End Of The Road Festival - Part 2 - The Woods Stage

Two three-day music festivals in quick succession, as I recently attended, do two things. The minor one concerns sleep patterns. That is no revelation, it lasts just a few days and is basically tiredness compounded by a lack of routine.  The less obviously explicable one, and it doesn't kick in for about a week, is that it totally messes with all idea of what recorded music I wish to listen to.

This doesn't particularly predispose it towards or away from artists that I heard live; rather it induces some kind of restive state that requires me to jump from one artist or genre to another. This is handy in some ways as it helps with listening to new releases as well as old things. Streaming services are a boon here with almost limitless instant access to all kinds of music at the standard monthly charge. Equally likely however is that I will dive into my collection of vinyl and CDs for something that I had long forgotten (but was reminded about by hook or by crook) or something by an artist that I have just heard.
In some cases it is actually that I want to play it for real - from a physical thing - simply because I can and that is illustrated perfectly by this, an artist who certainly wasn't one of the stand-out acts when originally announced, unless one happened to know otherwise for she was then only about to release her début album. All credit to the EOTR team for this.

Margo Price, Woods stage, Friday afternoon.

That LP is Midwest Farmer's Daughter (Third Man Records, 2016). I'm making no secret that it will be up there amongst my albums of 2016. Now it is mid-September it is time to start thinking about such things and not least because there are so many to consider (some of which may not yet have even been released)!

One thing that I certainly have is a very poor record of watching main-stage headline acts at festivals. In that regard I was really rather diligent at EOTR 2016. There is a specific reason for that, at least in part. The genesis of this blog is inextricably linked with the Saturday headline act at End Of The Road and that is Bat For Lashes. To find that, ten years later, I am writing this today... well what happened there?
Before Saturday evening came around several people whose thoughts and integrity I very much respect had said that they were surprised that Bat For Lashes had been chosen to headline the main Woods stage when Ezra Furman was playing the Garden stage. Luckily I had at least seen that potential clash coming and headed it off at the pass by catching Ezra Furman play at Green Man a fortnight earlier. One thing I could reliably inform them that he was absolutely on-fire then. I was told a couple of hours later, when we reconvened in the Tipi tent, that he still was.
So was Natasha Khan.

Bat For Lashes, Woods stage, Saturday evening, End Of The Road Festival 2016.

There is another thing about all of this. It is not at all uncommon to that I come across an act that quite unknown or not blows me away playing live. I'm pleased to report that it has happened a number of times this summer. What is truly rare is an artist and song (both absolutely new to me) that do that simultaneously. It happened at Green Man 2016.

A topic of discussion in recent times is that, taken together, festivals apparently favour male artists over female ones and especially near the top of the bill, on any given stage. End Of The Road has certainly never been this way and this year only served to underline that.  I just mention this because having written and included pictures of seven EOTR 2016 acts, so far, all of them female fronted. Is that therefore an indication that I am guilty of sexism in my photography?

Horse and I - a cover version

This has subverted what I was planning to write about this evening, but no matter. Two of my abiding themes are new artists and cover versions and this covers both bases admirably.
The song, Bat For Lashes' 'Horse and I', is from the 2006 album 'Fur and Gold'. It is only because of that album this this blog exists at all. This is an a capella version by London Contemporary Voices Choir and was only recently recorded live at St. John-at-Hackney church, East London.

New Music 2012 - Part 22 - The Haunted Man

Before starting on the music that I saw and heard live at Deer Shed Festival 3 this past weekend it is time to mention this; the third album from the artist whose first, Fur and Gold, was the inadvertent genesis of this particular blog!

Tracks:

1. Lilies
2. All Your Gold
3. Horses of the Sun
4. Oh Yeah
5. Laura
6. Winter Fields
7. The Haunted Man
8. Marilyn
9. A Wall
10. Rest Your Head
11. Deep Sea Diver

The Haunted Man is released early-autumn (October 15 in the UK) and it will be available on vinyl. After Two Suns, which she shared with her alter ego Pearl, I wonder what it will reveal. Natasha Khan has been an influence on more new artists since her 2006 début album than she may care to admit. That is one thing that I learned this weekend.
I'm just wondering when someone will first ask me to comment on the 'best albums of 2012'. It hasn't happened yet...
I have, for my part, a few in mind already.

