End Of The Road Festival 2016 - Part 1 - The Tipi Stage

End Of The Road Festival may not have the physical rigours associated with the sheer size and the mud to be found at Glastonbury but it is without doubt, if one is to take full advantage of what is on offer, the most mentally demanding of festivals that I have been to. This was my eighth EOTR, so I know what to expect, but that doesn't actually make it less challenging.
In some ways it is akin to a residential course in that, as well as the supplied live content 12 noon - 02:15 daily and that included watching thirty-nine live sets in eighty hours, there is the interaction with fellow attendees to be considered. It is wise to assume that they know what they are talking about and will expect you to do likewise.
This is not a weekend break with some music included; it is far more intense than Green Man and yet I can't quite imagine exactly how this has come to be the case. It is certainly a festival that artists enjoy playing because they know that they really are being listened to. In general terms both festivals focus on a similar part of the musical spectrum - indeed there is some artist overlap each year - and this can be used to advantage in order to minimise clashes at any given one, if attending both.

On rare occasions it is an excuse to see the same act twice in quick succession, as I chose to do here.

Mothers, Tipi stage, Friday evening.

It was inevitable that I would spend a great deal of time at the Tipi stage. I was always thus and so this post will focus only on, but not all of, what I saw there last weekend. Some of this comes from the late night/early morning surprise shows. Some of it comes from the convenient truth that when it started to sheet with rain early Saturday afternoon I was already comfortably ensconced right in front of the Tipi stage. I decided to stay there and as a result I saw a couple of artists that I might have missed otherwise. Greta Kline's band and de facto alter ego Frankie Cosmos is one of them.

Frankie Cosmos, Tipi stage, Saturday afternoon.

Great off-kilter pop with electro-twists from, but not entirely typical of, New York. The recently released album, the band's second, is 'Next Thing' (Bayonet Records, 2016).
Nobody that I found could recollect another lilac guitar although surely it must have happened? This one is a Danelectro model.

Let's jump back two generations, relative to the above.
For many years Kath Bloom has very rarely played solo shows outside of her home state of Connecticut. EOTR 2016 was treated to one such and that was not something I was planning to miss.

Kath Bloom, Tipi stage, Sunday afternoon.

As far as I am concerned two of the best grabs on the Tipi stage are bands that I had earlier failed to see on larger stages as a result of the inevitable timetable clashes. This is every bit as off-kilter and genre-disregarding, though rather tending towards rock, as Frankie Cosmos. Weaves hails from Toronto, Canada. Indeed EOTR 2016 featured rather a lot of Canadian artists.

Jasmyn Burke of Weaves, Tipi stage,  2:08am Saturday.

The last of the group of five is another band that I failed to see on Saturday afternoon on The Woods stage (the main one).  It was raining cats-and-dogs then but rain aside this is a band much better suited to a night-time slot. Seratones, from Shreveport, Louisiana is difficult to categorise exactly - a very good thing I might add -  but certainly garage rock isn't too far adrift here and it is absolutely wonderful live. The band says that it formed because there was simply nothing else to do. If so then good-luck-to-us because début LP 'Get Gone' (Fat Possum Records, 2016) was a splendid use of time.

A.J. Haynes of Seratones, Tipi stage, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

New Music 2016 - Part 4 - Clara Engel - Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss

It is the end of the first full working week of 2016 and for that I am thankful. I opened my mailbox on my return home and behind the weekly Domino Pizza flyer, that went straight into the recycling box as always, lurked a small padded envelope. Today had just taken another turn for the better!
Dispatched from the interesting independent label Paradigms Recordings, based in Kent, UK was this.

Clara Engel - Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss.

My first purchase from the above-label this may be but it is certainly not the first of music from Clara Engel, who hails from Toronto, Canada. Her releases, which might be (indeed often are) described as gothic folk, or possibly folk-noir from time to time, are always interesting and their supposed genre merely a distraction in many ways. They always demand attention - the vocal is sometimes almost spoken-word and the instrumentation apparently sparse yet, at the same time both deeply dimensioned.
I mentioned the Madagascar EP as long ago as May 2011 and the A Little Slander, A Little Lace EP (2015) as recently as last month as part of my reviews of 2015. There is plenty more to find, for she has released eleven albums (I think) but finding physical copies of much of the body of work is at best difficult.

