EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 2)

This was the most amazing thing - the band I thought least likely to... Slow Down, Molasses is one I have known about for some time. 'I'm An Old Believer' but that wasn't going to mean that I might get to see them live unless I went to Canada which, expense aside, I would be quite happy to do. Thanks to EOTR I saw them twice. Here they are playing for the second time on the Tipi Stage at, so my camera tells me, 01:50 on Monday morning.

That I hot-footed it from the Garden Stage to the Tipi Stage, making it just in time for their first set, made the perfect start to Sunday. Why the need to do this? Well I just had to see fellow Canadians Lightning Dust too, also for the first time.
  

  Amber Webber and Joshua Wells are the heart of Lightning Dust.
They are also half of Black Mountain.

End Of The Road Festival 2011

With my tickets  for Latitude 2011 and End Of The Road 2011 already booked, only yesterday was I thinking which artists I currently anticipate (or would like to see) populating the stages at them. In due course I will post my thoughts...
In the case of EOTR 2011 I can go a bit further than that for today the first tranche of confirmed acts was announced and here it is:

• Bo Ningen 
• Bob Log III
• The Deadly Syndrome 
• Doug Paisley 
• Dry The River
• The Fall
• Gordon Gano and the Ryans
• John Grant
• Jolie Holland
• Josh T Pearson
• La Sera
• Lanterns on The Lake
• Lightning Dust
• Micah P Hinson
• Midlake
• Mountain Man
• Treefight for Sunlight
• Twin Shadow
• Wild Beasts
• Woods
• Young Man
• The Walkmen
• Willy Mason

Tickets are on sale from www.endoftheroadfestival.com/tickets and if you purchase before the end of 2010 you save £5 due to the impending increase in VAT.

It is too soon to really digest the above list, let alone expound even my first thoughts on it, but two that would have been on my 'want to see in 2011 list' without a doubt are these.
 'Lightning Dust'I have never seen but shares Amber Webber and Joshua Wells with 'Black Mountain', which I saw at both Latitude and EOTR in 2010.
The return of 'Lanterns on the Lake' is fantastically well deserved and verges on or into New Music 2011 territory in any case. One of my revelations of EOTR was this six-piece, in the Tipi Tent on Saturday evening: it was more than a misfortune when their final song of the set, the wonderful 'I Love You, Sleepyhead', was cut short after only seconds by a total power failure.  Not only are they returning to EOTR the band announced yesterday, on its website, that it is now signed to Bella Union Records.  Regular readers will know that is a huge thumbs-up in my book.

Music I Want In 2009 - Part 10 - Infinite Light

Well we might not be getting 'the barbeque summer' that back in the spring we were promised would be ours to lift the mood, at least here in the rain-sodden UK, but not all is bad. August may traditionally be a quiet time for new releases, particularly of albums, but here are a few that I would like...
From Canada - and arguably where else - comes this.

Amber Webber and Joshua Wells - both also members of 'Black Mountain' - return with a second album release from their side-project 'Lightning Dust', the first of which was the self-titled album that I have mentioned before and, very importantly, still love to bits. Infinite Light is, as was the first album, released (yesterday in the UK and today in the US and Canada) by Jagjaguwar Records and is available on 12" LP, CD and download.

Now jump continents, and styles, as here is Sweden's First Aid Kit that was unfortunately a last-minute no-show at Latitude 2009. All is not lost on the live front as they are appearing at the 'End Of The Road Festival' in September, along with many other acts I want to see, and so I'll be there too.

Live at Puregroove Records, London. Better pictures soon I hope!

The 8-track 'Drunken Trees EP' (more of a mini-album really) is available on vinyl too and although in part currently best known for an act of breathtaking bravado --- covering Fleet Foxes' Tiger Mountain Peasant Song barely months after its original release --- they have thus been compared with Seattle's 'Fleet Foxes' and also their 2009 heirs and successors, Providence, RI based 'The Low Anthem' --- but they did more than simply got-away-with-it. Unlike the other two aforementioned, who are signed to Bella Union in the UK, they were snapped up by UK indie label Wichita Recordings.

Maybe, decades later, they still have somebody who can spot such things? I hope so...

I hear you singin' in the wire,

I can hear you through the whine

And the Wichita lineman

Is still on the line.

Whatever the truth this recording suggests that they could get along just fine in such company because the self-written tracks are also pretty special too, so now the surprise factor...

They are two sisters from Stockholm, with a combined age of thirty-five and a remakable world-weary take on music for two so young. In a truly inspired piece of booking, doubtless done months ago when what I have just written was far from obvious, all three bands are on the bill for 'The End Of The Road'!

I've plenty more to add, including more fascinating developments in the pipeline from Bella Union, but this post is getting long enough and unfortunately I have rather more important, but much less interesting, things to do just now.

