An off-the-cuff thought on music and festivals.

I'm not going to Glastonbury. Indeed I never sought to do so. Were I there you would, without any doubt, find me at one of the smaller stages.
As it turns out of the three main stage headline acts, following Dave Grohl's unfortunate and unforeseeable accident just recently resulting in the withdrawal of Foo Fighters and a band that I would very much like to see live, I have seen two of the now Glastonbury 2015 headline acts before and both when playing their first ever significant festival headline set. As for Kanye West, the other headline artist/act, let's just say that I'm not sad about missing that. It's quite simply not my thing.
I seem to have no usable pictures of Florence and The Machine playing Latitude Festival 2010, although I remember that the performance was excellent. As for Arcade Fire, well that was the final impetus that prompted me into festival-going - and that was Latitude Festival 2007. I shall not be at Latitude 2015 either but I'll be out and about at other festivals over the coming summer.
Whatever festivals you may be headed to have a great time and remember the things that become memorable are often the acts on the small stages and including the ones that you have almost no, or indeed any, prior knowledge of. My personal view is that festival line-ups, although usually announced from the head-liners down, are best assessed from the bottom up; that is by examining those artists playing on small stages and also the opening acts on any stage. I don't see any reason to change my view - it is a issue of sustainability - in the light of what I saw and heard last year. Some will cut the grade and others won't - but at the very least you will know it for real.

To reinforce that idea - and just in case you arrive five days early for some reason - check this out. I pretty much guarantee that you won't regret doing so.

The Midnight Novel (2014) is a wonderful LP.

I do hope that the weather is kind, that everyone stays safe and has a wonderful time at any and all festivals.

Sad Thoughts On Music.

It has been a rotten couple of weeks for music of all kinds and across continents. Strictly in date-order: PIAS fire (commercially speaking), Indiana State Fair and now Pukklepop.


My sympathy goes to everyone who has lost family, friends and their livelihood as a result of these events.
Music is, however, just too important to buckle under this and I think the victims would not want it to do so. All of us, from casual music radio listeners to festival-goers, owe it to the victims and all others concerned that it does not.
It has to be a promise. Forever.

New Music 2011 goes Americana again.

This is something that is too good not to mention straight away. 
  

July 19 is the US release date for Stranger Me, the third studio album from Memphis, TN based singer songwriter Amy LaVere. It is, as were the preceeding ones, released by independent label Archer Records.

I have, quite literally, only just found out about it and currently know nothing more. I shall be equally surprised and disappointed if it has not been worth the wait since Anchors and Anvils (2008) and the amazing Died Of Love EP (2009).  I'll add more, and relevant links, asap but for now I just wanted to share the excitement!
It will be available, at least in the US, on vinyl too. Count me as being on-board. UK CD & d/l date is slated as July 4 and the track listing is as follows: 

• You Can't Keep Me
• Red Banks
• A Great Divide
• Often Happens
• Lucky Boy
• Tricky Heart
• Stranger Me
• Candle Mambo
• Cry My Eyes Out
• Let Yourself Go (Come on)

The album is produced by Craig Silvey whose recent production credits include 'The Suburbs' - Arcade Fire (2010) and 'Suck It And See' - Arctic Monkeys (2011).

Thoughts on Music - albums for interesting times...

I've been taking a break from writing posts and one that has, unusually, lasted almost a fortnight. Suffice it to say that I have still been listening to and thinking about a great deal of music in the meantime. In part I have been seeking out new music, while also thinking about bands that I would like to see at this summer's festivals...
  
I intend to try and pick up the dropped stitches with a selection of music that I have had on-rotation during this time.  It comes with a warning: this is not uplifting music except that, just possibly it is comforting for its sense of hopelessness at the state of things albeit often in an abstract sense.  That things have changed has been deftly short-circuited by the recent Grammy and Brit Awards - both in the nominations and indeed the winners.
The relationship between Music and Politics took a turn for the better and it started to change in the Bush/Blair era but, I wish to contest, now the major labels are on the defensive the tide is going to be hard to change in the Cameron/Obama one.
The rise of music, largely without the political shackles that the major labels imposed, is likely to actually be one aspect of 'The Big Society' that Cameron can rely on getting in the real world. Punk was a total break.  It laid the foundation for an intelligent blue-print on which to call and promote; as happened, and with great success: that is grunge!
Tony Blair was "friends" with Oasis, in the so-called 'Cool Britannia' phase, and he also played guitar. It happened but was actually a poor publicity stunt. 
It is hard to imagine the possible invitees (except for TV talent show cast-offs) to such a soirée at 10 Downing Street, were one to happen in this new age of austerity; less likely still those, except the desperate, that might accept the invitation.
  
That is not to say that Britain does not have a wealth of talented musical artists, and ones increasingly good at taking their talent to export markets, for it does. Just now, however, is a time when they simply don't need that particular patronage.
  
This artist should be top of the list of "the uninvited". It is the eighth studio album from one who is never shy to pull punches when it comes to politics, subject or timing and therefore was only released on the Monday just gone.
  

Can one album cause a Government to fall? Well - and at least this is true - it has not happened yet.

