Green Man :: 2016 :: Dyn Gwrydd - Part 2 - acts seen live before

Time to get on with the music that I went to see and hear. Where better to start than a band whose career playing festivals almost exactly matches in time that of going to them myself? The correlation goes further - from Latitude 2007 to Green Man 2016, via No Direction Home 2012 and others, it always rains when I see Sheffield's Slow Club play. They have come a long way since first I saw Charles and Rebecca on the 'BBC Introducing stage' at Latitude Festival back in 2008. It involved wooden chairs and empty bottles as percussion. I will have to go back in time and find some pictures of that...

"You look so colourful in your cagoules". Rebecca's comment was true Yorkshire wit.

This post, I've just decided, is going to cover artists and acts that I have seen live at a festival at least once before. This is, I think, the fifth time that I have seen Slow Club play a full set at a festival. That's not a record, in fact it is not even close.

This next band is something of a nightmare to categorise: alt/indie country-rock but (with the exception of a judicious cover in their set this time) all sung in Welsh. This was the only picture that I managed to take that included all six members of the band!

Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog, Walled Garden stage, late Sunday afternoon.

Rhos Botwnnog is a village in the Llŷn peninsular, North Wales from which the band hails. I guess you can translate cowbois yourself. This is only the second time I have seen the band live; the first was also at the ill-fated No Direction Home Festival in 2012.

Thursday aside when it was almost the only place anything was happening, my forays into the vast tented gloom of the Far Out stage were then limited to Sunday. Of all those only one falls into the category of artists that I have seen live before. That is this one and it was a tremendous set. I first saw him play the Tipi stage on the Thursday evening at End Of The Road Festival 2014 and I wrote about that here.

Ezra Furman, Far Out stage, Sunday evening.

All these artists have new releases in tow, which they wish to promote and of course that is just how it should be. That is also true of this next, a four-piece from California that I saw live at End Of The Road Festival 2013.  Rather than focus on the front line this time I took this for it is the rhythm section that keeps the whole show on the rails.  Warpaint was first support on the Mountain stage on Sunday evening, which Belle and Sebastian headlined.

Stella Mozgawa, Warpaint, Mountain stage, 21 August 2016.

Yeah So?

It is almost as far as is imaginable from the boisterous indie of Arctic Monkeys but no less genuine for it - Slow Club is the other shimmering face of Sheffield indie music. They are appearing at Latitude 2009 for a third successive year, which may be a record, and this time it is just after the release of their first album, Yeah So, (Moshi Moshi, release date 6 July 2009)!

and then they are off to tour it in the US and Canada.

More links, including the lyric for the 2008 EP Let's Fall Back In Love:

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2008/09/lets-fall-back-in-love.html

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2008/09/to-whoever-just-asked-about-slow-club.html

To whoever just asked about 'Slow Club' lyrics.

Are you sure that you can live with your conscience?

If you have the EP on CD then surely you would not be asking this question. If you have a legal download, and it does not include such information, then surely it is time that representations were made to ensure that, at least in future, such releases do!

Click images to expand but also just make sure you now go see them live...

Bona fide signed copies could be obtained, and for quite literally just a few pennies more than the standard article on amazon.co.uk, if you keep an ear open!

They have no reason at all to forgive you if you just rip them off!

Let's Fall Back In Love

It is that time of year, unless of course you are south of the equator, when the days get shorter and the nights longer. If you have had a rubbish week at work so far, or are suffering any other similar situation, then I hope that it is some consolation that I share your lack of enthusiasm.

Two cheering thoughts: a good autumn (still a possibility) could well be better than a crappy summer (already confirmed) and more time to find and listen to music, new or old; more releases too and more time to read and write about them. The strange thing is, and this is nothing new, the more gloomy I feel in general the more eclectic and wide-ranging my taste in music becomes but seemingly not to the detriment of what I might regard as my 'core themes'.

Infinite Night
Drug lords, crooked cops, and thieves
Preying on the poor and on the weak
Boys with rifles in their hands
Far too young to understand.

[Chorus]
When it's more than you can bear
Let the silence fill the air.
You get a glimpse of the holy light
Well the sun is just a star
It reminds us of where we are
Just a little part of the infinite night.

Rich hold on to what they've got
Keep them far away from those who have not
Oceans rise and the fires rage on
Too much lost and nothing won.

[Chorus]

Oh looking down from up above
How we live and how we love
And how many days are yet to come... oh...

That track ain't even the half of it and this only confirms my view that, come the end of 2008, my selection of 'best albums' is likely to challenge that of last year in its variety and it would not greatly surprise me if this album [She Ain't Me - Carrie Rodriguez] features in it.

Let Me In
Make me understand
What it is to be a troubled man
And why you think that I'm the leaving kind
What else it is that ails your mind.

Oh let me in, I swear... I'll stay there.

I'm so tired of bailing out when push comes to shove.
Six long years to figure out all I need is your love.

Take me to your cave
I promise you that I won't behave
But I will give you all of my love
And a body sent from heaven above.

Oh let me in, I swear... I'll stay there.
Let me in , I swear... I'll stay there.

Back on planet GB there is no shortage of new music either and Slow Club are an act that I have seen live twice, at Latitude 2007 and Latitude 2008. They are wonderful and this (five-track CD) EP was released on Monday, 1 September by Moshi Moshi (MOMO66) and is an antidote to the rubbish summer weather. You might also find half of Slow Club, Rebecca, moonlighting-live with Noah and The Whale!

1. Let's Fall Back
2 Come On Youth
3. Dance To The Morning Light
4. Summer Shakedown
5. Trick Question

Slow Club on The Lake Stage @ Latitude 2007.

They are certainly unconventional but unquestionably good and, quite frankly, what's not to love?