New Music 2013 - Part 2 - The Stand-In

February 25, 2013 (UK and Europe, Names Records) and March 5, 2013 (US & Canada, ATO Records) sees the release of the second LP from Caitlin Rose, 'The Stand-In', and the follow up to the 2009/2010 début 'Own Side Now'. I shall be disappointed to a huge extent if this new album does not feature on the lists that I will be writing this time next year... that is a measure of the weight of expectation I attach to the twelve tracks on this release.  Is that unreasonable? In the circumstances I believe not.
More to follow soon - in the meantime here is a picture of the artist in question that I took on the smallest stage at End of The Road Festival 2010.

  Caitlin Rose, The Local stage, End of The Road Festival 2010.

  

The lead song is 'No One To Call'.  Here, if I've got the code embedded correctly, is a link to a stream of it:

Here is a thought: she is playing Bristol 'Fleece' on February 26.

Learning To Ride - Caitlin Rose - Lyric

To whosoever asked about this lyric about fifteen minutes ago, here it is. Another lyric from an artist who, as of this evening, is now confirmed for Latitude 2011 as well as, about a week ago, End Of The Road 2011.  This is the first track on the 2010 album 'Own Side Now'.
   
Learning To Ride
Learning to ride, oh, learning to ride
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride
A few broken bones for a place to hide
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride.
  
When I was young used to ride the wild ones
They were lots of fun but they almost took my life
Now all I need is a simple steed
To take me where I need without putting up a fight.
  
Learning to ride, oh, learning to ride
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride
A few broken bones for a place to hide
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride.
  
Tennessee Stud took me for a blooming bud
He chewed me up, spit me out just the same, oh
He took my words, spilled my beans in to the herd
Now they all look at me with courage and disdain.
  

Learning to ride, oh, learning to ride
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride
A few broken bones for a place to hide
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride.
  

Little-boy Lost, he's a real coin toss
And could I pay the cost of even heading for a fall?
Born in June, he could learn to run too soon
He's a real summer's child, with two heads about it all.
  
Learning to ride, oh, learning to ride
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride
A few broken bones for a place to hide
I get knocked down, oh
I get knocked down, oh
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride.
  

Other posts about Caitlin Rose:
Caitlin Rose - Own Side Now - lyric
Caitlin Rose - Docket - lyric
Caitlin Rose - live at EOTR 2010

Caitlin Rose - Answer In One Of These Bottles - lyric 

I'm On My Own Side Now

The title is taken from one of the best songs on one of my favourite albums of last year by one of the most impressive new live artists I saw.  This version of the lyric is a close as I can get to that which she performed at EOTR 2010 (twice, on different days and on different stages). It is almost identical to the version on the album 'Own Side Now' though the live instrumentation was somewhat different.


Own Side
I'm goin' out on the town
Said I'm tired of chasin' you down
And it's not my right
To always push you around
I'm on my own side now


Who's gonna take me home?
Cause I don't wanna go it alone
Who's gonna want me when I'm just somewhere you've been
Who's gonna want me now?
And who's gonna take me home?


I'm gonna find me true love
Said I'm through asking you if you knew, love
How much it meant to me?
How it was meant to be?
And how it all feels empty?


Who's gonna take me home?
Cause I don't wanna go it alone
Who's gonna want me when I'm just somewhere you've been?
Who's gonna want me now?
And who's gonna take me home?


Who? [repeat x4]
And who's gonna take me home?
Cause I don't wanna go it alone
Who's gonna want me when I'm just somewhere you've been?
Who's gonna want me now?


Who's gonna take me home?
Cause I don't wanna go it alone
Who's gonna want me when I'm just somewhere you've been?
Who's gonna want me now?
And who's gonna take me home?


I'm goin' out on the  town
Said I'm tired of chasin' you down
And it's not my right
To always push you around
I'm on my own side now.


Own side now.


What I particularly like about it, and many of her other songs too, is its ambidextrous balance of emotion - it is outwardly-assertive indignation and gnawing self-doubt rolled together.  It is far from the only example in her song-writing canon - Learning To Ride, the first song on this, her début album proper, is another.  But then, listening back to the 10" vinyl mini album 'Dead Flowers' that is similar, for all its cover versions also themed likewise, and includes the splendid self-penned - and her live audience-sing-a-long anthem of the summer gone - Answer In One Of These Bottles.  I'll add the lyric for both as soon as I can.
This latter song also has an interesting parallel in a track by another of my favourite artists out of Nashville - Amy LaVere.  I believe that she has been busy writing and recording new material with her band for a forthcoming third LP...  The song to which I am referring, however, is from her 2007 (2008 in the UK in effect) album 'Anchors and Anvils' and is the track Pointless Drinking, credited to Paul Taylor.  That is verging in to New Music 2011 territory, but why not?


As a sting in the tail, I'm now well and truly cross with myself to have not managed to see 'She Keeps Bees' at EOTR 2009. I have read so many good things about the Brooklyn duo lately...  and they are readying their new album too.
  

Note added March 8, 2011:

Caitlin Rose is now confirmed to appear at EOTR 2011.