Worth the risk?

I mentioned that I wanted to hear this a couple of months ago and finally, having read some negative reviews and then been unable to source it on vinyl at a sensible price for some time, it arrived yesterday morning. For once I was actually at home when the postman knocked and he asked me, very politely and in a slightly round-about way, what these apparently strange, square, flat, thin packages contained.
I told the truth - a vinyl LP.

Was this LP worth the wait?
Taking risks when buying music unheard is inevitable and not to do so is now unthinkable as far as I'm concerned. It is true that I've bought a few things I don't much care for but that can happen even when one has heard some tracks. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me - it is my only gambling tendency - and I'm winning far more often than losing. Surely most people don't expect to to hear a novel before reading it so why should music be any different?

Well, as I suspected, it is neither nu-miserable nor Black Mountain-lite. In The Future - Black Mountain (2008) is also one of my current 2008 favourites but Lightning Dust is more than likely to also be right up there with the best.
Nothing like the expansive sound of Black Mountain, this is really a late-night, early morning compsition. Keyboards and strings, including cello on several tracks, accompany the lyrics perfectly. Amber Webber wrote them and she sings them too, sometimes accompanied by Joshua Wells, and this is a very different proposition to Black Mountain. If you have 'In The Future' then the best guide is the track Night Walks (see lyrics) as that was written and sung by Webber.
I can't pick any favourite tracks yet and I suspect that it is one of those albums, released in this case by Jagjaguwar, on which I may never be able to do so. It is that good.

In The Future - Black Mountain

I've mentioned this before and now had this on vinyl for some weeks. While not everyone agrees with me it is fast becoming one of my favourites of 2008 so far.

The first time I heard it the opening guitar gambit instantly reminded me of a classic Rainbow song. Not, as far as I have yet been able to tell, any particular one but the issue of sounding somehow generic 1970s/1980s is something that other reviews I have read have also levelled against Black Mountain.
I can see where they are coming from, and there are plenty of other influences in there if one cares to mention them, but I think it is wonderful nevertheless. The other common accusation is that it is rather gloomy in tone and execution and I'd generally agree with that but rarely does it seem as apocalyptic as that by, to name an album by another Canadian band, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.
Night Walks is the final track on In The Future.

Night Walks

Night walks with me
And the moon leaves me just enough light to see
And my shadow my only company
And it moves just like me
And it walks just like me.

Help me to breathe.
I can only read what I see.
Be kind to me ‘cause the words come out carefully
And they break up easily
And I woke up in between.

Night walks with me
And the moon leaves me just enough light to see
And my shadow my only company
And it moves just like me
And it walks just like me.

Had Rainbow become folk-tinged, given to experimenting with acoustic instruments and also had a female co-vocalist, it is not quite impossible that they might have turned out a song like some of these here but that is only the half of it. After repeated listening it still does remind me of Rainbow however and it makes me want to dig out some, and therefore perhaps discover why, but mine was sadly all on long departed cassettes. I have no doubt that the CDs are out there and readily available - maybe the vinyl too that I should have bought that for pennies when I had the chance - but it is no secret that I have a soft spot both for folk and also the bombast of rock and that may matter more when it comes to my liking of In The Future.
More importantly, to tell the truth and despite or perhaps because of the mediocre reviews of it that I've read so far, I'm pretty keen to hear the eponymous album Lightning Dust recorded by Amber Webber and Joshua Wells. (Jagjaguwar CD/LP JAG112)

Deprived of the rest of Black Mountain - Steve McBean has his own side project Pink Mountaintops - this is even fitted by some in the category of nu-miserable. Truth-to-tell, and I can just imagine how I think it might sound, I just don't think so but I'm interested to see if I'm right and buying it completely unheard is a risk I'm now quite prepared to take.

To listen to in 2008 - Part 2

Too much pop, dance and nu-folk maybe?
I'm not too concerned about that, and can't tell you how good Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree is... I'm currently listening to it on vinyl. That said wouldn't it be sad if everything sounded this way? Yet another Canadian band ride to the rescue!

Black Mountain come from Vancouver and have released their second album, In The Future, on Jagjaguwar Records who last year gave us the Besnard Lakes' rather surprising second album The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse.

The two are not the same but when it comes to their heavy/progressive rock tendencies there is a point of comparison. In addition both bands continue the now common Canadian tradition of being a collective of musicians who also make use of male-female vocals: in the case of Black Mountain these are (mostly) provided by Steve McBean and Amber Webber and is allied, on some tracks, with a real folk sensitivity.

Black Mountain - In The Future.

In many ways it sounds considerably influenced by the music of the early 1970s but not remotely in a 'tribute band' sort of way; in fact the most derivative 1970s thing about this album is that Jagjaguwar have also made it available on 12"!