Sunday, February 21, 2016

New music, Canada and forthcoming festivals...

Only yesterday I was thinking that I hadn't written about new Welsh music for sometime and so I did something about that. I used to write about music from Canada rather often too, indeed it was Arcade Fire that were in large part responsible for my conversion to festival-going, and therefore Latitude Festival, back in 2007.

Here are two Canadian acts that I have never seen live before but are appearing at festivals to which I'm going this coming summer. One thing I am confident about is that nobody could claim that both fall into a single genre. Both have new records to bring to the party, however.

Basia Bulat - Good Advice (Secret City Records, 12 February 2016).

This release is rather more pop-oriented than her earlier acoustic and folk-oriented material that regularly featured hammered dulcimer and autoharp. She is playing End Of The Road Festival, Dorset, UK, and hopefully we will get the best of both worlds.


The Besnard Lakes - A Coliseum Complex Museum (Jagjaguwar Records, 22 January 2016).

The Besnard Lakes is, more or less, the project of  husband-and-wife team Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas. One thing that that they do very well is psych-rock. I have all the earlier LPs too but this is the latest and in any case my liking for this is hardly breaking news. One accusation levelled against the band is that it sticks to the theme too much...  another is that the album is too short; earlier ones were criticised for being too long.
You just can't win!
Any which way, The Besnard Lakes play Green Man Festival 2016
 See what you think. See you there?

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Greetings! Andrew from the on hiatus toomuchmusic.wordpress.com! / Still doing Twitter at @tmmblog, somewhat! Possibly new music projects in the works! :)

Anywho, searched for Basia in your search box, She has a proper show by the looks of it in nearby Bristol (looks to be near Frome!) November 12, so thought I'd stop by your blog! Good work keeping it up! I'll definitely listen to some stuff that is new to me (Billie Marten and Honeyblood caught my eye)!

Have you heard of Plants and Animals? I'm playing them now (a friend of mine is friend's with the band), and even though I knew the name, hadn't really listened much! Also, Half Moon Run are a pretty good band that are Montreal based too!

Cheers!

Richard G said...

Thank you for your kind comments, Andrew, and I look forward to you next project. Please let me know!
It amazes me in many ways that 'Thoughts on music' is now more than ten years old. I certainly never expected that, nor some of the things that subsequently resulted from the need for things to write about - my return to festivals and rediscovery of photography being just two amongst them.
I shall listen to both 'Half Moon Run' and 'Plants and Animals' asap. I might not be able to go and see Basia Bulat live in Bristol because of another not-my-day-job duties (driving heritage trains!) but I did see her live at EOTR 2016 and she was amazing. I will blog about that, and other artists, soon.

Keep in touch!
Richard