That is indeed a potential issue with Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss - it is limited to just 200 copies on CD - but is still available here. The screen-printed fold-out packaging is a great complement to the recording and a lyric sheet is also included. The track listing is as follows (taken from the back cover of said CD):

There are only five tracks but each of them takes its time to unfold. Neither the individual songs nor the LP, which is a fraction over thirty minutes in duration, ever threaten to overstay their welcome. It is another triumph of the maxim that sometimes less is more.

New Music 2015 - Part 17 - Suzanne Jarvie - Spiral Road

This next album is interesting. It was great to see it reviewed by Netherlands-based blog De krenten uit de pop. It beat me to it, I should have got my act together on Thursday, but that is just fine; we seem to share similar tastes in music.
This is a début album with a difference. In an age when artists get younger and Taylor Swift has released five LPs before the age of twenty-six, this is a début LP by a Canadian artist born in the 1960s. Its genesis is both tragic and an interesting story of how music can be inspired.

Spiral Road is released by independent label Continental Song City, one of those independent labels that can now be relied on to produce interesting fare, on 23 February in the UK. It is already released in North America.
Can I pick favourite songs here? Well no, at least not yet, but it is early days. That is a good sign; were the LP marginal in any sense I would be stating my stand-out(s) and then cutting loose.
Not so long ago I wrote about another Canadian artist, Lynne Hanson and her latest LP Rivers Of Sand. That was also released by Continental Song City and it looks like the label has more interesting releases forthcoming.

New Music 2015 - Part 10 - Clara Engel - A Little Slander, A Little Lace

I suppose that Saturday lunchtime is an odd time to write a post but never mind.  It is a cold, grey blustery day and I have done all the things I needed to do that involved being outdoors so now I'm at home and doing domestic things while listening to music, of course.
This, released digitally today by Canadian artist Clara Engel who I have mentioned several times before and most recently here, caught my attention immediately.

The download [from US $2] also includes track 'What's The Damage'. Pay 50% more than the minimum asking price and it is still no more than really good coffee. It is bottomless too - you can have another dose as often as you like, for as long as you like. You won't find a deal like that at any coffee shop that I've ever come across. 

New Music 2014 - Part 19 - Clara Engel - Looking-Glass Fire

I seem to be in a writing mood at the moment so I guess that it is best just to roll with it. In any case I just keep finding out about stuff that interests me and, as it often does, this tends to result in a positive-feedback loop all of its own. For times when this pattern fails I keep a list of things that I really ought to investigate but simply haven't done anything about. It may seem a curious way to work but that is how it is.

This is the latest release from Canadian artist Clara Engel, whom I have written about before in respect of the Madagascar EP (2011). It is another EP/mini-album and I am currently unaware if a physical release is planned, but no matter.
You can stream below but if you like what you hear please buy it. Only this way can independent artists subsist, let alone continue to record and thus make our lives a much richer place.      

There is plenty more by Clara to explore and enjoy. If you like the above then try her most recent full LP 'Ashes and Tangerines' (2014).

New Music 2011 - Clara Engel - Madagascar EP

The chain of events that led to me purchasing this pretty much sums up everything that I like about music and writing a blog all rolled into one. Three days ago I knew nothing - not even the existence - of this artist.  By yesterday evening I was listening to physical music by the same... something that only the combination of the digital age, independent artists, labels and stores and snail-mail-on-speed could achieve.

Clara Engel is a singer-songwriter from Toronto, Canada and a very prolific one so my research since Wednesday attests.  The Madagascar EP is however her first physical release and it is, even for purists and I am not one of them, a 'proper' EP - three tracks on vinyl, in this case of the 12" 45 rpm variety and only in this format.  It is released by new label Vox Humana Records as VHR01. It is available from Rough Trade Records, always a dependable source for new music.
  
