New Music 2014 - Part 1 - Snowbird 'Moon'

I'm so glad that I can mention this now, but also that it is not released until 2014! I have never forgotten seeing Stephanie Dosen live at my first festival in the new era, Latitude 2007, performing songs mostly from her second album 'A Lily For The Spectre'.
Well, finally she is back with a band Snowbird that includes a very surprising line-up, and the album 'Moon' is to be released by Bella Union in early 2014 and to be quite honest I can't wait. This is an album that just has to be purchased on vinyl and I can't see that Bella Union will disappoint.

All that does not detract from the vocals however. This is the lead single from it:

Bella Union is 15 (Part 1) - EOTR 2012

Once upon a time, decades ago and when all was good in the world, there were record labels (remember those things) that you could rely on. I mean that in the sense that if they were on your list of labels to 'like' you could trust that a new release would be at the very least likeable and most possibly lovable even if totally unheard?
Why would one worry about the Iron Curtain, The Cold War or 'mutually assured destruction' when you have a comforting blanket like that?  Or indeed the anti-war artists nibbling at the mainstream... be it in response to events in Malaya, Korea, Vietnam or simply part of a vision of utopia? 
Well, while we haven't reached our panacea yet though the signs are not as poor as some might believe, at least we've got dependable labels back and that is a damn good start.
One of them, Bella Union, is fifteen now and its teenage birthday party was the Friday of End Of The Road Festival 2012 across all four music stages with bands from the Bella Union family. Like all the best parties it started rather early and finished rather late...

Here, on the Garden Stage at around 1pm, is Mountain Man.

Traffic issues, associated with The Dorset Steam Fair apparently, meant they arrived just in the nick of time and without any kit. They borrowed this guitar, that they had never seen before, and promptly nicknamed it 'The Cadillac' - for its white lacquer and shiny chrome fittings...
Suffice it to say that it was not what they would have chosen.

After this start you just knew that it was going to be a remarkable day.

  

Flitting between the various stages at End of The Road is happily very quick and easy to do so off we go to the tented Tipi Stage.  In this case there is a real problem... I didn't take enough pictures but here is one of the only two that I did.

Hannah Cohen, The Tipi Stage @ EOTR 2012.

Another Bella Union artist and her début album 'Child Bride' is quite something. The thing about Bella Union artists, however, is that they are unfailingly good when performing live.
Bella Union does not however just help new artists on the way by releasing their first album... indeed it only signed this one for her second, 'Time Traveller' (2011), although at 22 she is hardly an old-timer. I saw her live at Truck Festival last year, performing with a band, and am now of the opinion that she is better live as a solo artist as here for the band tended to overwhelm the purposefully-fragile beauty of her song-writing and never more so would it be true than of the brand new songs that she essayed last Friday. This really is Alessi in Wonderland and (the prospect of) album #3 is a reason to continue living.
  

Alessi's Ark (Alessi Laurent Marke)  on the Tipi Stage @ 15:05 Friday, August 31.
  

This next artist however, although only recently added to the Bella Union rôster, released his first solo album when I was just a toddler! That, and the next two, have recently been re-released on Bella Union and to go with it he has returned to live touring. He is one of the legendary American songwriters and, as it happens, also a gifted raconteur between those songs.

Van Dyke Parks - Garden Stage @ EOTR 2012, about 17:15 on Friday.

  

This of course just a part of the party and then only those bits of it that, being unable to be in more than one place at a time, I chose to see! Part 2 of that which I saw of the party will follow tomorrow.

A Snowbird In The Gardens Of The North - New Music 2009 - Part 11

This is the continuation of the topic that I mentioned in Music I Want - Part 10 - Infinite Light a week ago (yes, I have it now, it is that good but for a later post).
As I also mentioned then that August is supposed to be a quiet time for album releases; all I can say about that is I hate to imagine what the Autumn-Spring 2009/2010 might bring (aside from the inevitable crop of "festive releases").

No great revelation is this one, given that I'd already mentioned that Bella Union releases would be a theme even before I had a little strop last Friday concerning, amonst other things, the importance of independent labels...

I almost deleted that post yesterday but changed my mind in the end. I'm glad now that I let it be - it was written when it was written: I have never actually deleted a published post in its entirety which, given the blog title, makes sense to me as yesterday's thoughts might not be the same as today's thoughts.

More importantly perhaps, even at my age, occasionally throwing ones toys out of the pram is still - at the very least metaphorically - cathartic and as any child knows it is so much more satisfying to do it when there is an audience, be it a real or imaginary one.

This item is one well publicised and it is on pre-order from an independent retailer. It is the first full-length album from Sleeping States, released in the UK on 17 August by Bella Union, which is fronted by historically peripatetic, but currently Bristol-based, Markland Starkie who is yet another arist I must catch live as soon as possible.
Talking of artists signed to Bella Union in the UK here are two more that I want to see live - Fleet Foxes and The Low Anthem - and that is as near a certainty as is ever possible as they are both playing at 'End Of The Road 2009' and I'm going to that.

When I went to Latitude 2007 however, my first festival in decades, one of the artists who made an immediate impression on the Sunset Stage was then a rather little known singer-songwriter from rural Wisconsin, Stephanie Dosen, who had recently been signed by a label (guess which) that had then just released her second album. I still listen to 'A Lily For The Spectre' on rotation, which says a great deal. It does not, however, demonstrate just what an amazingly good live artist she is.

Why I didn't use this picture two years ago is now an utter mystery to me and I despair!

[Click to enlarge]

Be that as it may she is currently recording her third solo album, again for Bella Union, which should be released in the spring of 2010. The reason it has taken so long is that she's actually recording two albums at the same time - Snowbird is a collaboration between herself and, Bella Union co-founder and ex-Cocteau Twin, Simon Raymonde (in partnership with Robin Guthrie, also of Cocteau Twins). Snowbird have played a few support gigs in the UK since the spring of this year and I haven't caught one of these yet but the potential is obvious.

Sammy is a soldier now...

As we are now in a period of global political and economic uncertainty, and one certainly afflicted by rising energy and commodity prices coupled with falling property values, surely there has to be something to look forward to?
That, I would contest, is music as it seems to have flourished during other similar episodes of uncertainty.

Sammy sleeps alone at night.
She says the world owes her a life.
When she was only five years old
She wouldn't do what she was told
But, when she got to ten
She learned to rein it in.

She knew she'd done something wrong.
She'd never do it again.

But it is so hard to keep the promises you make
And it's so hard to love when all you feel is hate.
Sammy lives in magazines,
She's searching for the perfect jeans.
She'd like to be clean as the sky
Outside and inside; no-one to depend on.

No family or foes, no-one to tell her
What she already knows.

She always says who needs that stuff anyhow?
She once was weak but she's a soldier now.

Major label release?

Definitely not, but that is not to say that Routines - Helene isn't a fine album for the here and now, despite the fact that it was released (Series 8, as SER 001 CD) in 2006, and if the track 'Sammy Is A Soldier Now' was the only good track on it that would still be quite something.
Luckily it isn't, far from it in fact, and not least because 'This Is All We Have To Know' is another very special song, again about growing up, yet cast in a very different light.

The whole album is really good and you should still be able to find it at a reasonable price. If you like it then the previous album, Postcard, and her earlier work with the band 'Barefoot Contessa' might also be of interest.
You might regard it all as slightly gloomy but I would hold that as suitable, given the current mood, because it is not overly depressing either. I could suggest a few other recent contenders in this category too, but so can you...

Please let me know!