Do I stay? Or do I go? - Latitude Festival 2012

It's decision time folks... I've been to the last five, but whether I go to Latitude 2012 is largely down to you this time. I had a few issues with Latitude 2011 and the weather wasn't really one of them although it was an inconvenience to all.  What do you think about the line up (as already announced) below? Please note that I go almost only for the music.

If I stay (much nearer home) I still have the option to go to Priddy Folk Festival, or indeed the revived Truck Festival instead. If not those then plenty of other opportunities are available and I'm already going to 'No Direction Home 2012' (its first offering at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire) and 'End Of The Road 2012' so I'm hardly going to be feeling left out. In fact the line up announced for these, and it is far from complete, is pretty amazing from my personal perspective and is something about which I shall comment in more detail very soon.

Ingénus only? Not this time!

An oft-heard criticism of the Mercury Music prize is that it favours new artists, and maybe that is true, but that doesn't mean that they always prevail and certainly not in 2008...

Manchester's Elbow have been around for about a decade, very impressive without the acclaim that should go with it, but finally their fourth album 'The Seldom Seen Kid' has done them proud and it has, rather against the popular odds, won them the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. It is not deserved on tenacious effort alone, though they certainly have that, and not on sales but simply on its own merit.
While it is special it seems effortlessly so - not only is it the album that so many bands would die to write, they are a band that can also play live as naturally, and I was lucky enough to catch them live earlier this summer.

Elbow live @ Latitude 2008.

2008 Mercury Music Prize nominations

The twelve albums that are short-listed for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize were made public today and, as it happens, the list dovetails with both my thoughts on Latitude 2008 and several other matters on which I have commented in the last year.

To serve as a point of reference here are the 2008 Mercury nominations (in alphabetical order):

• Adele - 19
• British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
• Burial - Untrue
• Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
• Estelle - Shine
• The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement
• Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
• Neon Neon - Stainless Style
• Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In The North Sea
• Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
• Radiohead - In Rainbows
• Rachel Unthank And The Winterset - The Bairns

The selection is, as perhaps we would like, eclectic and that makes my life easier. Two acts here - Elbow and British Sea Power - were amongst those that I saw live at Latitude 2008 and in a pantheon that was not without competition, even if some of it was not eligible for a Mercury nomination, was far from lightweight.
[As usual click the images for a rather larger version.]

I've been told many times that British Sea Power are stunning live and, if I ever doubted you, all I can say is that I now plead guilty as charged; you were right and I was wrong!

Naval pennants, foliage and Hungarian backing vocals - British Sea Power live at Latitude 2008!

On a different tack I'm delighted to see that modern folk gets two nominations and that Northumbrian band Rachel Unthank And The Winterset are amongst them is yet another massive boost for the impact that folk-inspired music now has and, as you might well know by now, Laura Marling has been on my play list for over a year and it is about time that she got some recognition.

This leads me on to another band in that genre and, as there is a collective tendency here, one with whom Laura Marling has also often played live. That is Noah and The Whale. They were at Latitude 2007 on the Lake Stage but I didn't get to see them. They were back this year, on the much larger Uncut Arena, and although there was a big turnout this time I did see them and it was another highlight of the weekend.

Noah and The Whale - live on the Uncut Arena - at Latitude 2008 on Sunday 20th July 2008.

To listen to in 2008 - Part 3

There are a few conflicting influences at work here and so I suspect this is going to prove rather a strange selection. I'll try and explain why I want to listen to these but even if I fail to do so in a comprehensible way it will possibly go some way to explaining the ways in which I end up discovering new music!
First up is the recently released fourth album by a band that I have been meaning to listen to for ages but for which that has never actually happened:

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

I'm afraid I can't yet tell you if I like it, as it is still on order, but judging from the reviews I have read I suspect that I will. The push that made me get it was that they are now confirmed for Latitude 2008 and I know how many artists that I saw at Latitude 2007 I still listen to and that have been mentioned in this blog; many of which I had never even heard of, let alone heard any of their music, before I went!

London has produced a whole crop of interesting and often successful new artists in the last couple of years and one of this year's is widely tipped, well before the release of an album and based mostly on their live following, to be The Clik Clik.

Maya Yianni and Stefan Abingdon share vocals with additional instrumental assistance from two others who play bass and percussion. The result is difficult to describe but is another part of the pop-is-back-in-favour phenomenon. This is organic and messy, even slightly dirty, pop that is also written, mixed and produced by the band; it is meant to be performed and heard live. It mirrors a trend and if I were writing this for a certain national newspaper it would ally with the recent phenomenal rise in the demand for organic food and now also for allotment gardens.

Chance still plays a big part in discovery and while reading some site, having searched for a completely different artist, the album artwork below caught my attention as it so reminded me of some old albums that I still have but have not listened to for years (in some cases probably more than a decade) and I just had to read the whole article. It seems that melodic heavy rock inspired by mythic themes is not dead after all - at least not in America!

The Sword - Gods Of The Earth

Well, all I can say for now is that it made me head for the less visited parts of my music collection and listen to the 1982 album Chase The Dragon by Magnum, which had actually been recorded two years earlier but even then label "issues" were a problem.
What a blast from the past that turned out to be and so I'm planning to get Gods Of The Earth, the sophomore album by Houston-based The Sword, if only to see how a quarter of a century has treated this particular sub-genre. I suspect I might like it too, if only for nostalgic reasons!

Note added 28 March:

As a matter of fact, and due to my curiosity, here is the lyric of 'The Spirit', which was on the aforementioned album by Magnum:

THE SPIRIT
Don't place your trust in foolish promises sworn
Nor cryptic message scrawled upon every wall.
Street corner justice beware -
The spirit will find you, always be fair.
The shallow verse once read means nothing at all
Nor fearful gestures made for instant recall.
In lies your heart will not share
The spirit inside you used without care.

The spirit that guides you, follow it through.
To the spirit inside you always be true.
You know you'll despair
If the spirit inside you is used without care.

The battlefield of glory pales into rust
The river flows much thicker fed by each thrust.
No beast alive does compare
The spirit beside you everywhere.
Let not your head be turned by tainted reward
And dreams of fortune won, forever to hoard.
Your conscience could not repair
The spirit inside you used without care.

'Cause it will be shelter, help you how to decide
And it will be your helper should your loyalties divide.

The ash of pages swept before the cruel wind,
The loss of choices, praises no one will sing,
No clues to how you will fare
The spirit implores you tread where you dare.
The dust lies thick on casket rich or quite poor
Distinction disappears, the worm doth ignore.
The candle burns out once more
But the spirit inside you won't be ignored.

A Happy Easter Bunny - that's me!

Why you might ask? Nothing to do with chocolate eggs, although I'm certainly not averse to them should they come my way, but this is really, really why...

[Click image to see it full screen.]

Tickets went on sale at this evening at 19:00 (GMT). I went To Latitude 2007, booking my ticket at the last moment, but I certainly wasn't going to take any chances this year. Let's just hope the weather is good!