Havoc In Heaven - Festivals 2010

It is time for something more uplifting or, at the very least, forward looking. This is what I intended to post about yesterday but in some ways I'm glad that I never did as I have rather more to add now.
To start with I am going to indulge my liking for American music - the reason being that I feel justified in doing so. I don't feel any compunction about this - UK music is in fine form too, the trade is bi-directional and long may it last for mutual benefit. I'll start my list with artists that I'm looking forward to, and of an acoustic bent. On the UK side these obviously include Laura Marling and Mumford and Sons.

On the American side, and like the above both now confirmed for Latitude 2010, are the following:

The hat is probably more suited to the Manchester climate than that of California?

There have been parallels made in both cases, some of them quite tenuous, with Laura Marling. In all honesty I don't think that either side is likely to have any problem with the other. The really strange thing is that only a few years ago who could have imagined that, instead of hard-core rap, we would be trading banjo-wielding singer-songwriters?

Another artist and a stranger tale still is that of Jesca Hoop. We have long been used to UK artists eloping to the sunnier side of the Atlantic but she has now been co-opted as a Manucunian; the grey skies and drizzle perhaps being more conducive to song-writing? At least there is a good excuse to stay in and get on with it and, when it arrives, the fleeting sun will seem far more precious!
On the other hand hers is not a conventional background anyway; she is from a musical, Mormon family but later trod her own path and in time that included being live-in nanny for Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's three kids. Now that is something - Waits' music is challenging in itself, his comments on artists perhaps even more so. I'm not sure if she plays banjo but I wouldn't rule it out...

Lissie, a native of the part of Illinois bordering the Mississippi River, most certainly does and without any need to apologize. She is performing on the 'Sunset Stage' at Latitude 2010. It is tented, relatively small and leaks if it rains, but is actually my favourite... I will never forget seeing Crystal Castles there in 2008 - it was possibly the most frightening live performance that I have ever seen.

Lissie is not going to be scary like that... but the reviews are already quite something and she seems to be setting-up-shop in the UK for what passes as our summer. If you want to catch her live, sooner rather than later, here's your chance.

That is not to dismiss the chance to witness a full set by Sweden's 'First Aid Kit' either. They had to cancel at Latitude 2009 but I did get to see them at EOTR 2009.

They are returning to Latitude 2010 supporting their first full-length album, 'The Big Black & The Blue', and for good reason.

Slightly modernised but only in a way that kept it relevant to the early 21st century their with-no-clever-tricks-at-all live take on 'Universal Soldier', written by Buffy Sainte-Marie and from the album 'It's My Way' (1964), was actually more devastating than it was sublime.

It was received with a resonance that befitted it - awe and total silence - and a rare moment when thoughts from the Cenotaph came to a festival.

Not many can do that and fewer those still in their teens - although many of those killed in The Great War were exactly thus.

The World Is Not My Home, but the good get better...

Another day, another EP but this time it is one quite genuinely from across the Atlantic and it was released on CD in the US - on April 1, 2009 - again on Archer Records. The title track is a cover of the traditional 'Railroad Boy (Died of Love)', 'Lazarus' is a take on a traditional lament and 'Green Grass' is a cover of the Tom Waits song and that is just half of it.

Added: Thursday, 14 May:

I'm sorry that this post sort of ended prematurely. I was tired and I published it rather than saving it. Thanks to whoever added a comment to this asking for 'links' today and I assume that it was to this post you were referring. If not please let me know and I'll try to fix that.

If you want to buy or legally download 'Died Of Love' here are some links:

US & UK CD (cdbaby.com)
US Download (amazon.com)
UK Download (amazon.co.uk)

I do not know of any UK distributors of the CD version but independent music distributor cdbaby do shipping to the UK very well and at competitive prices. They publish reviews, both their own and those written by customers, too.
For more press reviews of Amy LaVere, see here.

Split indecision - Love To Hate or Hate To Love?

It always comes to the fore when someone well known for music, such as Madonna, attempts a transition to film or indeed vice versa, although Ne-Yo is currently saying how good Lindsay Lohan was in handling the track 'Bossy' that he has recently written and produced for her!
He is not one to court disaster. He has written two global chart hits for Rihanna (including the current UK #1), plus a few more for himself and others, so that is hardly an assertion open to much doubt. Then again he professes a wish to work with Amy Winehouse, so trouble makers and jail-birds are clearly not an issue as such, and also Duffy who like Rihanna is generally held to be squeaky clean. So are Alicia Keys and Jordin Sparks, with whom he is currently touring America. He can certainly spot talented artists when he hears them but that is merely a digression.

There is one album, in the genre actress-turned-singer, that is currently testing all sorts of preconceptions at least here in the UK. The lines along which opinions are drawn are the predictable ones but the sides taken by various parties are however not and it seems able to divide even apparently kindred reviewers, resulting in something approaching civil war.
This is all the more surprising for the fact that it has been precipitated by a seemingly rather harmless project that might very easily have been largely ignored on this side of the Atlantic.

Scarlett Johansson is the unlikely revolutionary. This has, on the face of it, everything that says £2.99 in the bargain bin in Woolworths come August. That could still be true but the thing is that this is an album that incites writers in the music press to go to battle in a manner that few albums do.
The album Anywhere I Lay My Head consists of ten cover versions of songs by Tom Waits and also a new one too. On two tracks she shares vocal duties with David Bowie and the album was produced by David Sitek (Yeah, Yeah Yeahs, etc.) and none of them are known either for their unwillingness to push boundaries or an inclination to back a losing horse.
This is certainly something unusual and, if you feel the way that I do, it makes me want to listen to it too. I will have to buy it and, if enough people feel the same, the bargain bin scenario recedes.