2015 Festivals --- New music, artists and everything else...

I was in the supermarket today and in front of me in the queue was a group of four people, all in their 30s I'm guessing, two male and two female, discussing the idea of going to a festival this summer - I don't know which one and I suspect that they had no particular target. The discussion, which was loud enough for me to be able to hear most of it, went along these lines...
Person 1: "I can't make a decision before the (headline?) acts are announced."
Person 2: "Or until we see the weather forecast."
Persons 3 & 4 then added various caveats - involving camping, toilets, showers and the like.

I just smiled to myself: I can see that this is a plan that is almost certainly not going to happen. This approach is a sure-fire way to never go to a festival. Even if they did do so the arguments about what to see would be likely be catastrophic.
I really wanted to say why doesn't one of you simply commit to going. If nobody else follows the leader then just go anyway and  face the music. At least you can say you were there and report back on the brilliant/awful time that you had!
Of course there is the utterly selfish approach, which is to go alone by design. That way you can't spend all the time with your friends. You have to meet and talk to strangers and it just happens. What is more you can go see whatever you want, plan a military-style campaign if you wish to, and yet change your mind as often as you please. This is the diametric opposite of loneliness.

That brings me to albums released today in the UK by two artists that I have seen before at festivals and that I plan to see again in 2015.

Laura Marling is confirmed, as of today, for End Of The Road Festival 2015.

The Staves are playing Green Man Festival 2015.

This will be the third time that I have seen each at festivals (and never anywhere else).  Indeed I have seen both at EOTR in the past and each once at a different festival too. I may look out some pictures of those performances. I shall certainly comment on both albums once I have had the chance to listen to them sufficiently to form a stable opinion.
I shall return to the artists and acts that I have not seen before very soon.

New Music 2015 - Part 11 - 'Animal Fear': video and two forthcoming LPs

The start of February is something of a 'light the blue touch paper' moment; in large part due to the impending flood of new LPs but also the much-anticipated summer festival artist announcements.
This missive concerns two forthcoming albums by artists that I have seen live at festivals before. This is the first to be released and if the video to the first single from it (below) is to be believed the second album in this post will be a posthumous release! Both artists already have a history of somewhat unsettling songs and I'm thinking of these, 'Night Terror' and 'My Manic and I' (2007), here.
Now they are neighbours in London's East End this is what happened when Marika Hackman enlisted Laura Marling for the video to 'Animal Fear', on which she plays electric bass, and taken from the forthcoming album of the former.

'We Slept At Last' will be released on 16 February in the UK.

The video below is not for little ones to watch.

Laura Marling releases her fifth studio LP 'Short Movie' on 23 March.  Both releases, I rather suspect, will propel the cause of modern folk-pop further into untraditional territory. It is in the process of evolving into something that is in-and-of-itself. Other artists I could list here are many but one that I noticed a couple of years back is Lucy Cait and especially the 'Gabriel's Wharf EP' (2013).