The Longest Day - nearing half-time in 2011

There is irony in that now I have got reliable broadband after almost three weeks without I can't seem the pick up the threads again, which along with other events, explains the slightly cryptic, even diffuse, title.
The fact is that I don't really know what it is going to be about; it is a journey I just had to start before the destination was apparent. In that sense it is akin to last year's rambling (as yet still incomplete) that was New Music 2010 - Part 16 - Across America in music but is written two months earlier  in the musical calendar.
At this point I am only musing on the festivals that I am yet to attend but in many ways the picture is becoming clearer now that I'm actually writing again. That said it may take a while for this to become apparent, if indeed it ever does.
Those artists that I mentioned in the above might actually be a good place to start: Avi Buffalo at Latitude 2011 and Best Coast at EOTR 2011 - and I have seen neither live  but have spent much of the last six months listening to the respective albums.  Switching to the US East Coast two acts that I am very much looking forward to, although very different one from another, are Sarabeth Tucek, who recently released her second album 'Get Well Soon', and Brooklyn's Violens.  Having seen School of  Seven Bells, Chairlift and Telepathe at various points over the last couple of years I have high hopes.
As an aside while on the theme of East Coast artists, Marissa Nadler has just revealed  her fifth album ' Marissa Nadler' and the first to be released on her own label,  Box of  Cedar Records; and given that her 2009 album 'Little Hells' is still right up there on my playlist this is a definite must-have purchase.  I'm not, however and if the art work wasn't a clue, promising that this post will be a whole load of easily accessible summery music.  On the contrary some of it will likely be far more challenging, which is always a good thing.

Marissa Nadler is someone that I have never seen perform live and as far as I know she is not gracing UK stages this summer season.  Getting side tracked like this is something that I'm rather good at; should I mention the forthcoming album by Rosi Golan?  Later maybe...
  
Another realization is that, increasingly so, I have the opportunity to see acts that I have seen in previous years so that I should be able to compare and contrast.  This is something that I am looking forward to as, and this much is always the case, the new acts and artists.  Here are two, starting with the more guitar led:  British Sea Power  and Foals.  On the other hand there are  new guitar bands that I have never seen before: The Vaccines being just one amongst them...  It is going to be interesting, which ever way you look at it .

New Music 2010 - Part 16 - Across America in music.

This is perhaps going to be a hybrid of acts I heard at Latitude 2010, those that I am looking forward to at EOTR 2010 and others that have impinged on my consciousness for one reason or other.
If I can keep it focussed then it might work out OK.  If not it will become more than one post, maybe one of them devoted to Latitude artists or to US-based artists and acts.
At the start of the year I mentioned that I thought that diversity might be one of the beneficiaries of 2010 and, while I may not have specifically made that point, I'm starting to think that was a valid one nevertheless.  That which is certain is that, as regards the things I am listening to and those I now want to listen to, it most certainly is!


The US is springing surprises on an almost weekly basis and I have already mentioned some of them and 'Dead Flowers' - Caitlin Rose is on some kind of rotation as far as my personal play list is concerned. That the title track is a cover of a Jagger/Richards song only serves to make the self-written songs all the more apposite.

It is therefore not surprising that I now have the album 'Own Side Now' of which more later. What pleases me is that the US albums that I want are scattered across genres -  I have already mentioned Avi Buffalo's eponymous début album, which gets better with every listen I think. 

What is in it for...

Also on my list (and I'm hardly the first to mention this one) and if we get some late summer warmth then it is hard to imagine a BBQ that is not California-themed and sound-tracked, at least in part, by this...

...Best Coast's 'Crazy for You'.

They both have critics, of course. Some say that the lyrics of Avi Buffalo are too contorted (to be West Coast?)  while others that those of Bethany Cosentino's creations for Best Coast are too simplistic; just lyrics by numbers.   Well, and this is my point I suppose, you can take your choice: For me it is "yes, please" and "both, thank-you".

