New Music 2014 - Part 21 - The Secret Sisters - Put Your Needle Down

After a spell in which the 'New Music' series has predominantly been about UK based artists the pattern, like the weather does, seems to have wandered west to feature North American ones once again. As usual this is often dominated by ones that I have seen live, are going to see live or simply wish to see live. This one falls in to the first of those categories.

'Put Your Needle Down' is The Secret Sisters recently released second LP. 
    

They opened the Garden Stage at End of The Road Festival 2011 around noon and, true to festival form I got off to a very poor start with photography. I only took two and this is the better of them!

These days I am aware of this problem and, while I still don't really know why it happens, I am consciously able to compensate for it to some degree. One thing is evident here: that had I had wished to be up against the barrier, towards the left of this picture and a spot that would have been ideal, then there was absolutely nothing to stop me.
WTF was I thinking?
  
One answer, given that I only had the faintest idea about what to expect, is just how astonishingly good it was. The self-titled début LP had then only recently been released and I had not heard it. Unlike some such sibling-named acts Laura and Lydia Rogers really are sisters and, since these things matter more than they seem to in some forms of music, their home town is Muscle Shoals, Ala.
The title of this LP may be rhetorical; I don't know and I have no knowledge as yet of this LP released on vinyl. That is no matter but I can tell you is that it was considerably cheaper (delivery to the UK included) to buy it brand new and sealed (it arrived thus) on CD from the USA than to download it on amazon.co.uk.
That says something.  It took a few days longer; I'm quite down with that. I'll buy LPs direct from the artist if I can.
It certainly won't please everyone (and that I regard as a good thing) but for me the overarching thing about 'Put Your Needle Down' is that it is perfectly poised between being reverential of tradition and a contradictory need to seem to out-grow the same. Some of the new songs could have been written in the late 1950s or early 1960s except to say that they weren't.
There is a cover of a much more recent song in PJ Harvey's 'The Pocket Knife' and then, from the early 1980s, something more than a cover - Bob Dylan never completed 'Dirty Lie' and so, about twenty years down the line he offered Secret Sisters the demo recordings and a plea to pull it together, which they duly did.

There is a whole lot of good stuff coming out at the moment, and even the 'major labels' have stepped up to the plate, at least to some extent. It is hopeful, but tempting, to say that 'Times They Are A Changin...'. 

EOTR 2013 - New Music 2013 - Part 27 - The Graphite Set

I was going to continue my thoughts on EOTR with some of the various artists that I really wanted to see live again and I very soon shall do that, but then I decided to do this instead. The Graphite Set falls neatly between acts that I have seen before and ones that I haven't and also becomes one of the few to feature in my 'New Music' series of posts twice in the same year.
How does that come to happen? These Streets EP featured when it was released late spring. It is true that I have seen The Graphite Set's Lily Buchanan live before, and also at End of The Road in 2011, but in her previous incarnation as Lily and The Hackabouts. I wrote about that too but not, for some reason now forgotten, until early last year.

I'm not going to make any bones about this, and we chatted at the weekend about it. That was good but The Graphite Set is in a different league. These Streets probably won them many new fans and this performance on the Big Top Stage should have won them many more, not just those who were there but subsequently by word-of-mouth too, whether that be face-to-face or by social media and, in the increasingly DIY new music industry, it is one of the most powerful tools that there is and although an old cliché:
Talk is cheap when the story is good.

The band are awesome and the new material too. The next single, Grayson Perry is out very soon.

I have it on very good authority that an album is to follow in the New Year and the word is that the new material might well be a little more poppy and with lyrics that tell real stories...

New Music 2012 - Part 16

This first is something that I mentioned as up-coming a while back. It is 'Europe', the second album by Anglo-Australians Allo Darlin'.

It is released on Slumberland Records on May 7, 2012 - LP, CD & d/l

I saw Allo Darlin' live at EOTR 2011 and it was a wonderful set; that they could hold a candle to any other act there was certainly no mean feat. This album is a demonstration of that; there is no question about it in my mind.

Here is an image from that performance in the 'Big Top' at End Of The Road Festival 2011.

