Festival wish list - New Music 2010 - Part 8

To finish what has, aside from music and a great weekend in North Wales, been a rather lack-lustre month I thought I would add some things that have caught my attention in the last few weeks. When I started about two hours ago I had a pretty clear plan in mind; that it became well and truly wrecked on the rocks of new discoveries is just one of those things and also for the longer term good...

These are just some of the acts I originally intended to mention. I've mentioned some of these artists, if only in the side-bar, already so here are a few of them. In truth the list of those still to mention is actually now longer than it was when I started!

Esben and The Witch, Brighton, UK.

Exquisite, romantically inclined, comfortingly gothic (and occasionally electro-acoustic) new-traditional: I recommend any song you can find and they are confirmed as playing Truck Festival 2010. Last year's 'Marching Band' served as a shot across the bows of the competition, and my God has the competition become formidable on all fronts, but the one track that sticks in my mind just now is the more recent 'Lucia At The Precipice'.

The Ruby Suns, New Zealand.
Their album 'Fight Softly' is already available (released by UK label Memphis Industries) and they are confirmed to appear at End Of The Road 2010.

Ones that I have not mentioned before, and that I'd like to see live, are:

Beach Fossils, Brooklyn, NY.
I have heard a few songs and 'Day Dream' is not atypical.

Islands Lost At Sea, Bolton, UK.

The début album is 'are having a lovely time' and to be released in the UK on 26 April.

I could, and soon will, add more but it is past that time tonight. A few throw-away suggestions including, perhaps, some returning acts less well known:

Operator Please! - Australian five-piece in support of their second album 'Logic', due shortly.

New Young Pony Club - new album 'The Optimist' represents a distinct realignment by Ty Bulmer and the crew following 'Fantastic Playroom', which was their 2007 début. For more on this album see here:

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2010/04/optimist-difficult-second-album.html

It is supposed to be summer... Virtual Festival 1

It's the 4th July - which is just another day here in the UK, but it is supposed to be a summer day. Is that so? - fat chance!
Worse still, the radio stations have gone to pot as well. It is, and this is clearly an import from the US, the 'High School Prom' season and while that is a fairly recent import in the UK calendar, and with which I do not have a problem, I really wonder if what the radio stations have decided to play "in honor" bears a resemblance to any contemporary trend!
It seems to consist mostly of pop and disco ballads from 1975 -1988, which were all released far before the current protagonists were born. I'm not against the revival of old music, far from it in fact, but I think that this programming is actually aimed at an older audience - probably the parents of those school-leavers.

The radio was turned off early this evening and the advantage of having a sizable music collection of my own, whether currently in vogue or not, became very apparent and I'm old enough to make my own bad choices in music! I did think about the possibility of doing a mid-year 'favourites' list but have decided to do something different over the next few days and that is to try and decide which acts would appear, if I were arranging a festival line-up this so-called summer, and I will exclude any act that I have already seen performing live.

Every festival needs at least one infectious feel-good band and this would be my first choice:

This is a live DVD, recorded at Pure Groove in London in 2008.

In the last couple of years the seemingly impossible has happened and the UK has taken at least some notice of 'country music' if only in the cross-over formats. That said, this has to be one of the most improbable artists to play a part in that change...

This is a promo copy (PROP 05309) of Cock A Hoop (2003).

Since then she has returned to Wales and, as she is bilingual, may well reappear later in this list.

Live and not so dangerous...

My last post ended on a sombre note. At the other end of the scale come festivals. While much is made of the risks most of them are probably far safer places to be than out in almost any town on a Friday or Saturday night. Pick-pocketing and other theft aside, you probably aren't going to find, or even see or hear of, much trouble unless you go looking for it. I'm, as already mentioned, going to Latitude 2008 and I went to last year's one too and the fact that I was going on my own bothered me slightly until I got there. That I couldn't really imagine a more friendly place to be occurred to me in the first hour I was there.

The set list is interesting me more with every addition. One thing that was of interest was quite how anything could equal the exuberant madness of CSS? I had two thoughts, CSS (again, their new album is being hatched) and Operator Please! (who I'd love to see live). Later it occurred to me that we have a UK band more than capable of fulfilling the requirements for enthusiastic mayhem and, recent acts confirmed for Latitude 2008, indicated that they are the chosen ones.
Ian Parton formed the live incarnation of The Go! Team to tour with Franz Ferdinand (also at Latitude 2008) in 2004.

