Born To Die - why the fuss actually matters.

The best thing about Lana Del Rey and the album 'Born To Die' is that she has finally got many more people to bury their fears concerning on-line comment and share what they really feel about it. That is good work in anyone's book.

I don't actually care about the detail of what they feel or say, because everybody is entitled to their own opinion on a whole host of issues concerning this release... it is this virtual-audience participation that matters more than anything else. This is what music is supposed to do.
I'm not sitting on the fence as concerns the album: I like it a great deal and, some admission, I admire the decision of (major label, Universal) Polydor to take a gamble on the somewhat controversial. Whether it will stand the test of time as an album in its own right is anyone's guess. Some that don't, at least in their time and place, are later realized to have defined a moment.  Maybe it will, maybe it won't...  but that is never a reason not to try.  

History is nothing but all of tomorrow's yesterdays and much of it happens accidentally. Should she choose to quit the major-label hotchpotch, or should Interscope decide to let her go, I can imagine several truly independent labels that might be willing to take her on and probably be quite amenable to the way she wants to portray herself through her music. That is when things might become really very interesting indeed.

New to me... music I found and more that I want.

I'm not sure where to start this.  It has some aspects of things I saw and heard at festivals this summer and more than a bit that also comes from almost all things Americana, which comes from the last four years of festivals and then just trying to find what else is out there. It will be a strange mixture - rent by contradictions - of genre and style. It think I'll start with two artists who are in fact English. Most of us can be snobby about the music we like and I'm no exception but ultimately I don't mind if I hear about something I really like via obscure recommendation or daytime commercial radio.  If you find something that catches your attention here, that you then discover you like, then that is a bonus for me.
I have decided to start with the gentler option first.
The music is soft and ballad-heavy delta blues recorded in Nashville, with the vocal tropes that go with that, but then again 'Delta Maid' comes from Wavertree and while Merseyside has a long and glorious music heritage it is hardly on the scale of the Mississippi. Equally surprising, and perhaps a reflection of the change in UK music taste and the situation of the industry, it is a major label release (Geffen/Polydor).  The two album tracks that also appeared on the 2010 vinyl Broken Branches EP are less raw and conventionally produced, which might be a reflection of this.

The aforementioned EP is also well worth having. The version of 'Any Way I Want To' on it is for my money the best thing that she has done so far; it is world weary and yet perfectly resigned to the fact. If you can find the promo CD version of the EP it includes two very good cover versions too.
If it however leaves you thinking that it is all a bit soppy and easy listening then try this instead.  It is way more rattling and certainly not something to attempt if you are feeling the worse for wear - unless of course kill or cure is what you are after, in which case its just the job.
  
Ten all original songs from an artist in her early twenties when this, her début album, was released in 2009.

I had a listen to the songs on her myspace page but there was no easy way to be sure if it was representative of the album. It is released by German-based independent label Ruf Records and so I ordered it there and then. What a good idea that was!
It is quite a long album, at over 51 minutes, and I can't actually decide on my favourites on it despite a week of listening. One thing I can say for sure is that it doesn't suffer from the tendency of some such albums wherein either one or both of the artist and listener flags rather before the end.  Indeed it finishes with the longest track on the album  - Blackest Day - and despite its 8¼ minutes it is absolutely awesome.
It hardly needs to be said that her 2010 follow-up, Diamonds In The Dust, is next on my wants list and then to see her perform live.


I think I'll continue the theme with some genuine US artists that, although not new on the scene, have come in to the foreground of my conscience in the last couple of months.

Always a bridesmaid...

The kind of dogged, and very closely fought, battle for the UK #1 single that has been played out over the last six weeks has not been seen since the mid-1980s so, in other words, it simply hasn't been done by any artist in her lifetime!

Two weeks at #2 in the UK charts, a week at #3, and now another three weeks at #2; last week just sixteen sales kept her from the #1 spot and she missed out again today. It is something of a theme: naturally more at home on keyboards, she started writing songs on guitar when laid-up after she broke her foot on a trip to the cinema, which was to distract from/commiserate the fact that she had just been rejected by the 'Bristol Old Vic' stage school.

One faceless (female) exec. for a major label was heard to say, little more than a month ago, "She is so utterly irrelevant... I just don't see the point." and this was the finalé to a rather incomprehensible diatribe on the rise of new female artists. Clearly she felt threatened in some strange way; I can only hope that a 'P45' will provides her with some kind of closure because she deserves nothing less. On the other hand acting's loss is very much music's gain and these bitchy comments were aimed at someone for whom such petty feuds quite simply don't matter any more.
If she does anything at all it will be to write them into a future song and that is certainly not what the villain, now the victim, would wish to hear! She's already playing to far larger audiences and on her own terms - her Autumn 2007 headline tour sold out within hours of the tickets being released - and all that in advance of the release of her début album. Maybe that was part of the problem...

In just six weeks Kate Nash has almost single-handedly demolished a key tenet of the modern (for which read 'late 20th century' if you will) recording industry with her first single to be widely released - 'Foundations'!
I'm sure she didn't plan it this way but the lyric "holding on to the cracks in our foundation" has never seemed more apposite and nothing before it has done more to undermine the industry dinosaurs. It's fun, but also quite serious, and it grew to such prominence largely of its own accord - it virtually sold itself - and a did a very good job of it.

Nash is made of stern stuff and her album "Made Of Bricks" is released tomorrow; distributed by Polydor in the UK. It is incredibly good by the way and if anyone knows of a vinyl release of this album - I can't find one - could you please contact me here asap!