Now to the music.  I don't tend to write about music that I don't like and this is certainly no exception. Many of the UK-based comments on Clara Engel's music compare her to Anna Calvi, indeed the Rough Trade website and sticker on the cover did so. That is unfair, if a little understandable. Yes, they both write, sing and play guitar big time but actually Anna Calvi is the newcomer here if already better known in the UK; we can do parochial just as well as anyone else and I don't think lumping both artists together does either of them a favour.
Take a listen to this EP or indeed any of the other downloads available from www.claraengel.bandcamp.com and make up your own mind. There is plenty as her next album will be her eighth or ninth! The three tracks on the EP come from two albums; 'Blind Me' and 'Madagascar' from 'Secret Beasts' and 'Accompanied by Dreams' from 'The Bethlehem Tapes'.  There is a new album in the making, so long as she can get the funding together to make it happen. Another track from 'Secret Beasts' is 'Lick My Fins', which is available as a free, legal download.

You owe it to yourself to listen to new music. If it turns out that you don't like it then that is just fine but at least you will know and so it will influence your future forays in to the unknown.  What I want to do is take it out (on vinyl) and find people to play it to...

Beacons, Black Ice and crossed-wires

It is autumn here now even though the weather is still remarkably good generally. This evening when driving from work I took the back-route home, which is through some woods, and while there was the faintest drizzle in the air you didn't need that or the slowly changing colours of the leaves to indicate it because you could just smell that it was now autumn. The UK is not a country of great climatic extremes, or indeed climate at all, which is probably why we are obsessed with the random variability of our weather instead.

Now why have I mentioned that you might ask? Well, much music has associations in as much to say it goes better with some seasons or weather or other associations (even if the they actually have to be experienced in foreign climes). If that were not true then surely the attractions of Ibiza would be no more than those of the Isle of Wight. (The latter does, to be fair, however host two major festivals and is thus trying very hard indeed and the sun shone at Bestival 2009, I am told.) I also think that opening a festival is an unenviable task...

It is often like this. There is always an amazing feeling when I come across an album that is show-stopping, which I was quite unacquainted with, but this is it seems even better if it happens live and that is why I waited ten days to order the album. [It arrived today, hence the comment.]

To hear a full set by a band live in such circumstances, and then twice in one day, was something quite new to me and I wondered if the album would then prove a disappointment in some way. Not a bit of it... it is a wonderful album and while much of it has ostensibly weather related themes, predominantly winter ones, they are as much metaphorical as literal.

In fact the album could equally well have been called 'Crossed Wires'. This is the interior artwork on the CD (Bella Union - BELLACD199) but the front cover has a clue to this even though the wires are barely above the snow.

It is very difficult to chose any favourite tracks but Black Ice is an obvious contender.

Black Ice

I took the bus down Bathurst Street and saw where,
all the lonely people meet down there.
I sat on a pile of cigarettes and blew,
icicles with one sharp breath towards you.

There's black ice, no sign.

Temper me and temper this I've tried,
to fit in everything in a small time.
The winter brings a heaviness, this weight,
is a hand over the things I shouldn't say.

There's black ice, no sign.

They are a seven-piece, much given to changing and swapping instruments, so even their festival-opening set on the 'The Big Top Stage' Friday lunchtime was a fairly complicated affair. It was however as nothing when compared to their 'surprise session' appearance at 2am Saturday on the tiny stage in the Tipi Tent, not least because for some of it they were joined by fellow Torontans 'The Acorn'.

That made eleven of them on a tiny stage and it was another blistering performance.

Now try to sort out the out all the wires.

The end of one thing is just the start of another.

This time last week I was in North Dorset at 'End of The Road 2009' and it has taken me rest of the week to really come to terms with what that actually meant to me. Lots of awesome acts, that is for sure, but also rather more than that and so I've already bought a ticket for EOTR 2010.

I've long thought that to be the first act on stage at a festival must be an invidious task and at EOTR 2009 that fell to Toronto-based Ohbijou on the 'Big Top Stage' shortly after mid-day on Friday.

This was my introduction to EOTR and "holey-moley this is just amazing" is merely to quote lead vocalist Casey Mecija at some point mid-set; and it could very easily have gone downhill from there but it didn't, there is no doubt about that.

In fact, in the early hours of Saturday morning, Ohbijou became only the second act I have ever seen perform a full live set twice within 24 hours!
There was no shortage of amazing acts...