The second act is one I have been meaning to seek out for some while but only a chance reminder, Amazing Radio playing one of their songs, prompted me to do so at last. That band is a five-piece from Leeds, Ellen and The Escapades, which has only recently released its début LP 'All The Crooked Scenes' on Branch Out Records.

It is an album of beautifully poised contemporary summer folk. The album is available on LP, CD and d/l and Ellen & The Escapades is high on my list of bands to see live this summer.

New Music 2012 - Part 9 - The Graphite Set

It is something of a return to Thoughts on Festivals 2011 but for a good reason I believe. This band, a rarity in featuring a trumpet player as a key member, is here seen playing an opening set on the Tipi Stage at End Of The Road 2011 (EOTR 2011).

They were, back then, known as 'Lily and The Hackabouts' and they were very good.  A recent name change has seen them become 'The Graphite Set'. The songs are dependably good - the most recent ones particularly so.  Check out Genova, Chelsea Boots and (most recently revealed) Golden Ship.
Influences? Indie and arty, yes, but never to excess. I could write a list, but not one that would be a criticism of what they do, therefore I won't waste my time doing it. 
And they are very good live too, they gig regularly in North London in particular, but deserve a wider audience.
The Graphite Set is a band to watch in 2012 - and a priority to go-see live.

New Music 2012 - Part 4 - Europe, Cyrk and things

Two more sophopmore albums, as it happens I said it might be like this, both of which are by acts/artists I have also already seen live and this makes me more confident about saying that they are unlikely to disappoint.
   
The first is London-based Allo Darlin', although singer and ukelele player Elizabeth Morris is Australian. Here they are (she has a band too) playing the 'Big Top Tent' at EOTR 2011 and I don't think I've used any pictures from this set before.

At the start of the gig there were a couple of hundred in the audience, by mid-way it was something else and prompted the comment that, "If we look nervous it's because we are. We've never played to an audience this size." It didn't show but before the end and the result of a much-passed bit of paper she read out a request from Joe to his girlfriend, both somewhere mid-way back in the crowd as it now was, and she said "yes".
The new album, 'Europe' will be out soon, released by Slumberland Recordings and distributed by FORTUNA pop in, erm, Europe.  You could call the music twee-core, but only at your peril. Who cares what it is "labelled" anyway?
  
In some ways you could say much the same sorts of things about this artist too. One who as it happens performed on the Garden Stage at EOTR 2010 in support of her début album 'Me Oh My', so here she is doing exactly that.

The new album, released on January 17 in the US by The Control Group, is Cyrk.
  

Note added January 10, 2012:

If you want to hear the above-mentioned 'Cyrk' on free, legal stream try this:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/av/2012/01/video-premiere-cate-le-bon---fold-the-cloth-2.html

EOTR 2011 - Friday from America

Of course there was a wealth of acts from the US appearing over all three days of End Of The Road 2011 but Friday threw up a particularly interesting selection of ones that I really wanted to see performing live representing both coasts and much that comes between. I really enjoyed all of these sets. Here are two of them:

Tipi Stage, early Saturday afternoon - Sarabeth Tucek.

Her second album 'Get Well Soon' was released earlier this summer. I have had her self-titled début since it appeared in 2007 but I have no idea quite how I came to hear of this in the first place. Suffice it to say that it has been listened to consistently ever since. Neither album is really to be described as feel-good music at all, because the tone is too introspective and self-analytical for that. It is however very comforting and, while this might seen an odd thing to say when commenting on a festival performance, perhaps best listened to alone even if alone as part of a crowd and being in a crowd can be a particularly alienating kind of loneliness.
  

The contrast with the next act could hardly have been more pronounced. In a couple of minutes I walked from the indoor intimacy of the Tipi stage to the glorious afternoon sunshine of the Wood Stage and in doing so I travelled from the preoccupations of the Atlantic north-east to those of the beaches of California.

This was feel-good, beach party music. I swear I could hear the sound of surf by the end of the set.

This is Best Coast. Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno. Wood Stage, Saturday afternoon.

  

I couldn't convince the others that this was the way forward so I went along regardless. The whole point of music such as this, as I see it, is that it is frivolous and inconsequential fun. The whole set followed this approach, and it was great. In between the songs random chat involving such things as Snacks' thoughts on life - Snacks is Bethany Cosentino's cat, who appears on the 'Crazy For You' album cover and also in numerous band publicity shots, in case you were wondering!

