserted quarry backed by a mysterious metropolis.

The four-track EP is far better than the song covered. Aurora's début LP is due for release in early Spring 2016.

New Music 2015 - Part 77 - Mahoney & The Moment - Goodnight Moon

I mentioned only yesterday that New Music 2015 is still very much live as far as my listening and writing is concerned. This is just one song that exemplifies why that is and always should be so.

I have mentioned Mahoney & The Moment before. In September 2013 I commented thus and I don't regret that for a minute. I like this new song so very much. In a sense I am playing catch-up now and I'm enjoying that too.

New Music 2016 - Part 1 - The Black Feathers - Soaked To The Bone

Yes, I know it is not even November for another few hours; enjoy Hallowe'en and bear with me.  I am far from done with 'New Music 2015'  but I have decided to start on 2016 with this post for a reason beyond merely the fact that I can.

'Soaked To The Bone' is the début full LP from Gloucestershire-based duo The Black Feathers that comprises Ray Hughes (vocals and guitar) and Sian Chandler (vocals). It is released by Blue House Music on 26 February 2016.

It follows the five-song 2014 EP 'Strangers We Meet', which I mentioned here and that also featured in my best-of 2014 list in the category EPs and Mini Albums.
'Soaked To The Bone' consists of ten self-written songs and a Bob Dylan cover (albeit one more recently associated with a well-known UK female artist!) and none of these songs appeared on the aforementioned EP.  The track list for it is as follows:

• Take Me Back
• Goodbye Tomorrow
• Arclight
• Blind
• All For You
• Homesick
• Winter Moves In
• Down By The River
• Make You Feel My Love (Dylan)
• Spider and The Fly
• Clear Blue Sky

I'm not even going to try and pick a favourite here, despite having had the CD on heavy rotation for well over a fortnight now and this should tell you something about how I regard The Black Feathers. On the album they have a splendid cast of collaborating musicians including Phillip Henry (dobro) and Anna Jenkins (violin and viola). The Black Feathers are on tour in the coming weeks and live as a duo they are quite something.

Frome Cheese and Grain - 25 April 2014

I shall be going to see the pre-launch tour locally and I suggest you do so too if it is within reach - it includes dates in Inverness and Glasgow in early December. I'm sure that you will wish, and likely be able, to purchase a copy of 'Soaked To The Bone' direct from them at the time.

$200 --- a guitar or a gun?

This is a chilling question.

I'm off to a local folk music festival tomorrow and so it is likely I won't be finishing this post until Sunday. I know where I'm heading and hopefully it involves no guns but plenty of guitars. Both it and this post will continue my theme of listening to music from 2015.
Also, for the first time in ages or so it seems to me, this post will address a song lyric in detail. Not however that of a song I am likely to hear tomorrow.

It took me a couple more days than I intended before continuing but that is how it goes sometimes. On the other hand I have expanded the scope to include two songs: Both include at their heart internal contradictions. The concepts that are boiled-down here are much to do with recent events in the US and in particular the issues both addressed or avoided by the various candidates, of any particular persuasion or none, who are pitching to become the next President of The United States. It is not, I don't hesitate to add, a situation in any way unique to the US. It is just that it is sometimes easier to focus on the bare bones of the matter from a more distant viewpoint.
The first comes from Will Hoge's 2015 release 'Home Town Dreams' and a very fine album throughout. It is sung in the first person from the viewpoint of a teenage man looking for a taste of the larger world.

Guitar Or A Gun

A cool September morning, waitin' on the pawn shop to let me in. 
$200 worth of summer yard mowin' that I just had to spend.
I had my eye on two things, but I could only pick just one.
A young man's first decision; is it a guitar or a gun?

I can still hear daddy's voice say "now think about it son.
One of these will last forever, and the other's just for fun.
One can feed your family, and one will end you up in jail." 
And he seemed to know which one was which, but me, I couldn't tell.

I could learn to shoot like Jesse James, out there on the run, 
or play guitar and be a Rolling Stone, now that just sounds like fun.
A rock star or an outlaw, well either way I've won, 
when I walk out this door with a guitar or a gun.

I've thought about it long and hard, as I held 'em in my hand, 
standin' at the crossroads, still deciding who I am.
They're both just wood and metal. Six bullets or six strings?
Whichever choice I make I'll leave here feeling like a king.

Will I learn to shoot like Jesse James, out there on the run, 
or play guitar and be a rolling stone, now that just sounds like fun.
A rock star or an outlaw, well either way I've won, 
when I walk out this door with a guitar or a gun.

A cool September morning, waitin' on the pawn shop to let me in. 
$200 worth of summer yard mowin' that I just had to spend.

Should I learn to shoot like Jesse James, out there on the run, 
or play guitar and be a rolling stone, well that just sounds like fun.
A rock star or an outlaw, well either way I've won, 
when I walk out this door with a guitar or a gun.
when I walk out this door with a guitar or a gun.

With a guitar or a gun.

The protagonist admits that while his father, who is offering the advice, seems to be clear about the correct option to choose he himself is quite unclear about it all. You could say that this is an example of the wisdom that simply accrues with age and experience; even if that experience is only that of observation of the behaviours and outcomes of others.

