New Music 2016 - Part 24 - Julianna Barwick - Will

I seem to have posted a large run of 'New Music' posts just recently. Here is yet another and a sneak preview. I've been listening to this on repeat this evening simply because I can and I wish to do so.

Will is released by Dead Oceans in North America and Europe on 6 May 2016.

It follows her 2013 LP Nepenthe, which I mentioned briefly, and is her third full length recording. I'm minded to think that is is also the one that I might come to like the best. I have seen her play live too, at End Of The Road Festival 2013, and that aspect certainly comes highly recommended. She is confirmed to play at Green Man Festival 2016 so that is an opportunity I intend to take. The other thing that I have been doing is listening to it some more, from start to finish and now several times. I'm not as a rule much inclined to pick a couple of stand-out tracks unless of course I feel them to be all that is of-note on offer and here that is not any concern of mine.
I suppose you might attribute this to my pre-digital roots when there were only two things available - the singles or the album purchased in its entirety.

Here is the track listing:

Julianna Barwick - Will:

• St. Apolonia
• Nebula
• Beached
• Same
• Wist
• Big Hollow
• Heading Home
• Someway
• See, Know

Beautiful, dreamy and led by keyboards, it's going to take a small and intimate stage setting to show this at its best live - unless of course she has a grand 'Plan B' to reveal, which is quite possible at least in principle.
At End of The Road 2013 she played the Tipi stage with just understated electric guitar, courtesy of Scott Powell, as accompaniment beyond her own keyboards.

Here she is back then at EOTR 2013. The Walled Garden stage at Green Man 2016 would work perfectly.

Whilst I have nothing live to offer from the new album here is an extended live set recorded at KEXP in Seattle a couple of months later:

Julianna Barwick live at KEXP, Seattle - November 22, 2013.

EOTR 2013 - more from the Garden Stage - Part 2

As the title might suggest this continues directly on from my previous post. One thing I should add is that, for all the wonderful things that go on at the other stages, the Garden Stage is probably my favourite and certainly so for photography.
Here, early on Saturday afternoon, is someone probably better known as a producer of other people's records - including Laura Marling's last three albums - 'I Speak Because I Can' (2010), 'A Creature I Don't Know' (2011) and 'Once I Was An Eagle' (2013) but the only time I had previously seen him play live was (twice) at Latitude 2010 as a guitarist in Sir Tom Jones' live band when the latter was performing the album 'Praise and Blame', which Ethan Johns also produced. In fact he produced much of The Staves début album 'Dead and Born and Grown' too (see previous post).

EOTR likes tying things in knots, which only adds to the fun!

Whilst clearly busy with all of that Ethan Johns is also a sometime songwriter, singer and (mostly) guitar player and his set on the Garden Stage was all about that and his recent album 'If Not Now Then When'. On the other hand some of the prickly critics of such reinvention failed to curl up in a ball and proved to be rather soft-centered; PopMatters was just one such and they did not stand alone.
This however did not give us real insight into Ethan Johns' own music, although logic surely suggested roughly where it might lie. It is true that this assumption was not confounded but - and this is a very important but - neither was it derivative or a pastiche of any of the aforementioned artists. This is important in the evolving relationship between UK and US music and I shall return to it later - probably towards the end of this year.

The next is another band I had not seen before, and they do hail from the US, but the story of how the band came to be is as remarkable as it is improbable.

The Barr Brothers.

    

In one way perhaps the biggest winner on this stage was Fossil Collective. The band unexpectedly opened proceedings at noon on Saturday because Jessica Pratt (not to be confused with the Australian classical soprano singer with the same name) was unable to play songs from her self-titled début LP. Fossil Collective also played their booked set on the Tipi Stage late the same evening of course. I saw all of both sets making them one of the few acts I have ever seen perform full live sets twice in the same calendar day. Many, but far from all, songs came from the album 'Tell Where I Lie' (2013). You could likely write reams on the influences this band may have but then so could I and you might not want that. The point is, if it sounds good, does it actually matter?

It doesn't. Here is Fossil Collective, Garden Stage, End of The Road 2013.

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...

EOTR 2013 - acts to see live for the first time.

As ever EOTR for me was a mixture of acts and artists that were known to me and that I wished to see live for the first time, ones that I wanted to see again (and again in one of two cases) and the usual sprinkling of ones about which I was previously unaware. This last category is one on which I rate festivals very highly and EOTR has over the years been exemplary in this regard.

Taking the first category first as the subject of this post I shall start with London-based Daughter. On the basis of their 2013 début album 'If You Leave' and a couple of preceding EPs I had them in my sight and watching footage of their live performances at Glastonbury earlier in the summer only made the London three-piece an absolute must-see. They played the gloriously situated Garden Stage on Saturday evening and certainly didn't disappoint.

Daughter, Garden Stage, EOTR 2013, 31 August.

I was very fortunate to get as close to the front of this set to get such pictures as this. I had to hotfoot it from the main Woods Stage as soon as another of my must-see acts has finished their set. This is one of the great advantage of the compact but not cramped EOTR festival site.

This was one act where I struggled to take photos that captured the moment.

Emily Kokal of Los Angeles four-piece Warpaint on the Woods Stage.

The band performed a number of new songs strongly hinting that a follow up to 2010 LP The Fool and 2008 EP Exquisite Corpse is soon to be unleashed on a waiting world.

