Horse and I - a cover version

This has subverted what I was planning to write about this evening, but no matter. Two of my abiding themes are new artists and cover versions and this covers both bases admirably.
The song, Bat For Lashes' 'Horse and I', is from the 2006 album 'Fur and Gold'. It is only because of that album this this blog exists at all. This is an a capella version by London Contemporary Voices Choir and was only recently recorded live at St. John-at-Hackney church, East London.

New Music 2012 - Part 22 - The Haunted Man

Before starting on the music that I saw and heard live at Deer Shed Festival 3 this past weekend it is time to mention this; the third album from the artist whose first, Fur and Gold, was the inadvertent genesis of this particular blog!

Tracks:

1. Lilies
2. All Your Gold
3. Horses of the Sun
4. Oh Yeah
5. Laura
6. Winter Fields
7. The Haunted Man
8. Marilyn
9. A Wall
10. Rest Your Head
11. Deep Sea Diver

The Haunted Man is released early-autumn (October 15 in the UK) and it will be available on vinyl. After Two Suns, which she shared with her alter ego Pearl, I wonder what it will reveal. Natasha Khan has been an influence on more new artists since her 2006 début album than she may care to admit. That is one thing that I learned this weekend.
I'm just wondering when someone will first ask me to comment on the 'best albums of 2012'. It hasn't happened yet...
I have, for my part, a few in mind already.

To see her upcoming live set at Bestival 2012, Isle of Wight, UK see here:
http://www.youtube.com/bestivaltv

17:25 BST (UST +1)

Things you just discover --- Songs for Edna.

It is not possible to keep up with all that is going on but there will always be interesting new discoveries. This is one of them and yet another that comes from Brighton. The Edna of the album title is Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950) who was the first woman to receive the Pulizer Prize for Poetry, for The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923). Caroline Weeks has appeared in these pages before however, if only in pictures as her alter ego Ginger Lee as part of Bat For Lashes' band at Latitude 2007.

This picture was taken by Natasha 'Bat For Lashes' Khan.

The album is available on vinyl Manimal Vinyl Records (MANI 004).

I suspect that it will not be an album threatening the best-seller lists of 2009 and that is a shame. The seemingly recherché source material does not mean that this album is in any way difficult or inaccessible. It is the sublime; neither obviously poems set to music nor music to accompany poems and what you didn't know you would probably never even suspect.

Back To Bat... Music I Want in 2009 - Part 2

The only reason this blog exists at all is because of my innate curiosity. The only reason that, rather than just wondering about it, something actually happened instead is entirely due to one album. That album is 'Fur and Gold' and the artist is Bat For Lashes.

Live @ Latitude 2007

The UK release date for 'Two Suns' is 6 April 2009.

As winter turns to spring, and almost two-and-a-half-years after that début, the second Bat For Lashes album will appear, even fuller sounding and more eclectic than the first, and it is 'Two Suns'. Written and recorded, even if that were not the original plan, in New York, California and mid-Wales the result is something quite different.

Never yet one to turn down an opportunity to raid the costume box, one thing that you can rely on is that, seen live, Bat For Lashes will be nothing if not a true all-round stage performance.
This summer's festivals? Let's hope so!

Fur and Gold - how this blog started.

It all started, rather by accident, in September 2006 when I wanted to post a comment on a Blogspot post. To do that I needed to create an account of my own, which I did. The album I wanted to talk about was this one.

At that point I had no intention of starting a blog of my own but, eighteen months and one-hundred-and-fifty-something posts later, I'll probably have to admit that I was wrong about that!

I certainly wasn't wrong about this artist, who was little known at the time, however. While back in the studio to record the second Bat For Lashes LP, which is rumoured to be heavier than the first, Natasha and the others are also heading across Europe this spring as principal support for Radiohead on their stadium tour. As Thom Yorke said "Horse and I' is as perfectly haunting as songs come".

Mercury Music Prize 2007

Any regular reader of this blog will know that it first came in to being, in September 2006, as a direct result of my wishing to reply to a post on US-based blog "The Yellow Stereo" that, incidentally, is no longer to be found at the url that they were using back then; it can now be found at http://theyellowstereo.com/.

My first actual blog post was also a comment on the very same new UK band - Bat For Lashes - that is both the creation and the performance alter-ego of Natasha Khan.

Their set at Latitude 2007 (during which I took all the pictures in this post) was stymied by equipment malfunction; in particular the sustain pedal for the electric piano, which proved to be utterly unreliable. It shortened their set by two songs and Natasha's understandable disappointment, tinged with embarrassment and annoyance, was quite palpable (at least from the front row).

Bat For Lashes live at Latitude 2007. 'What's A Girl To Do?'

They handled it all so well and, by way of recompense, a few days later the début album 'Fur and Gold' was announced as one of the twelve nominees for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize!

The tracks that they were able to perform were however even better than could possibly be imagined. Even without on-stage malfunctions the album Fur and Gold is not, on the face of it, so very obviously transferable to live performance.

L - R: Abi Fry, Ginger Lee, Lizzy Carey and Natasha Khan. This was taken during the performance of 'Sad Eyes'.

If you haven't been lucky enough to catch Bat For Lashes live yet then I suggest you try and get hold of a copy of their latest 7" 'What's A Girl To Do?'.

The b-side is a very good live version of 'Sarah'.

Less is more?

I have been blogging here for nine months now and this is my 54th post. Time flies, as it does inexorably, but it amazes me that I've actually written that many in so short a time!
In that time I have also contributed only two customer reviews to <amazon.co.uk> but they have been amongst the most favourably regarded that I have posted in the last couple of years. Writing the blog has helped with this - but one of them was actually that which made me take the leap into the blog community in the first place!