EOTR 2011 - Friday from America

Of course there was a wealth of acts from the US appearing over all three days of End Of The Road 2011 but Friday threw up a particularly interesting selection of ones that I really wanted to see performing live representing both coasts and much that comes between. I really enjoyed all of these sets. Here are two of them:

Tipi Stage, early Saturday afternoon - Sarabeth Tucek.

Her second album 'Get Well Soon' was released earlier this summer. I have had her self-titled début since it appeared in 2007 but I have no idea quite how I came to hear of this in the first place. Suffice it to say that it has been listened to consistently ever since. Neither album is really to be described as feel-good music at all, because the tone is too introspective and self-analytical for that. It is however very comforting and, while this might seen an odd thing to say when commenting on a festival performance, perhaps best listened to alone even if alone as part of a crowd and being in a crowd can be a particularly alienating kind of loneliness.
  

The contrast with the next act could hardly have been more pronounced. In a couple of minutes I walked from the indoor intimacy of the Tipi stage to the glorious afternoon sunshine of the Wood Stage and in doing so I travelled from the preoccupations of the Atlantic north-east to those of the beaches of California.

This was feel-good, beach party music. I swear I could hear the sound of surf by the end of the set.

This is Best Coast. Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno. Wood Stage, Saturday afternoon.

  

I couldn't convince the others that this was the way forward so I went along regardless. The whole point of music such as this, as I see it, is that it is frivolous and inconsequential fun. The whole set followed this approach, and it was great. In between the songs random chat involving such things as Snacks' thoughts on life - Snacks is Bethany Cosentino's cat, who appears on the 'Crazy For You' album cover and also in numerous band publicity shots, in case you were wondering!

This could all lead to a diffuse, rambling performance. It took me a few songs to work out why it was not so. One person, and only one person, was in charge of this live show and that was the drummer, Ali Koehler.

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.