This was their magnificent début album, on the tiny indie label Memphis Industries, in 2004. It is an almost indescribable thing comprised of a collection of shiny beats, samples and other bits that would make a magpie with real addiction issues turn green with envy. It has has been reissued, partly for sample clearance in the US, and also later incorporating a couple of additional tracks. It remains as good now as it was when first released, so there would be difficult second album issues, right?

No! Proof Of Youth (2007) is every bit as good, in some ways even better. The band - a six-piece - are hardly short of writing talent and this time it really shows on the album. That is not to say that they have compromised either their propulsive enthusiasm or the rather unusual multi-threaded and eclectic dynamic. When it suits them they can muster four drummers simultaneously though only two, Chi Fukami Taylor and Sam Dook, are normally thus employed and in Ninja they have a very versatile singer/rapper. If she reminds me slightly of anyone it is Lauryn Hill.

Another Latitude 2008 act, one already announced, is Death Cab for Cutie. The album 'Narrow Stairs' is released in the UK next Monday (12th May) and is getting very favorable reviews by people in the press whose opinions I trust.

Reality Check - Part 3: Get What You Want.

There are more Australians currently on tour in the UK and they might just treat you as though you were still at primary school - if, of course, you are one of the lucky ones.

The teenage bolshiness is quite understandable but surely few younger than Simon Nichol, Peter Knight and Dave Swarbrick ( b. April 1941), variously of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span and all almost certainly much older than her parents, would even dream of being credible while wielding a rather non-threatening electric fiddle?

"Just shut up - you have paid to hear us play!"
Taylor Henderson of Operator Please.

Telling the audience how to behave is another matter entirely and getting away with it is quite an achievement; she seems to have another weapon at the ready so it is probably not the best time to ask any awkward questions anyway.

See them live and they're happy to scribble on your latest purchase, just like a child might, but the performance is very good. In fact child-like they certainly are not and the vocals of, and lyrics by, Amandah Wilkinson are fair proof of that.

Get What You Want - 7" vinyl (BRILS285).

The album 'Yes, Yes Vindictive' sees a full UK release (Vinyl, CD and download) on 17th March 2008 and it would be most welcome, since it is so made for summer, if they could include some weather from Queensland with it. They probably can't but if you pre-order the album from them, and according to their blog, London's Puregroove Records might just treat you with a bonus DVD of the band's recent in-store appearance! In any case, if you want the 12" version, it is much cheaper from Puregroove than from amazon.co.uk who, I can promise, will not give you a bonus DVD!

More new artists for 2008...

Real talent will out and with talent like this who needs reality TV music contests?

The first is, after perhaps Adele, the singer-songwriter that has recently occupied more column inches in the newspapers as the release of her début album Rockferry moves closer.

If the single 'Rockferry', released in December 2007 and of which this is the artwork of the 7" version, is anything to go by the hype is justified. Duffy comes from NW Wales but Rockferry is a mythical location in it - well not that mythical, this is actually Porthmadog Harbour station in disguise! The deliberately retro-look of the black and white picture is quite understandable and so, I believe, is much of the hype surrounding this release. Last week she played her first live gig in London, at a small venue, and the reactions that have filtered out from those who were there is one of bewilderment: they expected it to be good but not even half as good as it was.

This should be the album artwork and it is due for release on 3rd March . It is currently #12 in amazon.co.uk music pre-orders fully five weeks before release, which suggests a very high entry on the week of release.

Cob Records is indeed a proper old-fashioned music store and it is also to be found in Porthmadog High Street, virtually opposite the aforementioned station.

Now some bands:
Foals are widely tipped to explode across the face of the UK in 2008, in perhaps the kind of way that The Klaxons achieved last year. Again they have worked up a huge live following before the release of their first album Antidotes, due 24th March. Expect them to be at many of this summer's festivals.

Ubiquitous at last summer's festivals were the outrageously entertaining Brazilians CSS who will return with their second album in the early summer of 2008. This summer they might even have some southern hemisphere competition and if they do I suspect it will come from a five-piece whose combined age is only about 20% more than Mick Jagger's!

They hail from Queensland, Australia and they are Operator Please! Their first album has not yet had a full UK release but it is neither too hard or too costly to find an Australian import copy.

Yes Yes Vindictive - Operator Please!