To see her upcoming live set at Bestival 2012, Isle of Wight, UK see here:
http://www.youtube.com/bestivaltv

17:25 BST (UST +1)

Do I stay? Or do I go? - Latitude Festival 2012

It's decision time folks... I've been to the last five, but whether I go to Latitude 2012 is largely down to you this time. I had a few issues with Latitude 2011 and the weather wasn't really one of them although it was an inconvenience to all.  What do you think about the line up (as already announced) below? Please note that I go almost only for the music.

If I stay (much nearer home) I still have the option to go to Priddy Folk Festival, or indeed the revived Truck Festival instead. If not those then plenty of other opportunities are available and I'm already going to 'No Direction Home 2012' (its first offering at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire) and 'End Of The Road 2012' so I'm hardly going to be feeling left out. In fact the line up announced for these, and it is far from complete, is pretty amazing from my personal perspective and is something about which I shall comment in more detail very soon.

Set the sails and feel the winds stirring... live in 2009

I left this category - Live Performances of 2009 - towards the end because I thought it would be amongst the easier ones to solve. Oh, how wrong could I be? These are all acts that I have seen live, in a few cases more than once, in 2009 and yet I still can't choose between them.

It has proven an invidious task to whittle the list down to ten, with some pictures to follow soon I intend, and here alphabetically is that list.

• Alela Diane
• Bat For Lashes
• Bellowhead
• Gossip
• Imelda May
• Ladyhawke
• Low Anthem
• Ohbijou
• Recode
• School Of Seven Bells

'Set the sails and feel the winds a-stirring
and towards the bright horizon sail away.'

I could do this list all over again, twice more with no items repeated, and still be quite happy with it. That just shows what I think about live music in 2009.

Note added March 15, 2010:

For more about 'Low Anthem' see here: For new info on 'The Low Anthem' see here:

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2010/03/for-those-who-are-still-doubters.html

Note added December, 8:

The more I think about it the more tempting it becomes.

Things you just discover --- Songs for Edna.

It is not possible to keep up with all that is going on but there will always be interesting new discoveries. This is one of them and yet another that comes from Brighton. The Edna of the album title is Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950) who was the first woman to receive the Pulizer Prize for Poetry, for The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923). Caroline Weeks has appeared in these pages before however, if only in pictures as her alter ego Ginger Lee as part of Bat For Lashes' band at Latitude 2007.

This picture was taken by Natasha 'Bat For Lashes' Khan.

The album is available on vinyl Manimal Vinyl Records (MANI 004).

I suspect that it will not be an album threatening the best-seller lists of 2009 and that is a shame. The seemingly recherché source material does not mean that this album is in any way difficult or inaccessible. It is the sublime; neither obviously poems set to music nor music to accompany poems and what you didn't know you would probably never even suspect.

New Music I Want In 2009 - Part 5

Hello, I'm back after two weeks away from writing, but not from listening, which is just something I need to do once in a while. That said I'm now bubbling over with new music to share...

The latest from Metric, and all kinds of other wonderful things plus one that which, should I wish to do so, I could use as my excuse for vanishing for the last fortnight because it really is that good.

To have one alter ego is often one too many and two is beyond countenance.

None should try, and fewer could get away with, the blonde artifice of Pearl.

Only Karen O might give her competition, but perhaps they would talk clothes instead?
One told the lead guitarist that he'd be playing keyboards on the album, the other told Scott Walker to sing a song for her and sent him the part... and they both did.

Latitude 2009

Just a very quick note: Tickets for the fourth installment of Latitude, held as always at Henham Park, Suffolk, went on sale at 7pm UST (GMT) this evening - 23 March 2009. It sold out well in advance in 2008, so don't ponder too long before joining in. The dates are 17 - 19 July 2009, with the camping area opening from around midday on 16 July.
The main stage headline acts are:

Friday: Grace Jones
Saturday: The Pet Shop Boys
Sunday: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

For the latest additions see here Latitide 2009 - news and for criticism see here.

I was there in 2007 and 2008 and, don't even doubt it, I'm going again in 2009.

See you there?

Back To Bat... Music I Want in 2009 - Part 2

The only reason this blog exists at all is because of my innate curiosity. The only reason that, rather than just wondering about it, something actually happened instead is entirely due to one album. That album is 'Fur and Gold' and the artist is Bat For Lashes.