This could all lead to a diffuse, rambling performance. It took me a few songs to work out why it was not so. One person, and only one person, was in charge of this live show and that was the drummer, Ali Koehler.

EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 1)

I have a soft spot for a great deal of music that comes out of Canada, in case you haven't already noticed, and I posted to this effect recently.
This last weekend I was spoilt rotten. Here are just two of my highlights in no particular order and more will follow on this topic.
I shall start with Timber Timbre. Their world is one of mist and shadows. They shun publicity and certainly would not be found signing CDs in the Rough Trade pop-up shop. This extends to the live show too so luckily, on a glorious sunny Saturday afternoon, they were ensconced in the perpetual twilight of the Big Top Stage.

It was easy for the lighting guys but the unchanging red glow well suited the music too.

I need the album 'Creep On Creeping On'.

Immediately following them on the same stage was a band whose recent album 'Feel It Break' I have been listening to quite often in the last month or two. The prospect of seeing them live therefore excited me but, from experience, such expectation can prove to be a double-edged sword. This time it was not. The band is Austra, its front-woman Katie Stelmanis.
  

Rather electro, rather noir in a slightly Gothic but not-at-all-depressing kind of way and utterly spellbinding. If these had been the only memorable performances by Canadian artists that I saw over the weekend I'd have been just fine about it.
It wasn't quite like that.

End Of The Road 2011

OK. I'm back home, have caught up on some of my accumulated sleep deficit, and so it is time to write something.  Just how good was EOTR 2011?
Well, for once, words fail me. Actions speak louder and so I have just bought my ticket for End Of The Road 2012. See you there? This year it was bigger than before, that is certainly true.  I and most of the people that I spoke to that had also attended in previous years concurred that it was actually even better than before.

In the gardens, just before the start of play on Friday.

A few minutes later...  Secret Sisters on the Garden Stage. What's not to like?

   

Until this year the Garden Stage was the main one, but the new format required a larger one too and that is the Wood Stage.

Much more to come over the next couple of weeks as I'm intending to link this in with more comments about and pictures from the other festivals that I have been to this summer. I also want to overhaul and refresh the contents of the side bar but it all takes time.

New Music 2011 → Canada → EOTR 2011

"My brain is speeding faster than my mouth can move."

  

Strange but, to purloin a lyric from an EOTR artist in 2010 (not a Canadian one as it happens), it currently applies to my writing too. It isn't something that, for better or for worse, happens all the time.   

I'm not sure where to start and have no idea where it might end but here goes anyway. In one sense it is a little like 'The Mad Hatter's Tea Party' but, unlike a rather different Tea Party, shockingly liberal-minded.

OK, that's just plain silly so let us start with the act that takes its name from the study of tea leaves, or if you prefer it coffee grounds, as a means to divine the future. From Canada, based in Toronto but raised in Halifax and formerly known as Ghost Bees (2008-10), it is still twin sisters Romy and Sari Lightman. In 2010, reflecting the changed nature of their music to include diverse new influences, they changed their moniker to Tasseomancy (word definition).

  

They release their début album under this name, Ulalume, on Toronto-based independent label  Out Of This Spark on August 30, 2011 in Canada. That it is also the title of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, who was never the most conventional and cheerful of souls, should serve as due warning.  We might well be looking at a 2011 take on 'New Albums For Autumn' here - and quite possibly a premature trip into Halloween play-list territory too.
  

On the face of it this might seem to have little to do with End of The Road 2011 but that may not be the case.  Two bands, both of which I want to see live for the first time, are booked to appear at EOTR 2011. The first of them is Austra, which is touring the electronic-biased album 'Feel It Break'.

  

Creep On Creepin' On - Timber Timbre (2011)

      

The Lightmans are an integral part of Austra's touring line up and Timber Timbre, that produced and also guested on Ulalume, is also performing. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

2011 Festivals and stuff - Part 1

Important, but rather dull, things first:  I've just collected the most vital things together and checked that all parts are present and correct and thus I am reminded so much of my days supervising Duke of Edinburgh Award Expeditions - there is no better way to look a fool than to forget, or lose, those things about which you have lectured everyone else.
Tent, sleeping-bag, sleeping-mat and (the thing that I forget more often than anything else when camping) a pillow. The last item might seem relatively unimportant, because a pile of clothes can take its place; well yes it can, but a cheap synthetic pillow that doesn't get damp is much better and when shut-eye is at a premium this matters. I know because I forgot mine in 2007. It is indeed a somewhat mundane task but the anticipation it engenders makes it all worthwhile!
  
