EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 2)

This was the most amazing thing - the band I thought least likely to... Slow Down, Molasses is one I have known about for some time. 'I'm An Old Believer' but that wasn't going to mean that I might get to see them live unless I went to Canada which, expense aside, I would be quite happy to do. Thanks to EOTR I saw them twice. Here they are playing for the second time on the Tipi Stage at, so my camera tells me, 01:50 on Monday morning.

That I hot-footed it from the Garden Stage to the Tipi Stage, making it just in time for their first set, made the perfect start to Sunday. Why the need to do this? Well I just had to see fellow Canadians Lightning Dust too, also for the first time.
  

  Amber Webber and Joshua Wells are the heart of Lightning Dust.
They are also half of Black Mountain.

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.

Latitude 2010 → EOTR 2010 → New Music 2010 - Part 17

With EOTR 2010 just a few days away and Latitude 2010 still quite fresh in my mind, it is time to tackle a few more images, expectations and hopes for the future. If the following is a little unfocussed, or simply downright confusing, then I'm afraid that this is simply an occupational hazard of 'Thoughts on Music'.  It may completely mystify but, even if not a single person reads it, writing it does make things clearer to me and that matters.
There is some overlap between acts that appeared at Latitude and those to appear at EOTR.  I used that to try and minimize conflicts when I wanted to see more than one act that was performing at the same time. Here are three such that I did at least catch some of at Latitude. Someone asked, only a few days ago, for today's thought on Latitude... 
Oh, how I wish I could but writing a daily post still remains something of a distant ambition.  These photos are probably not the best but hopefully they convey at least something of the atmosphere and the musical variety to be found at such festivals...

This was simply perchance - I admit that I had never heard of her before - but that is all part of the wonderful festival experience. It is that moment; when something or someone impinges on your musical conscience for the first time.  I think that she is a late addition to the line-up at EOTR 2010.


The foregoing is not true of this band. Canadian psychrock five-piece 'Black Mountain' are on the cusp of releasing their third LP, Wilderness Heart, and I own and adore the previous two. This one is just a little different --- and no less awesome.

Stormy High.  Black Mountain live @ Latitude 2010, in the Word Arena.

I wasn't really close enough to do this justice but, let me tell you this, Black Mountain rock.  I can't wait to hear them again at EOTR 2010. The LP Wilderness Heart is high on my list of New Music I Want.

While the music is completely different, The Unthanks are another EOTR act that I caught only very briefly on the Obelisk stage at Latitude 2010.

I think a more intimate setting will suit both them and their music to perfection but that they, and many others of folk-influenced persuasion, played the main stage says a whole lot about music today... I can't wait to see the full live set.

That, of course, is not to say that the whole scene was for ageing folk-hippies...  This act is quite the opposite but on the other hand most of the little kids, there with their parents, seemed to find this act absolutely riveting...  It was the second time that I have seen them live - and for all the chaos [and the almost inevitable premature ending] - it was better than the first and only slightly less scary as I was further away from the front than when I saw them on the Sunset Stage at Latitude 2007.

It is strange to say this but, for all the chaos and strife, Crystal Castles has the same kind of attraction that the equally tempestuous and unpredictable Libertines did (and post-Leeds/Reading 2010 now have once again). Live, while it lasts, they are totally magnetic. The album Crystal Castles II (2010) is pretty flawless; what they self-destroy while performing live is really rather haunting when recorded in the studio and never more so than when recorded on vinyl.

The list of UK bands that I have seen/want to see is growing by the day.  Here are another few pictures from Latitude 2010. I have mentioned all these acts before.

The Good Natured live @ Latitude 2010.

Yuck - as well as their album I'm looking forward to their acoustic side-project as Yu(c)k. The band is performing at EOTR 2010 too.

As I am mentioning forthcoming new music I could hardly fail to include 'Without Why', which has now been released.  Rose Elinor Dougall made a good case for it at Latitude.
If you include acts from outside the UK the list is...
to be quite frank, almost endless.