Live @ Latitude 2007

The UK release date for 'Two Suns' is 6 April 2009.

As winter turns to spring, and almost two-and-a-half-years after that début, the second Bat For Lashes album will appear, even fuller sounding and more eclectic than the first, and it is 'Two Suns'. Written and recorded, even if that were not the original plan, in New York, California and mid-Wales the result is something quite different.

Never yet one to turn down an opportunity to raid the costume box, one thing that you can rely on is that, seen live, Bat For Lashes will be nothing if not a true all-round stage performance.
This summer's festivals? Let's hope so!

Thank you, everyone.

When I added a counter to this blog in early 2008 my dream was that, within a year, it would tell me that I had reached a thousand distinct readers. That is something over which I have no control whatsoever but I didn't need to worry - you made it happen and then some.
What I couldn't possibly have imagined is that, a couple of days before the start of 2009, it was set to reach 10,000.
I am quite stunned; my humble thanks to everyone that has visited this site, returned to it, left comments (always appreciated even if critical) and everyone else that has directly or indirectly helped with it in so many ways. I started 'Thoughts On Music' tentatively in September 2006 and I could not then conceive of writing a dozen posts. I can hardly believe that this, when I publish it, will be my 285th post to this blog!

For me the importance doesn't stop there. If I had not started this I very much doubt that I would have decided to go to Latitude 2007, a venture I repeated in 2008, or seen so many other live bands, read so much about music or even bought so much of it. There are also all the people that as a result I have had the pleasure to meet or talk to, most of whom are at least indirectly a result of this.

Just now, and purely for fun, I've taken out the limiter in the 'I've Just Listened To...' sidebar. Of course I've listened to more than this since I introduced it (I couldn't possibly include everything) but for now it is complete and as compiled.

Fur and Gold - how this blog started.

It all started, rather by accident, in September 2006 when I wanted to post a comment on a Blogspot post. To do that I needed to create an account of my own, which I did. The album I wanted to talk about was this one.

At that point I had no intention of starting a blog of my own but, eighteen months and one-hundred-and-fifty-something posts later, I'll probably have to admit that I was wrong about that!

I certainly wasn't wrong about this artist, who was little known at the time, however. While back in the studio to record the second Bat For Lashes LP, which is rumoured to be heavier than the first, Natasha and the others are also heading across Europe this spring as principal support for Radiohead on their stadium tour. As Thom Yorke said "Horse and I' is as perfectly haunting as songs come".

Mercury Music Prize 2007

Any regular reader of this blog will know that it first came in to being, in September 2006, as a direct result of my wishing to reply to a post on US-based blog "The Yellow Stereo" that, incidentally, is no longer to be found at the url that they were using back then; it can now be found at http://theyellowstereo.com/.

My first actual blog post was also a comment on the very same new UK band - Bat For Lashes - that is both the creation and the performance alter-ego of Natasha Khan.

Their set at Latitude 2007 (during which I took all the pictures in this post) was stymied by equipment malfunction; in particular the sustain pedal for the electric piano, which proved to be utterly unreliable. It shortened their set by two songs and Natasha's understandable disappointment, tinged with embarrassment and annoyance, was quite palpable (at least from the front row).

Bat For Lashes live at Latitude 2007. 'What's A Girl To Do?'

They handled it all so well and, by way of recompense, a few days later the début album 'Fur and Gold' was announced as one of the twelve nominees for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize!

The tracks that they were able to perform were however even better than could possibly be imagined. Even without on-stage malfunctions the album Fur and Gold is not, on the face of it, so very obviously transferable to live performance.

L - R: Abi Fry, Ginger Lee, Lizzy Carey and Natasha Khan. This was taken during the performance of 'Sad Eyes'.

If you haven't been lucky enough to catch Bat For Lashes live yet then I suggest you try and get hold of a copy of their latest 7" 'What's A Girl To Do?'.

The b-side is a very good live version of 'Sarah'.

Less is more?

I have been blogging here for nine months now and this is my 54th post. Time flies, as it does inexorably, but it amazes me that I've actually written that many in so short a time!
In that time I have also contributed only two customer reviews to <amazon.co.uk> but they have been amongst the most favourably regarded that I have posted in the last couple of years. Writing the blog has helped with this - but one of them was actually that which made me take the leap into the blog community in the first place!