New Music 2013 - Part 23 - Karima Francis - Black

I received this in the post yesterday and I couldn't wait to give it a thorough listen or three. The word is that I'm liking it very much indeed.
It seems so long ago that I reviewed Karima Francis's first album 'The Author'. It was back in 2009; it was good and so, if maybe less original, was the follow-up 'The Remedy' in 2012. Beneath the surface lay a major career set back. Not very many would have the strength of character to overcome a rejection like that.

Four years later her third album 'Black' is the result of a successful crowd-funding venture. Karima is supported by an excellent band, the members of which apparently coalesced out of nowhere in the matter of a very few days by dint of good fortune and quick thinking on the part of Karima to get them on-board. It is a record just how the tight unit wanted it to sound, working free from outside interference.

Karima Francis - Black:

• Black
• City Walls
• H.W.T.M.C.
• Believe In Love
• Regrets
• It's Alright Now
• Shout
• Remember Me
• Waves
• Perfect Dream
• Blue Moon

I can find no official release date as yet. 140dB Records is managing this release. What I really want to do now is see Karima and the band play live!

New Music - 2015 - Part 8 - Rae Morris - Unguarded

One summer Sunday morning, in North Yorkshire in 2012, I took this picture. There were not very many of us there to experience Rae Morris open the main stage of Deer Shed Festival 2012 as the ungodly hour of midday approached.

 It was clearly something special. I rarely make predictions like this. This could be one of the major label releases of 2015. 

Her début album 'Unguarded' is released tomorrow on Atlantic Records.

New Music 2014 - Part 28 - Deena - Rock River

For the most part I find new music for myself, one way or another, but this is one of the rare exceptions.
In keeping with my policy of not reviewing that which I don't care for, you never hear about many of them. I imagine that, had she not sent me a message, I might never have got to hear of Deena and her latest album 'Rock River', or not for some time at the very least. That would have been a shame, and for several different reasons.

The first reason is that I really like it. The second is, to me at least, more interesting. That is to do with what I would have thought, had I heard it for the very first time without any background or context whatsoever.
The answer to that is very simple: New York.

I can't pinpoint exactly what the combination of circumstances is but the album has this written through it in the manner of a stick of rock (a seaside candy, probably peculiar to Britain). Although  usually sold in length, typically 6 - 8 inches it can easily be made into slices...

Blackpool, a seaside resort in Lancashire became famous as an affordable vacation destination for the previously home-bound factory workers in the north west of England from the arrival of the railway in the mid-nineteenth century until cheap flights to Spain became available in the 1970s and then Florida some years later, is perhaps its true home. 

I used to listen to more music like this, or perhaps now I simply listen to more other music too, and it reminded me that I like it. I suspect however that this, to invoke another British food analogy, is something of a Marmite thing - that is to say adore or despise. I like Marmite too.
It is perhaps a consequence of a combination of the way it has with words, literate and self-referencing or reflective. The first feelings I had while listening were of Latitude Festival circa 2007 - 9. Then I tried to work out why. This, although done fitfully I have to admit, has taken a couple of weeks. Here are two LP points of reference that I have come up with and I did see both these artists live at Latitude in that period.

• Jaymay  ---  Autumn Fallin' (2008)
• Chairlift  ---   Does You Inspire You (2008)

It would be wrong of me not to mention Regina Spektor here and I her saw her live in this period too. You will suspect that I regard Deena Shoshkes as being in good company and if that means a few people buy some music that they might not otherwise have considered than that is all I can wish for.

I want to listen to her earlier albums now, particularly this one, and so can you:

New music I want in 2009 - Part 4

Every twenty years or so it happens; somewhere that has neither an obvious right nor reason to threaten the very core of music suddenly rises from its place, as generally regarded in musical terms at least, as the epitome of nowhere remarkable to the very top of the pile. No city has bettered Seattle in that respect - and happily it doesn't change everything. They were still playing The Eagles and Dire Straits incessantly on local radio in Seattle when I was there in 1999 - fully a decade after it became the fuzzy-felt board of 'grunge'; a creation that borrowed from aspects of heavy rock, metal and glam-rock all used in varying proportions. At times, although this might seem a curious observation now, it also featured whimsy and (sometimes cunningly satirical) humour in the lyrics.
The zenith of grunge lasted less than five years; some of the pieces stuck and others just fell off but its legacy, and it is almost worldwide, remains very apparent two decades later. Sub Pop, lest it be forgotten or should the young at heart now feel less so, is still going strong and celebrated its twentieth birthday in 2008 with a party headlined by Pearl Jam.
Little wonder therefore that it is hard to predict what might happen next. I wonder if the average American music consumer has even the faintest idea that Blackpool is on the NW coast of England? I don't know if they have pub quizzes in the US but, if they do, it might be useful to know and, like the famous Blackpool trams, you can wait for ages and then two strange things will arrive almost at once! Blackpool already has, in the artist 'Little Boots', one of the most hyped new UK acts of 2009 but it also has another very likely to become well known. The interesting thing is that they sound nothing like each other or for that matter bear any resemblance to the Seattle revolution of twenty years ago. At least that is not apparently so!
'Little Boots' is all electronic, italo-disco and that sort of thing, and is looking like one of the 'flavours of 2009'. She is finishing her début album in Los Angeles but the trans-Atlantic love doesn't end there - as you will probably already know if you've tried to find a copy of her US-only 12" Arecibo EP. I have no problem with that at all but, although also from Blackpool, Karima Francis isn't part of that scene: she's a singer-songwriter who mainly composes songs on acoustic guitar. There are many who say that there are more than enough of those already. They may yet be wrong.

The Author - Karima Francis

Blackpool aside the one thing that they have in common, and before either has released a studio album, is that both can reliably reduce a live audience - including press reviewers - to putty whilst leaving them feeling awestruck rather than manipulated. In 2009, as never before, that is a pretty trick.

Another artist making waves, and from just across the sea in Dublin, is Laura Izibor... Irish soul would be an alternative listening choice on 17 March!