New Music 2018 - Part 19 - I'm All Ears - Let's Eat Grandma

I have taken a month off blogging but that certainly doesn't mean that I haven't been listening; be that recorded or live. I spent a wonderful three days at a brand new folk festival last weekend too. There will be plenty about that here sooner rather than later.

To ease back into writing this seemed an obvious start. It isn't folky at all. It is precipitated by the release of the second full-length album by a band that I saw live last summer.

I'm All Ears - Let's Eat Grandma (Transgressive Records, 29 June 2018).

The twisted pop and psychedelic leanings of their début LP 'I, Gemini' were quite something. It is worth noting that Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth are not twins, indeed they are not even siblings. Both from Norwich they met at the start of primary school education. It was certainly a very adept album release, or at least I thought so. Then I saw Let's Eat Grandma live. That is the point at which I realised this was something very special.

Let's Eat Grandma, Big Top stage, End Of The Road Festival, 2 September 2017.

Difficult second album syndrome? My inclination is that this is every bit the equal of their first and, if anything, even more surprising. They do eclecticism and see no reason to apologize for that. This album covers a lot of ground in its eleven tracks and 51 minutes. It is all the more likeable for that.

Let's Eat Grandma - I'm All Ears:

• Whitewater
• Hot Pink
• It's Not Just Me
• Falling Into Me
• Snakes & Ladders
• Missed Call (1)
• I Will Be Waiting
• The Cat's Pyjamas
• Cool & Collected
• Ava
• Donnie Darko

It is also not the only album that I have that includes a song 'Cat's Pyjamas'; there is another quite different one of that name on the 2003 album 'Amorino' by Isobel Campbell! It is another beautifully off-kilter LP that is worth your attention, as it happens. It is here.

Festivals - from 2016 into 2017

It's time to start thinking about festivals again except of course for Glastonbury 2017; that sold out months ago and I had no desire to even consider it!
I have tickets for a few, no secrets there, and now that the first artist announcements are revealed it has reminded me that these things have - as well as so many options to see acts that are new, or just new to me - a rather likeable sense of continuity and even community.
This is Green Man 2017, as currently revealed.

Of course I want to see PJ Harvey and Ryan Adams headline. I must say that Future Islands is unknown by comparison in my experience, but the forthcoming album 'The Far Field' is getting great previews and I guess that, at least from their perspective, Green Man would count as exactly 'A Far Field' to them!
Of extreme interest are those a little lower down in this list.

Angel Olsen was astonishing on The Mountain stage at Green Man 2014.

I have never seen Micheal Kiwanuka live, and I very much want to. There are others that I have seen live and that I very much wish to see again. Here is one that for some reason I haven't mentioned before and I can't imagine why. She opened the Tipi stage, the smallest regular one, on the Saturday of End Of The Road 2016. It isn't that I failed to pay attention, because I did.

Julia Jacklin. Tipi stage, End Of The Road Festival, 3 September 2016.

Another fine artist hailing from Australia. In 2014 Green Man served up Courtney Barnett and in 2015 End Of The Road bought us Tame Impala.  Julia Jacklin isn't much like either of them. She is another one-off; Australia has strength in depth.

Julia Jacklin - Don't Let The Kids Win (Transgressive Records, 24 October 2016).

Her début album passed me by at the time of release. That annoys me. Clearly I had lost the plot here because it was released only a few weeks after I saw her play live. There is no excuse for that.

Note added 8 February 2017:
Julia Jacklin is now confirmed to play End Of The Road Festival 2017.