At 11:15 pm on Friday night Beth Jeans Houghton conspired to take an absolutely packed 'The Local' stage by storm.
She has received good reviews but this was a truly awesome set. When 'The Horrors' were unavailable due to illness on the Big Top Stage Saturday evening she was game for a bigger venue and, while I didn't catch that performance, she was by all accounts more than equal to filling that stage too.

The one act that defaulted at Latitude 2009 I was able to see at EOTR 2009, on the Tipi Stage, and that was Sweden's 'First Aid Kit'. They were amazing, as I had been led to believe they would be, but I didn't expect them to play even one song with such a surprising pair of instruments.

Autoharp, six-string banjo and a judiciously updated cover of 'Universal Soldier' - written and originally recorded by Toronto's Buffy Sainte-Marie in 1964.

If these had been the only highlights, but they most certainly weren't, it would still have been a pretty good weekend.

My current play list...

I'm soon going to attempt to trial something approaching the title of this post. It is the result of a suggestion from the, much appreciated, input of a reader of this blog. That said I'm not exactly sure what it will turn out to be, or indeed quite how to do it yet, but I've decided that it is certainly worth a try. The one thing I can promise is that it will not incorporate downloads.

If there are functional problems with anything I add please let me know and, should it actually work, I'd be pleased to receive any feedback regarding your thoughts on what I have done. I'm not sure quite how long it might take me to do this either; it may happen tomorrow, next week or sometime. I'm planning to give it a good shot but there may well be some trials, tribulations and outright revisions to the plan along the way - you have been warned!
At least I can tell you exactly what I'm listening to right now and it is what I regard as one of the 'Lost Albums of 2007' - and not just despite the fact that was a major label release (Mercury, Universal).

The album artwork may not be very sophisticated but that is part of the charm of this recording. Electro-pop is just meant to be like this and after a few listens the facts of the band's formation seem slightly less strange; Dan (guitar) and Martina (lead vocals) met by chance at a gig in their home city, Toronto, swiftly abandoned their former musical alliances, got married and moved to London in search of their real musical destiny!

The artwork of the promo CD was spartan in the extreme, as was the promotion of it by the label.

Dragonette - Galore --- the artwork of the promotional CD.

What is the logic of signing a band and then apparently failing to make any obvious effort to promote their début album?

My considered verdict is that this album was criminally under-promoted and also vastly under-rated. The other thing is that it is good music for spring; its often postponed release last year did not help either, as it came out late summer, which was I suspect rather symptomatic of perverse major label priorities.
See them live if you can - it is a really stunning show and the lyrics are often amusingly cheeky too. I Get Around, the first single from the album, was quite the part but did not make its presence felt in the UK chart.

Also Mi Reflejo (Christina Aguilera, 2000) - not least because the Spanish Genio Atrapado still seems much better than Genie In A Bottle to me. I'm sorry but I have already admitted to liking much pop and also music in foreign languages and sometimes both happen at once.

Reality Check - Part 2: Echo Beach revisited.

I'd been planning to mention some new (to the UK) Australian music developments in this post but this evening, while I was making something to eat (a fish pie if you care to know) and listening to the radio I got a surprise...

I know it's out of fashion and a trifle uncool
But I can't help it, I'm a romantic fool.
It's a habit of mine to watch the sun go down.

The song 'Echo Beach' but certainly not the version I remember.

This one is, it turns out, a cover version sung by Australian 16-year-old Gabriella Cilmie and I'm fine with that. The thing is that it made me feel old again when the DJ said I bet you don't know the original. I certainly do (and without the help of a press release) but I did recall something more useful that was not mentioned, which is that it was on the album Metro Music (DINDISC, released as DID.1 - that being a fact that I didn't remember) and more importantly that I actually own it on original vinyl and so, after some searching, here it is.

Metro Music - Martha And The Muffins (1980).

The passage of time, almost three decades, has not done the sleeve any favours but then, as I have just rediscovered today, I paid the princely sum of £0.50 ($0.95, €0,70) for it secondhand and that was in 'Canterbury Rock' twenty-two years ago next month! The vinyl inside has however stood the test of time admirably - unscratched and still as flat as could be - and so it should therefore play perfectly? I have just listened to it and it certainly does; that may be surprising but what I find even more so is just how well the music itself has aged!

This is not actually what I intended to continue yesterday's post with but that will now just have to wait again.