End Of The Road 2014 - Part 2

Shortly before I headed off to the idyll that is Larmer Tree Gardens and the venue for End of The Road I posted a "must see" list of eight acts that does not include any of the three, mentioned in my post yesterday, that I saw at both Green Man 2014 and EOTR 2014. This is how I got on with that. I saw the complete sets of seven out of eight; the exception was Pink Mountaintops and largely because of a time (and day!) scheduling change, but I still saw a few songs in the Big Top tent on Friday.
Lily and Madeleine opened proceedings on The Garden stage on Saturday morning.

They played songs from the forthcoming second LP 'Fumes' and, from what I was able to tell when talking to people during the weekend, gained a whole load of new fans too.

On Saturday evening Marissa Nadler took to the Tipi stage, the smallest of the four main music stages. She has been on my list of "ones to see" for an age, or so it seems, and never more so than since the release of her most recent LP 'July' in February 2014.

This is her seventh studio album in a run that started with 'Ballads of Living and Dying' in 2004. It is the first to have a UK release on Bella Union. Regular readers will be well aware of the importance that I attach to this.

Much the same could be said of Liverpool trio Stealing Sheep since the 2012 début LP 'Into The Diamond Sun'. I mentioned the dragon yesterday.

Stealing Sheep playing The Garden Stage on a gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon. The songs are short, sharply conceived and based for the most part around a percussive format. In the moment it was hard to imagine anything more perfect.  

Stealing Sheep, Tipi Stage, early Monday morning.

Until that is Stealing Sheep became one of very few acts I have seen play two live sets within twelve hours. It is things like this and, more than one might realise, the people you meet that make festivals very special.

Green Man 2014 (again) and an End Of The Road preview...

Right. Just over 36 hours until it is time to head out again for another long weekend of festival fun at End of The Road 2014. At the moment the weather is looking reasonable, and importantly the remnants of Hurricane Cristobel shouldn't play a part in the proceedings. I'm hoping for more of the same meteorological good fortune that accompanied my trip to Green Man 2014 the weekend before last. We shall see.
I shall start with a picture of the band that were first support on the Mountain Stage on Friday evening and that I first saw live on the Garden Stage at EOTR 2013.

Daughter, or here just Elena Tonra thereof, Mountain Stage, Green Man Festival 2014.

So then, what's cooking at End of The Road 2014 and what do I particularly want to see?

Let's start with just eight of them that I want to see live for the very first time. Here listed alphabetically:

• Arc Iris
• Jenny Lewis
• Lau
• Lily and Madeleine
• Marissa Nadler
• Pink Mountaintops
• Richard Thompson
• Stealing Sheep

I chose the particular links to each above based on those that I feel best explain my reason for wanting to see the act or artist live.

There are plenty that I would be delighted to hear again, including two or three from just two weeks back, and many more besides. As my recent post about First Aid Kit mentioned it is interesting to see just how artists develop of the space of a few years. This is another example of that. It is third time I have seen her live and while she was good then she has really grown in stature and confidence. I was blown away the second time, at EOTR .

Anna Calvi - Mountain Stage late Sunday afternoon, Green Man 2014.

Sometimes it takes a lot longer for me to to catch up live. Blue Roses - Blue Roses was one of my favourite albums of 2009. I even wrote about it in January of that year. It has taken more than five years to see her play live, now under her own name, Laura Groves. She played the Walled Garden Stage and it was a perfect foil on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Luck had it that conveniently scheduled not to clash with the above.

Laura Groves, Walled Garden Stage, Sunday, Green Man 2014.

Astonishing though the Mountain Stage is, the Walled Garden Stage is as good as any with the possible exception of The Garden Stage at EOTR. If you know me then you will realise that this is high praise indeed.
This consideration has made me decide that, if I get around to it [before this coming weekend], then the next post will be about Green Man other than the music - the ambience, facilities and all other things that make a festival more than just the line-up. If I don't write it before I return from End of The Road 2014 then maybe my detention homework will be a compare and contrast assignment!

The Longest Day - nearing half-time in 2011

There is irony in that now I have got reliable broadband after almost three weeks without I can't seem the pick up the threads again, which along with other events, explains the slightly cryptic, even diffuse, title.
The fact is that I don't really know what it is going to be about; it is a journey I just had to start before the destination was apparent. In that sense it is akin to last year's rambling (as yet still incomplete) that was New Music 2010 - Part 16 - Across America in music but is written two months earlier  in the musical calendar.
At this point I am only musing on the festivals that I am yet to attend but in many ways the picture is becoming clearer now that I'm actually writing again. That said it may take a while for this to become apparent, if indeed it ever does.
Those artists that I mentioned in the above might actually be a good place to start: Avi Buffalo at Latitude 2011 and Best Coast at EOTR 2011 - and I have seen neither live  but have spent much of the last six months listening to the respective albums.  Switching to the US East Coast two acts that I am very much looking forward to, although very different one from another, are Sarabeth Tucek, who recently released her second album 'Get Well Soon', and Brooklyn's Violens.  Having seen School of  Seven Bells, Chairlift and Telepathe at various points over the last couple of years I have high hopes.
As an aside while on the theme of East Coast artists, Marissa Nadler has just revealed  her fifth album ' Marissa Nadler' and the first to be released on her own label,  Box of  Cedar Records; and given that her 2009 album 'Little Hells' is still right up there on my playlist this is a definite must-have purchase.  I'm not, however and if the art work wasn't a clue, promising that this post will be a whole load of easily accessible summery music.  On the contrary some of it will likely be far more challenging, which is always a good thing.

Marissa Nadler is someone that I have never seen perform live and as far as I know she is not gracing UK stages this summer season.  Getting side tracked like this is something that I'm rather good at; should I mention the forthcoming album by Rosi Golan?  Later maybe...
  
Another realization is that, increasingly so, I have the opportunity to see acts that I have seen in previous years so that I should be able to compare and contrast.  This is something that I am looking forward to as, and this much is always the case, the new acts and artists.  Here are two, starting with the more guitar led:  British Sea Power  and Foals.  On the other hand there are  new guitar bands that I have never seen before: The Vaccines being just one amongst them...  It is going to be interesting, which ever way you look at it .

Spoiled for choice... a new dilemma.

Whatever things might be wrong in my world finding, or simply being notified of, new music isn't usually one of them. In one sense it is almost becoming a problem of its own - what to do about it all - but then that is a positive as music is, at least in part, an escape from reality so to be confronted with a different problem is a change if not a rest.

To illustrate that point here are two items. Firstly UK act Blackbud, local to this part of England as it happens, about which I was asked today (by someone in the US) and the second that I was told about today (a US act as it happens) that I had never heard of before and quite fortunately they are not directly comparable.

Released in 2006 this really should be better known. To say that it is traditional rock is something of an injustice and not least because every track on it is an original composition. That would not matter if it were no good but in fact some songs are so surprising that it merely begs the question "why were they not written before?" It is rock, laid back rock, yes, but certainly not asleep. The illustration is actually that of the 12" LP release (ISOM62LP - Independiente Records, 2006).

On the other hand I learned about this today and it is released in the US tomorrow!

The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

The multi-instrumentalist threesome (Ben Knox Miller, Jeff Prystowsky and Jocie Adams) are from Providence, RI and went as far from civilisation as is possible in Rhode Island to record this acoustic album in winter. I gather that, and the data is plentiful, it is a masterwork of modern acoustica. It is available from the US on vinyl and so, as an indulgence, it is my birthday present to myself.

It won't be the end of the problems though...

...it is hard enough to keep in touch with UK new releases and this is one that isn't.
Little known over here it is, however, amazingly good.