Dyn Gwyrdd 2015 - Green Man - Part 4 - amrywiaeth

Amrywiaeth. What's that all about?
Well this post is about a lot of things that haven't made it into the previous three posts on Green Man 2015, so what to call it was a mystery. Welsh has this one word that encompasses several English ones - such as miscellany, variation, variety, assortment - and is more appropriate in this instance than any one of them. That is my excuse.
The tented Far Out stage is large and, whilst I didn't spent as much time there this year as last, I have mentioned it hardly at all since seeing Gwenno play it on Thursday afternoon. First support Sunday evening was an Australian artist rapidly establishing herself as one of the break-out acts of 2015, following the release of her first full LP 'Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit'.

Courtney Barnett. Far Out Stage,  Green Man 2015, 23 August.

She is not the most forthcoming of artists on stage, however, tending to lurk in the shadows towards the edge and there were many such in the Far Out tent. The performance was simply breathtaking -  verging on the confessional.

In keeping with my oft-stated policy of favouring the smaller stages and the opening acts on any stage here is the smallest stage - Green Man Rising - and the opening act of the Festival on it, Seren the Heron.

A Crickhowell native, she has just released her début album Scrambled Mess. Give it a listen. Here and now.

One thing about the Green Man Rising stage is that as well as having a lovely setting overlooking a pond and a with couple of wasp nests for some excitement, it has a fantastic view across the arena of the neighbouring Mountain stage.

Here on the Green Man Rising Stage, and when I found a wasp nest for myself, Saturday lunch-time...

London three-piece Girl Ray.

It is impossible to sum up a three day festival in four posts and with twenty-something pictures, however much one might wish to try. The truth is, really, you just have to be there. Some things are so unpredictable that they can only ever be memories and this could very easily have been just another one of them.

St. Vincent, headlining The Mountain stage on Sunday evening. 

New Music 2015 - Part 41 - Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think...

The title 'Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit.' refers, of course, to the great divider that the Eurovision Song Contest has become as it celebrates its 60th!
The archetypal dysfunctional 'family' is joined by Australia this year and I for one welcome that wholeheartedly. I can't imagine how anything but good can come of it. Think what the headlines would be if Guy Sebastian were to win with 'Tonight Again'?
Australia is "not allowed" to host the competition so where would it be held? I'd nominate Ireland, to be quite honest and not just because there is no danger of them winning it themselves in 2015 as they failed to make the final.

The foregoing is an unlikely scenario and whatever happens when Eurovision 2015 is gone and forgotten this next Australian, starting to take the UK by storm with an album that is as difficult to describe as it is clever and that extends to its duplicitous title - 'Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit.' - is extremely unlikely to suffer the same fâte.
What is more, her take on events chimes rather nicely with the way many of us in the UK view Eurovision and many other things.

There is a constituency that she is just born to inherit - those that like deliberately obtuse songs full of internal questioning and clever wordiness. I could listen to this LP over and over again and not get bored but, equally, I just know that it will have rabid haters for exactly the same reasons that make me a fan. It is like Marmite or more appropriately, and it appears in the lyric to one song, the antipodean equivalent Vegemite. Be that as it may I'm happy as she is playing Green Man Festival 2015. It has some references that I could mention, at least for me, but I don't think that I need to mention them. 
Astonishingly this is Courtney Barnett's début album but I recommend that you also listen to 'A Sea of Split Peas' (2013), which is a compilation of songs from her EPs.