New Music 2015 - Part 54 - The Honeycutters - Me Oh My

I'm going to stick with the American theme - it is 4th July after all - and The Honeycutters come from the Appalachian tradition that dates back to the earliest years.

The five-piece is fronted by songwriter, lead vocalist and sometime guitarist Amanda Platt and hails from Asheville, NC. This leads one to suspect a Blue Ridge influence and, to an extent, that is what you get here. One thing you most certainly do not get is manufactured Nashville country - it's homespun but with nice flourishes where they make a real difference. 
I suspect that they are not at all well known in the UK at the moment even though Me Oh My is their third album. On the other hand with the fast changing relationship between the US and UK in terms of folk/roots/Americana the timing is nothing if not propitious.

The Honeycutters - Me Oh My (UK release - April 2015)

It is nothing ground breaking in style but that was not its mission. If it makes your corner of the world seem a little bit better or even just more understandable, then it has succeeded it the minds of it creators.  If you like it then the 2012 LP 'When Bitter Met Sweet' might be worth a listen too.
It is also worth mentioning that, as someone who regards lyrics as important, I like this for that reason too. I can imagine them sung in a English, Scottish or Welsh accent and (without the pedal steel, possibly a fiddle might come in handy) they would seem every bit as plausible.

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

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?

Me Oh My (and the matter of Pet Deaths).

I'll steer away from reminiscences of EOTR 2009 for a moment, in favour of those started at Latitude 2007 and here is why...
One of the artists I saw then was Cate Le Bon and I mentioned that her début album 'Pet Deaths' would soon be out. That was now more than two years ago and it still isn't (although the 10" EP Edrych Yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg appeared in 2008). That album has, for various reasons, gone the same way as the pets...

It has however been replaced by this one, Me Oh My, which is out soon on Irony Bored Records and if you want a bonus DVD to come along with it then Rough Trade in London is the place to look:
http://www.roughtrade.com/site/shop_detail.lasso?search_type=sku&sku=317252