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.

New Music 2010 - Yet another wants-list.

It is time that I retuned to this again, it is in effect 'Part 12', and is there anything
more to wish for? Let me tell you that, at least in my world, there most certainly is.
I'll start with some items from the US including this one that was released in 2009 but I only discovered recently and received in physical form today.  It is surely no secret, unless that is you have been Google-transported here on a whim in which case I can only apologise and welcome you, that I am a fan of folk, acoustica and Americana amongst other genres.

It is true that buying music essentially unheard, based on a hunch and the odd review by who-knows-who, is something of a risk but I don't regard it as gambling; for a start the odds are better and the risk is commensurate with the reward.  You might win big-time, in terms of new music, but you will never lose more than you pay for the item in question.  Based on two listenings this evening this one is a winner: quietly optimistic and plaintive by turns, but not by numbers.
Many have made the Bon Iver comparisons; Bowerbirds toured with him and aside from that I can see why they are made.  'Upper Air' also made me rediscover my CD of Laura Veirs' 2004 album 'Carbon Glacier': It is less melancholy than 'For Emma, Forever Ago' and rather less icily wrought than 'Carbon Glacier', but certainly none the worse for that.  If you like 'A Fine Frenzy', and therefore wonder about pain and piano, then you might like to try this.


You might by now have realized that my definition of new is not something concocted by a major label, or for that matter any other but it seems less likely, nor will it be predictable.  Formed in 2004, and on their fifth drummer before the release of their first album later this summer but until now little known in the UK.
Los Angeles present:

Today there was also an historic victory for new music of all kinds...  the BBC trustees ruled against the proposed shut down of Digital Radio BBC6 Music.  This is no time for complacency however; we need to build on that victory for the benefit of public service broadcasting worldwide.

Mythology revisited - New Music 2010 - Part 7

It may seem that I have posted much about new music from major labels in 2010. That is true but here is something very different.

If I were to start to mention an album that tells a story - in the sense of a drama - you might reasonably think that at best I have come over all 1970's prog-rock.

Hadestown is a rather different proposition.

It is Anaïs Mitchell's fourth album and by leagues the most ambitious: it tells the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice but is set in depression-era New Orleans. It is an Americana opera in which Mitchell sings the part of Eurydice while that of Orpheus is played by Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver renown).
The record is released (on 26 April in the UK) by Righteous Babe Records and its founder, Ani DiFranco, sings the part of Persephone while veteran Iowan folk singer/songwriter Greg Brown takes that of the careworn Hades. Ben Knox Miller (The Low Anthem) also plays a part...
This is a fine 'cast' but what makes it work the way it does is the song writing and the arrangements. That is all down to Mitchell.

Those albums I have failed to mention before...

This is certainly not intended to be my last post of 2008 but, as I'm going to do that holiday thing for the next few days, it set me thinking about all the things I have missed in 2008.
Much of it does not really belong here but there is also so much music too, and that certainly does matter. I could write a list of albums that I've failed to get in 2008 just as long as the one of my favourites (et sequi) that I did and it would comprise many and various things. There are others that I simply failed to mention for one reason or another and here are two that come to mind tonight.

The Bairns - Rachel Unthank and The Winterset (2007)

For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver (2008)

On the face of it two very different albums and yet they share something of a common theme.