Yesterday someone asked if I have a list of timings for music artists at Latitude 2011.  I'm afraid that I do not, at least currently, have such information because I'd like it too, so that I could plan my days but such is life. [If you do have some idea, even if it is only fragmentary, then please add a comment.]
On the other hand that is something to do on Thursday afternoon, official festival programme in hand, once the tent is pitched and life in the orthogonal dimension has begun!
That has just made me remember other things to take - a pencil and paper (soft pencils still work on damp paper) to make notes, either about the timings or on the acts that one sees. Add to that insect repellent - I have run out so now added to shopping list - and to check the basic first aid kit.
Planning is good but inflexibility stifles discovery. Having a preconceived plan, some structure at least, is very worthwhile even if exigencies, either personal preference or unavoidable such as changes of artist or performance times, result in last minute changes. I have never actually done exactly what I planned to do and I've never really regretted it either.  In a strange way the regrets of what I might have seen or done but, for whatever reason, couldn't just make me want to go to another festival.


Here is an artist that was certainly not on my 'to-see' list at Latitude 2010 because I hadn't even heard of her a year ago.  Impressive on the Lake Stage, although I only caught some of her set, was Alice Gold. She was due to play EOTR 2010 some weeks later, and was therefore on my want-to-hear list, but had to cancel at shortly before the event and this is yet another reason for changes of plan. The timing is now however good - her début album Seven Rainbows is released in the UK on Monday, 4 July and it is on my list of New Music 2011 that I want.

As far as I know she is not appearing at any of the festivals to which I am going this summer. The counterpoise is that there are artists, about whom I currently know nothing at all, that are. That actually matters more.

If you are going to Truck Festival 2011 then there is a very useful site, that acts as planner and clash-alert, that I found on Wednesday. More on that, and some first thoughts on the artists that I particularly wish to see there, very soon.

Looking forward to festivals...

What with this last weekend being BBC Radio 1's outdoor 'Big Weekend' and Brighton's multi-venue indoor 'Great Escape', a fortnight after 'Camden Crawl 2011', I have been busy remotely listening to, watching and reading about the very best in new and established live music as it marks the start of the 2011 festival season.  I also watched the Eurovision 2011 Grand Final in its entirety. It is always important to maintain a sense of proportion and perspective.
This has of course made me think more about all the acts that I will have a chance to see and hear live at festivals this summer.  As my last post concerned new music from Canada where better to start than with more music from Canada?

Just added to the line up at EOTR 2011 is a Canadian act that I first mentioned back in 2010 - Slow Down, Molasses. Walk Into The Sea is the second album.

Little did I suspect that the band would be added to the confirmed artists for EOTR 2011. Indeed so unlikely did it seem that it never even occurred to me to include it on my list.
  
Be careful what you wish for.  Be amazed by what you don't.

"I Will Return I Promise" - Beth Jeans Houghton

It has been a couple of years since she first popped up on the scene with the EP 'Hot Toast - Volume 1'. I first heard (of) her, and then immediately bought the EP at the Rough Trade pop-up store, at End Of The Road 2009.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the toast is getting stale, and there certainly hasn't been a second round, but now things are moving fast. Here she is, in the then rather basic 'Local' tent, at EOTR 2009.

It is very easy to forget that this is actually not much more than eighteen months ago.

This may well have actually been her first festival performance but, due to The Horrors having to cancel due to illness, she did a slot on the very much larger Big Top stage later in the weekend, which I did not see, and again to much acclaim by all accounts. There is something very EOTR about all this (as Caitlin Rose proved in 2010)...

The début album has taken a while longer than anticipated, though it is now (May 2011) complete. Nevertheless she appeared again in the meantime with her band The Hooves of Destiny on the Lake Stage at Latitude 2010 on Sunday afternoon.

