Latitude 2010 → EOTR 2010 → New Music 2010 - Part 17

With EOTR 2010 just a few days away and Latitude 2010 still quite fresh in my mind, it is time to tackle a few more images, expectations and hopes for the future. If the following is a little unfocussed, or simply downright confusing, then I'm afraid that this is simply an occupational hazard of 'Thoughts on Music'.  It may completely mystify but, even if not a single person reads it, writing it does make things clearer to me and that matters.
There is some overlap between acts that appeared at Latitude and those to appear at EOTR.  I used that to try and minimize conflicts when I wanted to see more than one act that was performing at the same time. Here are three such that I did at least catch some of at Latitude. Someone asked, only a few days ago, for today's thought on Latitude... 
Oh, how I wish I could but writing a daily post still remains something of a distant ambition.  These photos are probably not the best but hopefully they convey at least something of the atmosphere and the musical variety to be found at such festivals...

This was simply perchance - I admit that I had never heard of her before - but that is all part of the wonderful festival experience. It is that moment; when something or someone impinges on your musical conscience for the first time.  I think that she is a late addition to the line-up at EOTR 2010.


The foregoing is not true of this band. Canadian psychrock five-piece 'Black Mountain' are on the cusp of releasing their third LP, Wilderness Heart, and I own and adore the previous two. This one is just a little different --- and no less awesome.

Stormy High.  Black Mountain live @ Latitude 2010, in the Word Arena.

I wasn't really close enough to do this justice but, let me tell you this, Black Mountain rock.  I can't wait to hear them again at EOTR 2010. The LP Wilderness Heart is high on my list of New Music I Want.

While the music is completely different, The Unthanks are another EOTR act that I caught only very briefly on the Obelisk stage at Latitude 2010.

I think a more intimate setting will suit both them and their music to perfection but that they, and many others of folk-influenced persuasion, played the main stage says a whole lot about music today... I can't wait to see the full live set.

That, of course, is not to say that the whole scene was for ageing folk-hippies...  This act is quite the opposite but on the other hand most of the little kids, there with their parents, seemed to find this act absolutely riveting...  It was the second time that I have seen them live - and for all the chaos [and the almost inevitable premature ending] - it was better than the first and only slightly less scary as I was further away from the front than when I saw them on the Sunset Stage at Latitude 2007.

It is strange to say this but, for all the chaos and strife, Crystal Castles has the same kind of attraction that the equally tempestuous and unpredictable Libertines did (and post-Leeds/Reading 2010 now have once again). Live, while it lasts, they are totally magnetic. The album Crystal Castles II (2010) is pretty flawless; what they self-destroy while performing live is really rather haunting when recorded in the studio and never more so than when recorded on vinyl.

The list of UK bands that I have seen/want to see is growing by the day.  Here are another few pictures from Latitude 2010. I have mentioned all these acts before.

The Good Natured live @ Latitude 2010.

Yuck - as well as their album I'm looking forward to their acoustic side-project as Yu(c)k. The band is performing at EOTR 2010 too.

As I am mentioning forthcoming new music I could hardly fail to include 'Without Why', which has now been released.  Rose Elinor Dougall made a good case for it at Latitude.
If you include acts from outside the UK the list is...
to be quite frank, almost endless.

Not least @ Latitude - Part 2 - Rosay no more!

She was once Pipette Rosay, but no longer. Now she is back to being who she is and doing what she wants -  and this is Rose Elinor Dougall.  I've seen 'The Pipettes' live and, although it never struck me then, she can hardly have shrunk in physical stature in the intervening couple of years.

Even with the most ferocious heels, the wearing of which did not in any way prevent her from dancing, she is tiny except in the vocal department.

Her band, The Distractions, were very good too and only marginally failed to usurp their raison de être, which is just as it should be.

She has been working with producer Mark Ronson and so the forthcoming album 'Without Why' should be well worth the wait.  This was another Saturday treasure on the now reinvigorated Lake Stage...

Returning. Retro. Revised - New Music 2010 - Part 10

That was then, this is now...

I recently mentioned that I had a few in mind - so here are two of them. They both have line-up changes in their new incarnations and both have a sixties-influenced perspective; however none of the members (current or former) were even born in the 1970s and that is part of why they matter so much. Members of both come from musical family backgrounds, that is true, but rather varied ones.

This album, by Los Angeles based trio 'The Like', appeared in 2006 and it comprised Tennessee Thomas (drums, vocals), Charlotte Froom (bass, vocals) and Z Berg (vocals, guitar). It is retro-styled rock and I like it as much now as I did then. Until very recently I thought that they had vanished without trace. That however is not so.

They are now a four-piece: Tennessee Thomas and Z Berg are joined by Laena Geronimo (bass) and Annie Monroe (electric organ). They have been busy in the studio and this is their first new single. The producer is hardly an unknown, particularly given the influences in the music.

The next is a throwback to the earlier days of 1960's music - a time when female artists did not play instruments.

The 2006 album 'We Are The Pipettes' was something of an anachronism from the start. They looked the part and had an all-male backing band, 'The Cassettes' (then mostly comprising of members of 'British Sea Power'), but they could never have got away with some of the lyrics way back then...

They are back however, now a two-piece as Rosay (Rose Elinor Dougall - who has also been working with Mark Ronson of late) and Riot Becki left to do other things, leaving Gwenno Saunders (centre, above) as the sole surviving member from the line up that recorded and toured the first album. That said even she was a last-minute replacement, recruited at an early 'Pipettes' gig in Cardiff and she has featured in this blog before, in a different guise.

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2007/01/never-judge-artists-from-album-cover.html

Her only co-Pipette is now her sister Ani Saunders. The new album is scheduled for release in June 2010. All, or any, of these acts would be welcome additions to the stages at the coming summer's festivals.