This post was going to be about that alone until I was listening to this next song. I was really listening yesterday evening when I realized that this contained a lyric that encapsulates another more subtle contradiction - in this case one person, an adult, worrying about one problem while either oblivious to or wilfully ignoring the flip-side and that it is an attitude that is in large part driving the former.

Dry County Blues

There's a car full of pillbillies looking to score

From one of them trailer-court front-porch drug stores.

And a tired coal miner on a long West Virginia beer run.

Dry county blues, not a beer joint in sight.

Half the county's laid off, laid up or gettin' high.

At the head of the holler there's a makeshift casino

with a rusty pool table and blackjack and bingo.

Ain't nothing illegal as long as the sheriff gets paid.

There's good Christian women locking their front doors,

Praying their daughters don't turn into meth whores,

While their sons are out drinkin' and drivin' and trying to get laid.

Dry county blues, not a beer joint in sight.

Half the county's laid off, laid up or gettin' high.

Nowhere to go, not a damn thing to do.

So you turn a blind eye, and barely get by.

Dry county blues.

This is from Angaleena Presley's 2014 (in the US) and 2015 (in the UK) LP 'American Middle Class'. It is her début solo album and another cracking record. It is not even half as good however as seeing her play live so here she is doing just that.

Cambridge Folk Festival, 31 July 2015.

New Music 2015 - Part 75 - Bella Spinks - Debut EP

It was a journey without any destination. One thing that I most certainly did not expect when I started this little project in September 2006 was ever to be able to review releases that few have yet had the chance to hear.  This is the latest stop on the way.

Bella Spinks is a 22 year-old and from Brighton. She writes songs with a notable literary bent. This is music that simply won't stay in the background. It will ensnare you - the piano might catch you first but it is the words around which it ebbs and flows that soon become the challenge and thus reveal the true worth in this. I could make comparisons with other artists but I don't feel the need to do that. I think that spoon-feeding would be unhelpful and possibly even insulting, both to the artist and to readers who I hope will also become fans and listeners.

Debut EP - Bella Spinks. Released 27 November 2015 by Sublime Music.

I can suggest music that you might like, the choice is entirely yours, rather than try to tell you what music you should like. I will also mention, as a champion of the revival of the EP format, that less is so often more. The early release of a small collection of well chosen, carefully honed tracks is the way to go. It focuses attention and allows the music to speak for itself.

This is the track list:

• Call You Home
• Regenerate
• George Of The 5th Of September
• Laura Save Yourself

You can't be expected to make a judgement for yourself without anything to listen to. 

A live version of  'Call You Home' recorded in a church in Brighton. December 2014.

New Music 2015 - Part 74 - Cattle & Cane - Home

Here is a thing. Cattle & Cane is another band including siblings that I have chosen to mention. Four of the five band members in this case: Joseph, Helen, Fran and Vin Hammill and Tom Chapman on drums.

I can almost hear the ghostly whisperings now and, just like the lone Wichita lineman, there is with a little luck some method in my seeming madness. This is their first album.

It is, if I may use a dirty word, pop. It is not however pop in the sense that those who deny, based on much modern "pop", that the genre should never have existed at all. Cattle & Cane is certainly no one-trick pony. The nearest that I can bring myself to say is that this is Anglo-American pop of the highest order. It is already released by Quiet Crown Recordings.


This is track 7 from it: Sold My Soul. The other thing I should say is that I really like this whole album; more so with each and every listen and there have been quite a few now.

Unusual song covers.

Once upon a time I had mixed feelings about an artist covering the songs of another artist. I can't actually remember why I felt that way but I got over it a long time ago. It is, of course, the staple diet of the very many talent contests on TV but that has hardly encouraged me. On the other hand my most recent post mentioned only covered songs and that I suppose made has made me think about the subject yet again. That is in a sense driven by the fact that Ryan Adams' cover of Taylor Swift's '1989' in toto actually didn't spark that response because I have worked through my thoughts on that territory before.
This is one by an artist, Natalie Prass, that I saw live this summer, and mentioned, with a song I might not have imagined her taking on. Let's see how this turns out.  She is covering a song in an entirely different genre to her own and one that was first released in the year she was born.

Here she covers Slayer and 'Raining Blood' from the 1986 album 'Reign In Blood'.

You may like neither version one little bit but I contend that it was an interesting, and even braver, choice.

New Music 2015 - Part 73 - Lizzy and the Bluenotes

It transpires that much of the live music that I see in October will have at least significant blues influence.
Lizzy and the Bluenotes is not on my list, more is the pity. It was serendipity that caused me to notice this trio from Brighton this evening. I currently have not much to go on other than that the band comprises Lizzy Boyd, Daniel Shaw and Oli Vincent and their line is semi-acoustic blues with a distinct soul streak running through it.
I could listen to their cover of Fenton Robinson's 1967 track 'Somebody Loan Me A Dime' on repeat and I know that because I just have.

I thought you might like a bit of Janis Joplin too.

Likewise the cover of Amy Winehouse and 'Stronger Than Me' from her often rather overlooked 2003 LP Frank. I realise that this is a review based only on covers but I'm happy with doing that if they are strong and show the promise of things to come. I'm looking forward to what happens next.