New Music 2010 - Part 11

Where to start?  It goes like this as often as not.  After what seems like weeks of waiting a whole host of new music impinges on my consciousness at once; it is not all about the music it is in part about me.

This one I can't wait to hear but the release date is  September 13 in the UK (a day later in the US and their native Canada).  I am, however, off to both Latitude and End Of The Road festivals and this band is performing at both of them.

Wilderness Heart - Black Mountain

This is the third album from the prog/psych outfit from Canada, a band that I have long wanted to hear live. Now I have two chances and the opportunity to hear some of the new material before the release of the album.  This band has also spawned two side-projects - Pink Mountaintops and Lightning Dust - and I'm rather hoping that the 'secret stages' at EOTR might provide an opportunity to catch either one or both of these (please).

Those heading to Leeds/Reading Festivals will have the opportunity to see the band that, almost single handedly as they headlined Sunday at Latitude 2007, convinced me that I needed to go to a festival again and that band is of course Arcade Fire.  

 They release their third full length album, The Suburbs, on August 2 in the UK.

Whatever you currently think of their music I can pretty much guarantee that you will see an incredible performance.  It is no coincidence that I am still going to festivals three years later and would like to add more to my schedule if that proves possible.  Enjoy!

This only covers part of my interest in music and only part of that which comes from Canada. My first thought about this is 'help, help and rescue!' but, on the other side of the coin, that leaves a whole load more new music for another post or three.

At some times I only want to listen familiar music while at others I really want to discover new music including new acts and new genres.  It would be really useful if I could understand why this is.

2007 - Things that I forgot to mention...

The title says it all - they are many and varied but perhaps that is actually a good thing! In 2007 I bought more new music than in any previous year and, despite that, my wants list is longer than ever. In many ways I'd regard that as a result and I even took myself to see live music in a quantity that I've never done before and it is something I fully intend to do again in 2008 because picking highlights is almost impossible.

Here are a few more of my pictures instead [click on any of them them to see larger versions]:

Arcade Fire live @ Latitude 2007.

While Damon Albarn's latest vehicle, The Good, The Bad and The Queen was, for all its technical perfection, just about as involving live as watching a music DVD it still had its merits and not least amongst them Paul Simonon [The Clash] on bass guitar.

I am old enough to remember the Brit-pop duelling in the early 1990s and so it was a relief to discover that, maybe older and wiser, Jarvis Cocker remains the artist that he was. Sure he can sing, and write songs too, but above all he is a performance artist and also a comedian of the highest order.

Jarvis Cocker live @ Latitude 2007.

Live music is all about enjoyment and few, if any, embody that as completely as CSS. They spent almost the whole of 2007 touring and, to be quite honest, conveyed the impression that nothing else could have pleased them more...

Lovefoxxx of CSS live @ Latitude 2007.

Canada returns...

It has been clear for several years that the music coming from Canada - and particularly Toronto and Montreal - has to be taken very seriously indeed. When Roughtrade Records released 'Funeral', the début album from Montreal seven-piece Arcade Fire, in the UK in the spring of 2005 things happened very fast indeed.
Within weeks every newspaper and magazine that you picked up would have a review of it and the tickets to their tour dates, mostly taking place at small venues as when they were arranged nobody had heard of them, suddenly became rarer than golden eggs.
Then the reviews of these live performances appeared and the frenzy moved up a gear - here was a band that not only make a completely new style involving many classical instruments put to the ends of rather apocalyptic indie rock, but were so good at doing it that they swap their instruments among themselves while performing. The only thing rarer than live tickets, even after two years in which Funeral has continued to sell strongly, is a review that dares say a bad thing about it or their live performances!

What everyone wondered was what would they follow it up with? It is a rock on which many artists have foundered, hence the often heard phrase "difficult second album". Some bands do it by taking a huge sideways step, which is hard to pull off convincingly, others by progressing with the sound of the first album. Given the acclaim that their first was accorded and were they even minded to attempt such a thing, could it be anything other than a hollow shell in comparison to Funeral?

If this bothered the band they were not telling anyone, and certainly not giving any clues as to what the sequel would sound like, while touring in the summer of 2006. Then all of a sudden, about a two months ago, they revealed that Neon Bible would be released on their own SonoVox label and the fact that it was largely recorded in a number of churches in Québec, not least for their acoustics and a requirement for real organ. This hinted that Neon Bible would follow on where Funeral left off, which it does.

Did they pull it off? A couple of listens will soon give only one impression - that they did and with quite a lot of room to spare. If you liked Funeral then you'll will almost certainly love Neon Bible. It has everything that was good about its predecessor - only done with more scope and ambition and, well basically, done better. Win Butler's voice has less of the tortured half-scream it once had (but when it matters it still has just enough) and, while still only infrequently employed, the vocals of Régine Chassagne appear just when most they are devastatingly effective (remember 'Haiti' on Funeral). The instruments - and there are a great number and variety of them - pile up in complex and dizzying layers that somehow miraculously never collapse in to chaos.
It is largely in this skill in composing and then arranging the many improbable threads that the secret lies - it is what makes Arcade Fire sound like they do and not very much like anyone else!