New Music 2010 - Part 11

Where to start?  It goes like this as often as not.  After what seems like weeks of waiting a whole host of new music impinges on my consciousness at once; it is not all about the music it is in part about me.

This one I can't wait to hear but the release date is  September 13 in the UK (a day later in the US and their native Canada).  I am, however, off to both Latitude and End Of The Road festivals and this band is performing at both of them.

Wilderness Heart - Black Mountain

This is the third album from the prog/psych outfit from Canada, a band that I have long wanted to hear live. Now I have two chances and the opportunity to hear some of the new material before the release of the album.  This band has also spawned two side-projects - Pink Mountaintops and Lightning Dust - and I'm rather hoping that the 'secret stages' at EOTR might provide an opportunity to catch either one or both of these (please).

Those heading to Leeds/Reading Festivals will have the opportunity to see the band that, almost single handedly as they headlined Sunday at Latitude 2007, convinced me that I needed to go to a festival again and that band is of course Arcade Fire.  

 They release their third full length album, The Suburbs, on August 2 in the UK.

Whatever you currently think of their music I can pretty much guarantee that you will see an incredible performance.  It is no coincidence that I am still going to festivals three years later and would like to add more to my schedule if that proves possible.  Enjoy!

This only covers part of my interest in music and only part of that which comes from Canada. My first thought about this is 'help, help and rescue!' but, on the other side of the coin, that leaves a whole load more new music for another post or three.

At some times I only want to listen familiar music while at others I really want to discover new music including new acts and new genres.  It would be really useful if I could understand why this is.

End Of The Road 2010

'New Pornographers' will swap the ice-hockey rink for Larmer Tree Gardens in September 2010.

They will be joined, inter alia, by the following confirmed acts:

The Mountain Goats, The Low Anthem, Iron & Wine, Black Mountain, Wilco

Dengue Fever -- Felice Brothers -- The Unthanks

AA Bondy, The Antlers, Elliott Brood, Cate Le Bon, Citay, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Daredevil Christopher Wright, Deer Tick, Diane Cluck with Anders Griffen, Django Django, DON’T MOVE!, Frank Fairfield, Forest Fire, Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell, Ladyhawke, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Mountain Man, Nurses, Papercuts, Phosphorescent, Joe Pug, The Ruby Suns, Snowman, The Fresh & Onlys, Timber Timbre, The Wilderness Of Manitoba...

...and a whole lot more yet to be revealed. Tickets are on sale now:
http://www.endoftheroadfestival.com/tickets/

It is all looking pretty good... I'm going to add links to the artists when and where I can, not least because I enjoyed and appreciated reading them myself. They are not intended to be definitive, and certainly not comprehensive, rather a guide to how I understand the chosen artists might relate one to another.

One of the many outstanding performances of EOTR 2009 was that by 'The Low Anthem' on the Garden Stage on a glorious, sunny Saturday afternoon and they are to return in 2010.

Worth the risk?

I mentioned that I wanted to hear this a couple of months ago and finally, having read some negative reviews and then been unable to source it on vinyl at a sensible price for some time, it arrived yesterday morning. For once I was actually at home when the postman knocked and he asked me, very politely and in a slightly round-about way, what these apparently strange, square, flat, thin packages contained.
I told the truth - a vinyl LP.

Was this LP worth the wait?
Taking risks when buying music unheard is inevitable and not to do so is now unthinkable as far as I'm concerned. It is true that I've bought a few things I don't much care for but that can happen even when one has heard some tracks. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me - it is my only gambling tendency - and I'm winning far more often than losing. Surely most people don't expect to to hear a novel before reading it so why should music be any different?