Both these photos do not however include an absolutely vital part of the live 'Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny' experience, so it is high time to put that right.

Rory Gibson on bass.
  

She is good on her promise too: on Monday it was confirmed that Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny are to appear at EOTR 2011 with, no doubt, the album to showcase.

Now signed to Mute Records the track Dodecahedron is available as a free, legal download in the meantime.

You know you want to because...

...you know you need to be there.

For full details:

www.endoftheroadfestival.com

Why music really matters (Part 3) - just because it does.

I've seen and heard a great deal of new music in 2010 and for that I am extremely thankful.  When it comes to taking stock, for the season of those end-of-year lists is fast approaching, it makes life challenging but also great fun.
What I find hardest to understand let alone to explain to others is why I like the music I do (and not that I don't) and why it changes.  On a day-by-day-basis I'm fine with it - just fits the mood or some other largely random trigger, such as hearing something played on the radio that brings back a particular time or memory.
It is the longer term trends, particularly the way I feel about music and the associated changes that I'm less certain about.  That is a shame because, in a deeper sense, I think this is the more fascinating aspect for it also begs the implicit question: "What is it about music, taken in all its forms, that makes it have such universal importance to human-kind?"  If it were simply an ephemeral pleasure I doubt it could invoke such passion and sometimes vehement disagreement.
The earlier posts are here:
Why Music Really Matters (Part 2)
Why Music Really Matters


I seem to have gone all philosophical on you, dear readers, but I am not going to apologise.  It also shows just how little, even now, we understand the detailed processes of the human brain that underlie culture in the broadest sense.
If this just sends you running for a copy of 'Steps - Gold' then it only serves to my illustrate my point but, equally, I must never judge you on your choices...


To lighten proceedings I'll add a few more pictures and thoughts from the last couple of years.  They will, of couse, be subject to my own bias in such matters...


This first artist, who I saw at EOTR 2010 (by the way the remainder of the tickets for EOTR 2011 are now on sale) has already been mentioned here.

Just testing: Jessica Lea Mayfield had to put her guitar back in tune and, as she was playing solo, bantered with the audience to fill the void in the performance.
I have found myself listening to the album 'With Blasphemy So Heartfelt' more and more in the last couple of months.  Her second album, slated for release in spring 2011, will be interesting indeed and she played a couple of tracks from it in this set.


One of the first artists I saw at Latitude 2007, on the Lake Stage on the Friday, was Cate Le Bon (no relation to Duran Duran's Simon, by the way).  It was her first festival performance and, to all intents and purposes, my first as a member of the crowd.  I have pictures that I took then and the crowd was numbered in dozens.  We crossed paths again at EOTR 2010 and it made me realise that I should have included (the much delayed) album 'Me Oh My' in my 2009 ' best-of' list.

Cate Le Bon played the (main) Garden Stage at EOTR 2010 on Friday afternoon.
Her first attempt at an album, 'Pet Deaths' was abandoned. In the meantime she released a 7" single, 'Can't Drag Me Down' and Welsh language 10" EP ' Edrych Yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg'.

No complaints from the crowd of, I estimate, well the right side of a thousand.

If we can't work out the science it does not detract from the experience. Music matters because it does and why should we feel the need to justify that?

Nine hours and gone...

This is what happened when EOTR 2011 'early bird' tickets went on sale this morning. There are some more, at 2010 prices, on offer now but limited again, but does this tell you something about how good EOTR 2010 actually was.  I have a 2011 ticket but I'm still just coming to terms with EOTR 2010 and the acts that I saw. This is just one little piece of the jigsaw.

Saturday: Caitlin Rose live on the Local stage @ EOTR 2010.

On Sunday, co-opted to the Big Top to replace the unavailable Steve Mason, she finished with two songs accompanied only by herself.  The first was her own song 'Shotgun Wedding', from the Dead Flowers EP, and the second was a headlong cover of 'Tomorrow is a Long Time'.  I've mentioned the dangers of cover versions before; played and heard live this Dylan song was a quite remarkable example of how it can be done.


Note added March 8, 2011 (and later):
Caitlin Rose is now confirmed to appear at EOTR 2011, Truck Festival 2011 and Latitude 2011.