* If you are reading this, and it seems strange, you are quite normal*

In retrospect I should have gone all analogue instead and spent the time on those lyrics that simply require listening to on vinyl and putting a pencil to paper!  That of course puts me in mind of  New York, which metaphorically this trip is as yet nowhere near, and Caroline Polachek's line about 'the most evident utensil'.

While entirely imaginary this is proving suspiciously like the real thing.  Transport malfunction and unexpected detours amongst them. It was a very bad idea to start on Wednesday night, however...

The road trip can wait 'till tomorrow except that what was once tomorrow  is now today; and it has been so for a while now. I am, however, still west of the Mississippi and thus some way short of my next musical destination. The rest of today has been spent in Farmville, IA.  If  Facebook notifications are anything to go by then my sister farms a large part of it now.  She is always the industrious one.

Strange day today (August, 19) but not as bad as I thought it might be and

with it came some thoughts on music that had never really occurred to me before.

Travelling east, we will reach the home of another artist that I have mentioned. What is new is that this is now readily available in the UK.  It appeared in the US before her 2010 début album 'Catching A Tiger' and she is from Rock Island, IL. It is one of the Quad Cities that border the river that is the Iowa - Illinois boundary.

A mini-album, it is too long really to be an EP even in the broadest sense, and also totally worth a listen in its own right is Why You Runnin', by Lissie.
Tomorrow is another day so, once it is done, do I then cross the river and head east or do I take a right turn and follow the river south?


You are my guides for I do not have sat-nav for this virtual journey.
I'm heading south by popular request.
Here, therefore, is a thought for the next year and this applies to UK music even though that might seem surprising.

Pedal steel is not exactly that well known over here but it is a very worthwhile complement to slide guitar, which I have long liked.  I think we might be hearing a great deal more of both instruments in the next year or so.


As for the road trip and quite where the journey will end is anyone's guess now.  I like the idea of Seattle, or possibly even Portland, via Canada and I have my reasons why.  That said I'm not paying for the fuel and, that being so, I know exactly the vehicle I would be driving - one that I once owned.
It was nothing remotely flashy... no air con, even heating/cooling was a pretty much hit & miss affair but, at least soon after I bought it it had a CD auto-changer that had more wires than the rest of it but was one of the things that never failed.  That alone was worth all the other problems. It is a journey in progress.


I've got a docket in my pocket
It says all I've ever wanted is to be free.

What's In It For?

Some have been asking, and I have been waiting, for this album to arrive!  The wonder that is the global marketplace has determined that this vinyl album (SP865) has made its way to me from the US via Australia and simply because that was by far the cheapest way to do it. That is patently idiotic.

This was the first outing for my copy of Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo; a 12" LP record just destined to played.

Is it good, like I thought it would be?  Not really perhaps, its rather better than that, and it fits neatly with some of my comments, both recent and forthcoming, on the music at Latitude and, simply because I can, here is a lyric.


What's In It For?

i walked in on a plan to
dissolve all of your wishes
but i couldn't help your mouth
which i missed by two inches
maybe i thought that you and i
could run away alongside
but I didn't understand i was
a cold tear in your raw hide
what's in it for someone with
nothing to do what's in it for me?
what's in it for someone with
nothing to do what's in it for me?
i can read but i won't if i'm sleeping
here without you and all these things
that you learn, i've been knowing since
my childhood. you are tiny and your
lips are like little pieces of bacon
i can feel you on fire 'cause you're
drunk and i seem too cool
know i love it when you put your
fingertips around my shoulder
should i take you to more functions
or would you rather be lonely?
i feel like i'm messing up too much
and i forget where i am, you are
so much wiser and i'm used to
stretching things out so long.

That said the very vinyl virtues are always now going to come with such issues in tow but, as Jack White recently stated, vinyl is the only growing market for tangible recorded music today.  The lyric sheet and associated artwork is just a glorious bonus...

 

 Devin O'Brien provided the album cover artwork and Rebecca Coleman that for the insert.