Well, as I suspected, it is neither nu-miserable nor Black Mountain-lite. In The Future - Black Mountain (2008) is also one of my current 2008 favourites but Lightning Dust is more than likely to also be right up there with the best.
Nothing like the expansive sound of Black Mountain, this is really a late-night, early morning compsition. Keyboards and strings, including cello on several tracks, accompany the lyrics perfectly. Amber Webber wrote them and she sings them too, sometimes accompanied by Joshua Wells, and this is a very different proposition to Black Mountain. If you have 'In The Future' then the best guide is the track Night Walks (see lyrics) as that was written and sung by Webber.
I can't pick any favourite tracks yet and I suspect that it is one of those albums, released in this case by Jagjaguwar, on which I may never be able to do so. It is that good.

In The Future - Black Mountain

I've mentioned this before and now had this on vinyl for some weeks. While not everyone agrees with me it is fast becoming one of my favourites of 2008 so far.

The first time I heard it the opening guitar gambit instantly reminded me of a classic Rainbow song. Not, as far as I have yet been able to tell, any particular one but the issue of sounding somehow generic 1970s/1980s is something that other reviews I have read have also levelled against Black Mountain.
I can see where they are coming from, and there are plenty of other influences in there if one cares to mention them, but I think it is wonderful nevertheless. The other common accusation is that it is rather gloomy in tone and execution and I'd generally agree with that but rarely does it seem as apocalyptic as that by, to name an album by another Canadian band, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.
Night Walks is the final track on In The Future.

Night Walks

Night walks with me
And the moon leaves me just enough light to see
And my shadow my only company
And it moves just like me
And it walks just like me.

Help me to breathe.
I can only read what I see.
Be kind to me ‘cause the words come out carefully
And they break up easily
And I woke up in between.

Night walks with me
And the moon leaves me just enough light to see
And my shadow my only company
And it moves just like me
And it walks just like me.

Had Rainbow become folk-tinged, given to experimenting with acoustic instruments and also had a female co-vocalist, it is not quite impossible that they might have turned out a song like some of these here but that is only the half of it. After repeated listening it still does remind me of Rainbow however and it makes me want to dig out some, and therefore perhaps discover why, but mine was sadly all on long departed cassettes. I have no doubt that the CDs are out there and readily available - maybe the vinyl too that I should have bought that for pennies when I had the chance - but it is no secret that I have a soft spot both for folk and also the bombast of rock and that may matter more when it comes to my liking of In The Future.
More importantly, to tell the truth and despite or perhaps because of the mediocre reviews of it that I've read so far, I'm pretty keen to hear the eponymous album Lightning Dust recorded by Amber Webber and Joshua Wells. (Jagjaguwar CD/LP JAG112)

Deprived of the rest of Black Mountain - Steve McBean has his own side project Pink Mountaintops - this is even fitted by some in the category of nu-miserable. Truth-to-tell, and I can just imagine how I think it might sound, I just don't think so but I'm interested to see if I'm right and buying it completely unheard is a risk I'm now quite prepared to take.

To listen to in 2008 - Part 2

Too much pop, dance and nu-folk maybe?
I'm not too concerned about that, and can't tell you how good Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree is... I'm currently listening to it on vinyl. That said wouldn't it be sad if everything sounded this way? Yet another Canadian band ride to the rescue!

Black Mountain come from Vancouver and have released their second album, In The Future, on Jagjaguwar Records who last year gave us the Besnard Lakes' rather surprising second album The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse.

The two are not the same but when it comes to their heavy/progressive rock tendencies there is a point of comparison. In addition both bands continue the now common Canadian tradition of being a collective of musicians who also make use of male-female vocals: in the case of Black Mountain these are (mostly) provided by Steve McBean and Amber Webber and is allied, on some tracks, with a real folk sensitivity.

Black Mountain - In The Future.

In many ways it sounds considerably influenced by the music of the early 1970s but not remotely in a 'tribute band' sort of way; in fact the most derivative 1970s thing about this album is that Jagjaguwar have also made it available on 12"!