End of The Road 2015 - The Big Top

After a rather soggy, but quite wonderful, Green Man 2015 I am happy to report that apart from a short shower at an unimportant time on Saturday morning End Of The Road 2015 was blessed with dry and, as time went on, increasingly sunny weather.
By Saturday afternoon it was pretty much sunny so, having visited it hardly at all in 2014, I decided to spend much of the afternoon inside the tented Big Top stage! The first act that I saw there was actually one that had impressed me a fortnight earlier at Green Man - The Drink. This was just the start of what turned out to be a run of female-led acts on this stage.

Dearbhla Minogue of The Drink, Big Top Stage, End Of The Road Festival, early Saturday afternoon.

This next is Beth Jeans Houghton and an artist I have seen live a number of times before, not least several times at EOTR. This was the first time I have seen her with her new band project Du Blonde.

I could write a full post about this. Had it been the the culmination of an afternoon in the Big Top I would not have been disappointed. It turned out to be the end of the start. The backing bands for both the above are all male.

When I first heard the song 'Jane' last year it made me take note of its perpetrators - female duo Girlpool from Los Angeles. I can honestly say that at that time what it might sound like live never even crossed my mind. In fact I still don't know for, following the prudent idea of not playing live the song(s) that first garnered attention, they didn't play it.

Without the slightest pretence Harmony Tividad (bass and vocals) and Cleo Tucker (guitar and vocals) set about dismantling a whole raft of preconceptions about modern music in the space of forty minutes. I'm not at all convinced that I have seen a more affecting live set this year.

New Music 2015 - Part 19 - Girlpool - Before The World Was Big

Just when you thought all-female garage rock couldn't get any better and with Girlpool confirmed as booked for End Of The Road Festival 2015 it is now a real challenge; can Cleo Tucker (guitar and vocals) and Harmony Tividad (bass and vocals) better the set that Deap Vally produced on the Thursday evening in 2013 at EOTR, only to then better it themselves with an astonishing one at Truck Festival 2014 when playing on the main stage?
Here is the reason that I mention this. The stakes are suddenly raised for the début Girlpool LP has come to be known...

Girlpool - 'before the world was big' (Wichita Recordings) 1 June 2015 in the UK. (2 June in USA & Canada.)

Maybe I should have shared this, the first single lifted from the LP, yesterday.

New Music 2014 - Part 30 - Girlpool

I thought it time that some new music appeared here after a welter of festival related posts. This turned out to be too good to waste any time in sharing. It is the short but not entirely sweet 'Jane' by Los Angeles based duo Girlpool, comprising Cleo Tucker (guitar), Harmony Tividad (bass) and both of them on vocals. Girlpool is now signed to UK label Wichita.

The EP Girlpool is released in November.