Note added February 3, 2011:
[If you are currently at The Scala, 275 Pentonville Road, London, where 'She Keeps Bees' is supporting Smoke Fairies this evening then you can buy it pre-release.


More Caitlin Rose posts:
Docket - Caitlin Rose - lyric
Live at End of The Road 2010
Answer In One Of These Bottles - Caitlin Rose - lyric
Shotgun Wedding - Caitlin Rose - lyric


  
Pointless Drinking - Amy LaVere - lyric

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. 

Docket - Caitlin Rose - lyric

Thank you for asking about this just a few hours ago. This evening I was wondering just what should be the subject of something I thought that I would never do: this is my 500th published post on this blog.


Lyrics have, and this surprised me when I first posted some, become an integral and very satisfying part of the whole and I'll try and reply when I can. The proviso is that there will likely be a few mistakes especially when, as is the case with this one, I have done them 'by ear' and in this case from the 10" vinyl version of 'Dead Flowers'.  On the other hand I relish the challenge and I think that I have got better, and certainly faster, at doing it with practice.
This, therefore, is what I think they are and while, not to excuse myself of inaccuracies, here is an observation. Artists do actually vary their lyrics: this can be deliberately such as to customize live performances but it also concerns the lyrics in a CD sleeve and those that are actually to be heard on the CD therein. Cover versions, are, of course, even more prone to such variation...


Docket
I got a discount; I got a coupon
It cost ten dollars to get your groove on
I've got a docket in my pocket
It says all I'll ever want is to be free.

I've got a sweet bike, it gets me real far

It doesn't break down, like a sweet car

I've got a docket in my pocket

And speeding down the hill is where I want to be.

I've got a docket in my pocket

It says all I've ever wanted is to be free.

I got a big house, I bought a hi-rise

Women in my block act like Stepford Wives

Well they got pre-nups, acid reflux, Botox

Friday and a headache built for three.

I've got a docket in my pocket

It says all I've ever wanted is to be free.

I got a fresh pack, I got a red BIC

The Surgeon General can suck on my d**k

I've got a docket in my pocket

It says cancer's never catching up to me.

I've got a docket in my pocket

It says all I've ever wanted is to be free.

I got a nice guy and he's got no class

l like his blue eyes, call him trailer trash

But he's got a docket in his pocket

It says all he really wants is to be free.

We've got dockets in our pockets

That say all we've ever wanted is to be free.

I got a discount got a coupon
I'm not paying anyone to get my groove on.

I've got a docket in my pocket

It says no-one controls my destiny.

I've got a docket in my pocket

It says all I'll ever wanted is to be free.

I think that if indulging in karaoke you would get away with this version of the lyric, not that you are going to catch me putting this theory to the test myself!
The 'Dead Flowers' EP, also available on d/l and CD, is well worth having and so is the recent album 'Own Side Now', which is less obviously country than the former. I'd be happy to attempt lyrics for any track from either of them.


As a complete aside:
To whosoever asked for the lyric to 'River Clyde', from the album 'Folie à Deux' by '6 Day Riot' rest assured that I haven't forgotten you. I intend to add that track and indeed the lyrics to all the other songs in the next few days.

New Music 2010 - Part 16 - Across America in music.

This is perhaps going to be a hybrid of acts I heard at Latitude 2010, those that I am looking forward to at EOTR 2010 and others that have impinged on my consciousness for one reason or other.
If I can keep it focussed then it might work out OK.  If not it will become more than one post, maybe one of them devoted to Latitude artists or to US-based artists and acts.
At the start of the year I mentioned that I thought that diversity might be one of the beneficiaries of 2010 and, while I may not have specifically made that point, I'm starting to think that was a valid one nevertheless.  That which is certain is that, as regards the things I am listening to and those I now want to listen to, it most certainly is!


The US is springing surprises on an almost weekly basis and I have already mentioned some of them and 'Dead Flowers' - Caitlin Rose is on some kind of rotation as far as my personal play list is concerned. That the title track is a cover of a Jagger/Richards song only serves to make the self-written songs all the more apposite.

It is therefore not surprising that I now have the album 'Own Side Now' of which more later. What pleases me is that the US albums that I want are scattered across genres -  I have already mentioned Avi Buffalo's eponymous début album, which gets better with every listen I think. 

What is in it for...

Also on my list (and I'm hardly the first to mention this one) and if we get some late summer warmth then it is hard to imagine a BBQ that is not California-themed and sound-tracked, at least in part, by this...

...Best Coast's 'Crazy for You'.

They both have critics, of course. Some say that the lyrics of Avi Buffalo are too contorted (to be West Coast?)  while others that those of Bethany Cosentino's creations for Best Coast are too simplistic; just lyrics by numbers.   Well, and this is my point I suppose, you can take your choice: For me it is "yes, please" and "both, thank-you".

* If you are reading this, and it seems strange, you are quite normal*

In retrospect I should have gone all analogue instead and spent the time on those lyrics that simply require listening to on vinyl and putting a pencil to paper!  That of course puts me in mind of  New York, which metaphorically this trip is as yet nowhere near, and Caroline Polachek's line about 'the most evident utensil'.