Surprise opener on the Big Top Stage on Friday, in place of the unavailable Four Mile House, was Widowspeak from Brooklyn. I'm really not sure how I became aware of them but I bought their 2011 début album very soon after it has appeared - in fact I think I had to import the vinyl version from the US so I had obviously convinced myself of its worth and, as it happens, I was right. Now a duo rather than a four-piece they have recently released their second album Almanac, which I do not have yet. On hearing them live that will very soon be remedied!

Robert Earl Thomas and Molly Hamilton, Big Top Stage, 30 September.

How I might choose to classify their music is open to debate, but then they don't seem to consider pigeon-holing it themselves a priority either. Indie guitar certainly but some of the flowing guitar parts and melodies are beguiling in the extreme and sound as if they come from an earlier time.

End of The Road Festival 2013

I'm back from the forgoing festival and anyone that has paid more than passing attention to this little site will likely have noticed that it is in fact anything but the end of a musical year for me. It is indeed the start of a new one and for more than one reason.
For a start I have already bought my ticket for End of The Road 2014, and that harks back to the issue of trust that I mentioned in my last post, but also because it has now become so important to the writing of this blog that I associate one with the other. I simply can't list the music that I have heard, the people I have met because of it, and all because on a whim back in early September 2006 I decided to comment on someone else's blog post (about Bat For Lashes' début album Fur and Gold) and to do that (at the time) I had to create a blog account of my own. I didn't then imagine for a moment that today I would be writing a piece about the seventh anniversary of that wilful post. It is one of the happier accidents of fâte.
This year I made a particular effort to arrive in time to see all the "warm-up programme" on Thursday evening. King Charles in that rôle last year made me determined to do this this time and it was well worthwhile - five acts, with a predominance of electric guitar taking to the Tipi Stage from 17:30.
I have mentioned before my policy of watching opening acts on any stage as well as those those on 'lesser-stages' generally as a matter of priority. It may not be Simon Cowell's idea of entertainment but, on the other hand, it does have its own merit I believe.
I don't always do this but I think in this case it makes sense. I will list the five acts from Thursday evening and then add some pictures and comments about each:

• Evans the Death
• Annie Eve
• Catfish and the Bottlemen
• Tigercats
• Deap Vally

Evans the Death had two problems here and neither were of their own making. The first is the real and well documented one of being the opening act at a festival. The other is that I always take a few hours to get into the mood to take half-decent pictures. Only a fraction as gloomy as the band name might suggest they were an admirable choice. They are currently working on finishing their second album, they are signed to independent label FortunaPOP!, and I rather lean to the idea of buying their self-titled first.

Next up was Annie Eve, already mentioned, but that to me seems no reason not to do it again not least for the reason of her recent eponymous EP in a year that at least for me has been remarkable for their number and quality.

One thing you can say about East London's Tigercats is that they favour playing, if not all bare-footed, at least shoeless. I have no photographic evidence of their drummer in this regard.

I know that some will find their kind of indie-pop irksome in the extreme. I am not one of them and should I be feeling slightly down I might well add their 2012 album Isle of Dogs to my playlist, along with those by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and others including Los Campesinos.
Catfish and the Bottlemen are much in favour over at Amazing Radio at the moment. This is probably how I first became aware of them and it was gratifying to see them live. I know my fellow blogger Geoff Spence enjoyed this band and is looking forward to their forthcoming show at the Westgarth Social Club in Middlesborough. This is, it seems to me, exactly the kind of venue that up and down the country we need to be supporting.

The same cannot be said of the next band, the evening's head-line act and it is rare in my experience for one to warn its potential audience of factors concerning loudness. Welcome to the garage rock world of Californian duo Deap Vally. Often, seemingly for want of any other touchstone, likened to The White Stripes I rather favour the opinion that they exist in their own space and time.

I any case I would find the idea of Jack White dressed in the attire of Lindsey Troy more than a little disturbing. They are actually signed to Universal - and you may be aware of my thoughts about major labels but that is a story for another time. Sistrionix, as well as having a rather inspired title, is actually a good LP but live they are quite something else.

New Music - Part 25 - Nepenthe - Julianna Barwick

Well, you can say what you want but UK festivals will always bring surprises! Here is another artist who is to play at End of the Road Festival and, at the moment of writing and in my local time, Julianna Barwick's LP 'Nepenthe' was released in the UK today and will be released in the US tomorrow!
Born in Louisiana, raised in Missouri and now resident in Brooklyn, the album was in large part recorded in Iceland with Alex Somers - Sigur Rós and others - on production duties.
This, I think, says a great deal about the new order in music marketing - and it certainly is not a major label release. Independent US label Dead Oceans is responsible for this and good for them.

The album is available on vinyl of course. If you can wait then you can stream it here.

  

She is performing at End of The Road too, on the Tipi Stage on Friday evening. This is something that I'm not planning to miss.

OMG --- End Of The Road 2013

The scale of this challenge, both on decision making when it comes to clashes and also stamina, is only just dawning on me.
The problem is not "Who do I want to see?" but neither is it "Who do I care not to see?". The additional problem is all the acts /artists that I simply don't know if I want to see or not. The default position, which is listening to all of them, is simply not an option.
It is true that I have seen both Sigur Rós and Belle and Sebastian live before but that is not to say that I don't want to see them again.
Oh dear!