New Music 2010 - Part 14 - Albums for Autumn

I thought that I would take a break from my musings on Latitude 2010, of which more soon, to mention forthcoming albums by two acts that have already featured here before and both of which I have heard live.

The first comes from duo 'Smoke Fairies' whose stock has been much in the ascendant in 2010, following high-profile support slots and a trip to the US.  After an impressive run of singles and EPs, many of them on vinyl, their début album Through Low Light and Trees is to be released by V2 Coop on September 10 in the UK on 12" vinyl, CD and download. Those of us lucky enough to be going to End Of The Road Festival 2010 that weekend will also have the pleasure of seeing and hearing them perform live on September 12.

This is the album artwork and here is the track listing and also a legal freebie:

Through Low Light And Trees - Smoke Fairies

1. Summer Fades

2. Devil In My Mind
3. Hotel Room
4. Dragon
5. Erie Lackawanna
6. Strange Moon Rising
7. Morning Blues
8. Storm Song
9. Blue Skies Fall
10. Feeling Is Turning Blue
11. After The Rain

"New Album Track 'Strange Moon Rising' now on myspace and also available as a free download from the website www.SmokeFairies.com by signing up to the mailing list. If you're already on it, don't worry we'll be sending you a mail shot with a link very soon!"

For my comment on Smoke Fairies live, at End Of The Road 2010, see here:
http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2010/09/smoke-fairies-eotr-2010-part-3.html

The next item to catch my attention is the second album release by Imelda May. The excellent 2008 début Love Tattoo will be followed (on October 4 in the UK) by Mayhem, which is released by Decca (yes, really).

I am currently unable to say whether this will be available on 12" vinyl but the lead single Psycho, released on June 28, most certainly is available on 7" vinyl.  I posted my thoughts on Imelda May live in Frome last year.

Both of these are well and truly on my list of forthcoming albums and I'm very much looking forward to hearing both.  They are not the only ones by any means...

Set the sails and feel the winds stirring... live in 2009

I left this category - Live Performances of 2009 - towards the end because I thought it would be amongst the easier ones to solve. Oh, how wrong could I be? These are all acts that I have seen live, in a few cases more than once, in 2009 and yet I still can't choose between them.

It has proven an invidious task to whittle the list down to ten, with some pictures to follow soon I intend, and here alphabetically is that list.

• Alela Diane
• Bat For Lashes
• Bellowhead
• Gossip
• Imelda May
• Ladyhawke
• Low Anthem
• Ohbijou
• Recode
• School Of Seven Bells

'Set the sails and feel the winds a-stirring
and towards the bright horizon sail away.'

I could do this list all over again, twice more with no items repeated, and still be quite happy with it. That just shows what I think about live music in 2009.

Note added March 15, 2010:

For more about 'Low Anthem' see here: For new info on 'The Low Anthem' see here:

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2010/03/for-those-who-are-still-doubters.html

Note added December, 8:

The more I think about it the more tempting it becomes.

Love Tattoo - live

It is hard to say what the most incredible live gig I have ever seen is but this is certainly amongst the top ten or so...

The remarkable band not only played almost all of the 2008 album 'Love Tattoo' but also several impressive new songs that are to appear on the second album which, they also said, is due in January 2010. Come the end everyone was asking random strangers "did I really hear that?" and it is the mark of a gig that, although they were doubtless already high, exceeded everyone's expectations of it.

If I see two sets as good or better than this at Latitude 2009 then I shall regard myself as very fortunate. If I don't I shall not feel hard done-by and doubt that I will come away disappointed.

2008 matters because... Part 1

I've not posted much recently but that is not because music has been far from my mind. Rather the opposite in fact; it is just that I have been listening to it and thinking about it rather than writing about it. Several people have asked about lyrics to some albums I have mentioned recently, particularly 'Jill Jackson' - Jill Jackson and 'Love Tattoo' - Imelda May and I hope to have these on-line this coming weekend at the latest.

Some say, and it has been the case for decades, that the latest year is just more proof of the end of the world as we know it. I am quite willing to believe that the global economy in 2008 has suffered vicissitudes unknown in the lifetimes of most of us but does that therefore mean the end of music as we know it? I'd wager that the answer is no for that never really happens, new layers are simply added and, while some genres fade in popularity and prominence (not always the same thing) they rarely disappear completely and have a tendency to return, revisited and reinvented, when least suspected. I have only one reservation and that is: Do you get the feeling that things are undergoing a subtle, but perhaps profound, change?

Think back over the last year and there are some surprises, the most surprising often not being the most immediately obvious. A good and fairly easy place to start is the continuing ascent of apparently unlikely, but often very successful, cover versions.

Who, say three years ago, would have predicted the likes of Adele covering Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love?
It's the only cover on her 2008 début album '19' but what a dangerous choice - he has rarely played it live, hinting that it it is too difficult to perform under pressure - but when she performed it live on 'Later... with Jules Holland' as a piano ballad it went stellar and is now to be a single.
Leona Lewis has just released an updated version of her #1 2007 album 'Spirit', which went straight to the top spot again this week; of the two new tracks on it one is actually a cover version of Run from the 2003 Snow Patrol album 'Final Straw' which she first revealed, by performing it live, on BBC Radio 1's 'Live Lounge' in 2007 and again on X-Factor a couple of weeks ago.

I've heard this cover of Willie Nelson's Angel Too Close To The Ground (from the soundtrack to the 1980 drama Honeysuckle Rose), performed live by Beth Rowley twice now and it is amazing:

If you had not have fallen then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground.

I patched up your broken wings and hung around a while
Kept your spirits up and your fever down.
I knew some day that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found

So leave me, if you need to, but I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground.

It is included, as a duet, on her 2008 début album 'Little Dreamer', which also includes a fine cover of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released and also some very good new songs. In my opinion So Sublime is the best of them, and amongst the best on the album, but it is all a close call.

I'll expand on what I mean by this generalisation in the coming weeks, but this is my premise:
Could the diversity that we have seen this year be the start of a new era of popular music we can hardly yet even imagine?

It is no hardship...

This week I started to listen systematically to every 2008 album release that I own, and make notes, with the idea being to choose the ten or so that I think have mattered the most to me. It is most certainly a labour of love. (It does include albums released in 2007 elsewhere but not in the UK - and, as a balance, I'm also including albums I have that were released elsewhere in 2008 are but not yet on full release in the UK).
It is a larger task than I had presumed and you could say that I've manipulated the rules to suit my purposes but if they can do it on 'X Factor' then surely, in the absence of experts, it is my prerogotive too?
Last minute entries are always welcome, and there may be more yet, but I'm glad that I started this assignment when I did.

A full week of evenings spent listening wouldn't get through half of it and, from a purely practical aspect, necessities such as eating and sleeping make that quite impossible anyway. I also made some predictions for 2008 and so it is therefore only right that I should be held to account.

I think that I'm now settled on about half of it and, if the pattern is anything to go by, it is going to bear no more relationship to the charts - in the UK, the US or anywhere else - than it did last year. That is not to say that I don't listen to, or like, chart music because actually I do; I'll mention some that has caught my ear in 2008 in another post.
'Thoughts On Music 2008' certainly isn't over yet but 'Thoughts on Music 2009' already exists in my mind!