While entirely imaginary this is proving suspiciously like the real thing.  Transport malfunction and unexpected detours amongst them. It was a very bad idea to start on Wednesday night, however...

The road trip can wait 'till tomorrow except that what was once tomorrow  is now today; and it has been so for a while now. I am, however, still west of the Mississippi and thus some way short of my next musical destination. The rest of today has been spent in Farmville, IA.  If  Facebook notifications are anything to go by then my sister farms a large part of it now.  She is always the industrious one.

Strange day today (August, 19) but not as bad as I thought it might be and

with it came some thoughts on music that had never really occurred to me before.

Travelling east, we will reach the home of another artist that I have mentioned. What is new is that this is now readily available in the UK.  It appeared in the US before her 2010 début album 'Catching A Tiger' and she is from Rock Island, IL. It is one of the Quad Cities that border the river that is the Iowa - Illinois boundary.

A mini-album, it is too long really to be an EP even in the broadest sense, and also totally worth a listen in its own right is Why You Runnin', by Lissie.
Tomorrow is another day so, once it is done, do I then cross the river and head east or do I take a right turn and follow the river south?


You are my guides for I do not have sat-nav for this virtual journey.
I'm heading south by popular request.
Here, therefore, is a thought for the next year and this applies to UK music even though that might seem surprising.

Pedal steel is not exactly that well known over here but it is a very worthwhile complement to slide guitar, which I have long liked.  I think we might be hearing a great deal more of both instruments in the next year or so.


As for the road trip and quite where the journey will end is anyone's guess now.  I like the idea of Seattle, or possibly even Portland, via Canada and I have my reasons why.  That said I'm not paying for the fuel and, that being so, I know exactly the vehicle I would be driving - one that I once owned.
It was nothing remotely flashy... no air con, even heating/cooling was a pretty much hit & miss affair but, at least soon after I bought it it had a CD auto-changer that had more wires than the rest of it but was one of the things that never failed.  That alone was worth all the other problems. It is a journey in progress.


I've got a docket in my pocket
It says all I've ever wanted is to be free.

2010 - The Year that...

What a year for music 2010 is turning out to be.  When, back at the end of 2009, I was trying to predict what it might bring I was fairly sure that nu-folk was finally coming to prominence.  I underestimated that, particularly the contribution to it that has come from outside the UK and from North America in particular.

It has bothered the UK charts throughout 2010 and that is reflected by the fact that of the twelve albums nominated for the 2010 Mercury Music Award three are of this persuasion:

Becoming A Jackal  ---  Villagers

I Speak Because I Can  ---  Laura Marling

Sigh No More  ---  Mumford and Sons

All three acts appeared at Latitude 2010, along with two of the other nine, and all credit to the organisers for their foresight. Of those three the only one that I didn't see live, owing to the inevitable conflicts of timing between the different stages, was Villagers. Everyone that I spoke to rated the performance highly and now the least I can do is get the album.

An artist who falls in to the Americana/roots part of the equation as mentioned above is Lissie and her 2010 album 'Catching A Tiger'; I was unable to see her perform live at Latitude.  That was a pity and it was the result of a first for me: four music stages and acts I wanted to see on all of them simultaneously! To some extent I had to go with choices that minimized the time spent between stages and maximized the time listening to music, but that is surely far better than being at a loose end?

That is not the say that the UK music scene is being overwhelmed by such things, far from it in fact, and that can only be good.  At the moment you can pretty much have anything and not be a pariah... Dub-step has moved to new levels of sophistication and, like it or not, new audiences to the point that it is bothering the charts too.  Artists such as Plan B, Professor Green and Example have all revealed albums that have proven major hitters in the chart.  If you want good old pop and all that comes with it that is still there too, along with all the rest.

Then there is the latest talent to have burst from the Brit School of Performing Arts - she is Katie B and her début single is entitled 'Katie On A Mission'. If that were just the title then so what? Hear her interviewed and, this is what has struck me about many in 2010, she comes across as thoughtful, intelligent and very much involved and immersed in the music scene as a whole.

Finally,  Eminem' 'I Like The Way You Lie' is a cracking return to form for him and the collaboration with Rihanna, whose world weary vocals actually make the song, is nothing if not inspired.

I've mentioned cover versions too, especially daring ones, and here are two more:

• Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray   ---  Patsy Cline/Eddie Miller
• Dead Flowers  ---  The Rolling Stones/Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

They both come on one 10" vinyl offering (NAMES40) - and Caitlin Rose's 'Dead Flowers' is nothing short of astonishing. Except, that is, perhaps I do have a secret liking for country after all...

Her début album 'Own Side Now' was released in the UK today (9 August). Of the ten tracks on it not one is reproduced from the seven on the item mentioned above and, as well as the Nashville country influences, it has many that are reminiscent of the West Coast music scene in the late sixties and early seventies. 

This just skims the surface of what I might mention - no rock in here for example - but if music can get better than this and I don't see any reason why not, then I want to be around to hear it.

This theme is, in many ways, continued in another post above:
New Music 2010 - Part 16 - Across America in music.