New Music 2016 - Part 32 - Hattie Briggs - Young Runaway

When Hattie Briggs' début LP 'Red & Gold' was released in April 2015 I remember thinking that whatever releases the rest of the year was to bring this was sure to remain amongst my favourites. I was quite right and, given the reviews that the album and her live performances have received in the months that followed, many others feel the same way.

Clearly not one to rest on her laurels and a prolific song writer, just as the spring of 2016 was struggling to get going the 'Here's to Hoping EP' came our way.

This consisted of Tilly's Song, the original release of which pre-dates Red & Gold, and three news songs as a taster of a forthcoming LP. This is that record.

Hattie Briggs - Young Runaway (Wise Dog Records, 8 July 2016).

• The Lake
• Lift Me Up
• Here's to Hoping
• On Your Way
• Digging to Australia
• Have We Met Before?
• Castle On the Sand
• Talk To Me
• You Only Live Once
• The River

The ten songs are all new and self-written. 'Red and Gold itself only had a single cover, that being 'Fields of Gold'. The team behind it, including producer Peter Waterman, remains much the same as that featured on the first record. It is however clear that the team had learned a lot during the making of the first.  It shows in a number of ways, from the more intricate use of supporting musicians to the production. The other feature that sets it apart is that it is a set of songs all written over a fairly short period of time. I haven't really listened to it often enough to chose any particular favourites but I suspect that this may not really be possible because, despite countless times of listening, my favourite tracks on 'Red & Gold' tend to be quite mutable depending on the circumstances prevailing at the time.

Whilst I whole-heartedly commend 'Young Runaway' to your attention I very much suggest that you take any opportunity you get to see Hattie Briggs live - be that busking solo, which she often does, or playing with the full band.

New Music 2015 - Part 21 - Hattie Briggs - Red & Gold

UK music is combustible. In fact it has been a raging fire for several years now. The sparks have even taken root far beyond these shores and the incoming influences vice versa.
As long as it remains as such I don't think I will ever tire of it and, in particular, the tidal wave of acoustic.
It has become very obvious to me these last few years that the artists playing this music were becoming ever younger than their audiences. I have the inkling, particularly recently, that this is finally starting to change too - in the sense only that that they are also attracting younger audiences. Where once Celtic or Celtic-influenced music was the mainstay of UK and Irish folk output, whether traditional or contemporary, the balance has become more even in recent years too. To put it another way, English folk, similarly categorised, has found its sense of purpose and it has become to be realised that it is not, however it may have been perceived to be, simply the accompaniment to Morris Dancing.  Whether these thoughts and observations are relevant only time will tell. It is however a preamble to this - an interesting story of an astonishing change of career direction.

Hattie Briggs is from the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. This is her soon-to-be released, as on April 6, début LP and there is an involved story behind it.

This is the official video to 'A Beautiful Mind', taken from it.

She is now confirmed for Cambridge Folk Festival 2015 - Den Stage, Friday so I believe.

My Music in 2014 - EPs and mini albums

Just four out of so many possibilities are included in this list but there could always be a 'part 2'. These are not in alphabetical order either but rather in ascending order of the number of times I think that have listened to them since I came to be aware/it was released and this is not adjusted for the time factor in each case - I don't keep statistics in that detail.  It is also less influenced by that which I have seen live but I have designs on that too.

• Aimée - Codes

Originally the solo project of Aimée Mackenzie from Liphook, Hampshire, Codes is the latest EP and one on which she has been joined by younger siblings Freya (violin and backing vocals)  and Ross (cajón).

The first Aimée LP should appear sometime in 2015 and this is not only something I look forward to because I have never seen this outfit live either. It should not be a problem; Aimée is announced to play at Behind the Castle Festival, Sherborne, Dorset on 13 June 2015. Their music while predominantly acoustic is really quite a challenge to categorize, which is no bad thing I hasten to add, for it jumps styles and genres between, and sometimes even during, songs.

• Cardboard Fox - Cardboard Fox

This is the most recently released of the four in this list and it is a début release of kinds - three of the four members of this acoustic quartet have featured in these pages as the still fully functioning Carrivick Sisters - Charlotte and Laura Carrivick and John Breese are joined by Joe Tozer on mandolin and acoustic guitar in Cardboard Fox.

Still very much folk based and with self-penned songs this is rather less heavily bluegrass influenced than the Carrivick Sisters' recordings.

• The Black Feathers - Strangers We Meet

This is a duo that I have seen live twice in 2014 and I'm planning on making that three times at Nunney Acoustic Café later this week.

I'm rather hoping that Gloucestershire-based Ray Hughes and Sian Chandler's Strangers We Meet EP might presage, in a wholly good way however, an album sooner rather than later. I just have a feeling that it could be the start of something big. 

The Black Feathers, Cheese and Grain, Frome, 24 October 2014.

I have, unusually for me, chosen three acts based more or less in central southern England here. This next, although I was alerted to it by Folk Radio UK, comprises three young ladies from thousands of miles away.

• Free The Honey - In Our Hands

Free The Honey is from Gunnison in the high mountains of western Colorado, USA. 

This EP had, in so far as I was aware until this week, no physical release and so it marked a rare foray into downloads as far I am concerned. 

This it seems is not true any longer. The rest of this shop looks fascinating too!

That it is my most played EP or mini-album of 2014 says a great deal. As I mentioned back in June it is a delight of unexpected twists and  turns. At seven tracks it is the only one in this list that truly counts as a mini-album although as strictly-defined EPs should have only three, not more or less, and all the above fail on that criterion: Strangers We Meet has five and the other two four tracks each. The really key thing and I think it important to the renaissance of EPs and mini albums in the last several years, is that there is no need for filler. New music, even just a small body of work, can be made available in a physical format, as well as on-line, as a unified whole far sooner and at less cost than heretofore.

New Music 2014 - Part 38 - Elise Yuill and Hattie Briggs

As I know that I shall be busy listening to live music this coming weekend and I shall write about that in due course. I thought that I would try and sneak this post in before then.
This really is new music; two unconnected artists that don't have a released LP between them - yet.
Hattie Briggs, based in Gloucestershire, released EP 'My Shepherd's Hut' all the way back in 2013. It does I strongly suspect suggest the angle that her début LP 'Red and Gold', which is to be released in 2015, will take. Don't fear if you read that that one of the album's producers is Peter Waterman - he is not the same as Pete Waterman, the maestro of pre-millennial UK pop and preserved railways! The other producer is Dan Cassidy and he is, truth be told, brother of the late lamented Eva Cassidy.
For some reason I am in a mood for watching songs with video this evening. So, while it totally recommend the above mentioned EP this is a track that is not on it!

Elise Yuill is based in Plymouth but originally from Somerset. Her music is folk/roots but, as it is in the following song sometimes firmly lodged in the Americana mould. I can find no trace of released recordings but if this, a song called ' The Five Regrets', is anything on which to base judgement that should change if only by popular demand.
  Five Regrets from Elise Yuill on Vimeo.
I have spent much of the evening listening and watching these.