The map has been redrawn.

When I last wrote, just over two weeks ago, I suppose that I was doing one of those most-British-of-things that is hoping-for-the-best and that everything would work out fine. 

It didn't and it is all our own fault. All of us - not just the 52% that voted leave - for sleepwalking to this point over a period of approximately twenty-five years.

Reading now what I posted then only serves to make me think that, five days before the referendum, I had more grave reservations about the outcome than I was prepared to admit, even to myself. This isn't a blog about politics it is one about music, but conveniently the two are inextricably linked.
A new journey is starting and nobody can tell how it will play out or where it will lead...
The Leave campaign used the slogan...  'I Want My Country Back!' ...whatever that actually means. I just want to share my country with whoever from wherever can see the tolerance, diversity and virtues that it really has.

The UK has long been at the cross-roads of music; absorbing, assimilating, creating and exporting with the whole work-piece on repeat-play. I'm pretty sure that this situation isn't about to change at all. Indeed the sense of fracture and of political upheaval may well spawn new creative directions. Music, whether making or consuming, is a good use of anger and disaffection.
The question right here is what music do I choose to illuminate this and where to start?
It is US Independence Day, which event we didn't much like at the time, so that was one possibility. I'll return to that but have decided to start by looking across an narrower stretch of water to a country that we have screwed-over more times than any other. It's almost certain that, in ignorance, we've just done so once again.
Ireland.
About this time last summer I became aware of a couple of acts from Ireland that prompted me to pay more attention to what has been developing there over the last couple of years. This is where I shall start.

September Girls - Age Of Indignation (Fortuna Pop!, 15 April 2016).

This is the second LP from the Dublin five-piece, and the sequel to 2014 LP 'Cursing The Sea'. Their music combines a range of trends from 1980s guitar and synth rock to 1960s girl bands. It is on this album that they find their own recipe for that cocktail, musically and also in the subject matter of the songs. It concerns a number of the ills that have affected, or in some cases have simply continued to afflict, their home country since the financial meltdown of 2008. It isn't about "Brexit" or what might happen in coming months and years.

It may possibly prove to be something of a template. Either way it is a mighty fine piece of work and this is a band that is currently very near the top of my "need-to-see-live" list.

On the other hand we now have some very stark home-grown divisions within the UK, and not just between its constituent parts. I have wondered for the last ten days or so what new music might be being worked up in response to all of this. Whatever it is I'm looking forward to hearing it...
I am well aware that I am writing from the seat of my pants here, and that I might tweak a few raw nerves in so-doing but, after almost ten years and 1200 published posts, I feel that if I don't let go and air my thoughts right now then I probably never will. I may regret doing so; but the alternative is far worse.
This next LP is one that is about the rather numerous parts of England that are far less beautiful or glamorous than the paeans to cultural tourism such as Stonehenge, Stratford on Avon and York. Some of them are just as interesting, in so far as concerns the wider cultural situation, as well as being a whole lot more authentic and edgy.

Kate Jackson - British Road Movies (Hoo Ha Records, 20 May 2016).

Kate Jackson was once the lead vocalist of The Long Blondes, a Sheffield five-piece whose members had all attended university in that city. She is originally from Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. This LP has been a very long time in the making - Jackson and Bernard Butler (he plays guitar and co-produces) have been working on this sporadically since late 2008. It's time might be now.

I rather think that I should have started with the next track 'The End Of Reason' instead.

New Music 2011 - Mirror, mirror - l want it all.

There is much to write, and most of it concerns (forthcoming) festivals too, but I'm going to start with this instead. After a fortnight away from writing I have decided that, with the numbered run of 'New Music 2011' having reached #14 by the end of March they will, at least for the foreseeable future, become unnumbered.  There is just too much that I'm excited about...
  
First off the fourth studio album from Domino Records stalwarts and Glaswegian institution Sons and Daughters. The  2008 album 'This Gift' was good but, produced by Bernard Butler, a rather unsurprisingly polished affair. It seems as though their fourth LP - to be called 'Mirror Mirror' marks a return in many ways to their glorious 2005 album 'The Repulsion Box' and if you need to listen to one S&D album before the new one appears, in early summer I believe, this is it.

Deciphering the lyrics will, almost certainly, prove a challenge but you will probably forget to try because the insistent drumming and the venom of the songs is quite remarkable. That the album actually runs for less than thirty minutes is something that you will also not even notice at first.
Always a good album for getting rid of party guests that have overstayed their welcome and to make a statement when played way too loud in the car with the windows wound down!
  
Still as scarily good as it was when it was released; for me it is now a 'classic' LP.

Thank you for reminding me...

This is for whoever ended up here when wondering who wrote/performed the song 'Driving To Idaho' earlier this evening...

This is the 2005 (self -released) Idaho Records version of her second album 'Fires' (the first album was 'Dear Frustrated Superstar', which is also well worth a listen) and it can still be found cheaply on Amazon Marketplace. It is, in my opinion far more real - and thus worth seeking - than the later major label (14th Floor) 'sparkly-pop' re-release of it. Another album, 'The Graduate' followed in 2009 and, in between times, she has been busy writing for other artists.  
I believe that she has been writing for herself again recently and that Bernard Butler might be on production duties for the new collection. 
For those of us with a fascination with lyrics she is somewhere between dream and nightmare - track 7 on 'Fires' is Geek Love and is about as improbable as could be.

Britpop revived: Live with little comment.

• Blur reunited - check.
• Suede reunited - check.

Today Pulp announced their return...  at least for one day in Hyde Park in July 2011.

Jarvis Cocker, comedian and musician, live at Latitude 2007 and quite unforgettable.

Note added November 18, 2010:

We now have confirmation the the above mentioned reunion of all six original members of Pulp is not a one-off: the band is confirmed for Isle of Wight Festival 2011 the tickets for which have now gone on sale.

This Gift - Sons and Daughters

The Gift is here and released in the UK on Monday 28th January on both CD (and also a limited bonus version with a live CD included) and on 12" vinyl (again limited) with a gold-foil sleeve that makes it almost impossible to photograph. I know this - I've just tried several possible ways of doing it and it is much like trying to take a picture of a mirror without seeing oneself in it!

Success is a two-edged blade and they knew it. What could they do next given that in 2005 their second album was both fantastic and so criminally underrated? No band had pushed boundaries as far and not only got away with it but made it their own territory.
That said 'This Gift' is amazing. 'The Repulsion Box' (2005) was always going to be an extremely tough album to follow but they've certainly done it. As it only arrived this morning I'm still undecided on the best tracks. There are plenty to chose from...

This library image really doesn't do it justice and I'll try again in daylight tomorrow morning but, as Domino vinyl always seems to be, the quality is untouchable. Some reviews have hinted that, with Bernard Butler on production duties, this is the album that sees Sons and Daughters go pop.
Well, unless your idea of pop is pitch-perfect in its twistedness - and this album is - then you might just be disappointed. More pop than The Repulsion Box for sure but that is hardly difficult and it is no less recognisable as Sons and Daughters. If this is the future of pop then so be it.

Incidentally someone sent me an e-mail today that contained an interesting suggestion: Once Amy Winehouse is packed off to rehab one of the therapies should be listening to Adele Bethel singing (presumably The Repulsion Box) as the songs are probably as messed-up as they come but Bethel (by all reports) isn't!