New York @ Latitude 2010

Time for a very slight change of tack now. Last year I saw two truly impressive NYC acts at Latitude - Chairlift and Yes Giantess - neither of which I had heard live or possessed (at the time) any music by or from. I have posted about both and the Chairlift album 'Does You Inspire You' remains one of the most frequently played that I have; I bought it immediately afterwards.

This year I was equally blessed but the dynamic is slightly different. The thing runs like this: my fourth Latitude and so surely somehow the possibility of a disappointment beckoned.  Call me gloomy, like Eeyore, if you like but it was not to be so this time.

In fact it was possibly, as regards the music, the best I have yet attended and my main failing is that I am simply unable to be in more than one place at once. Last autumn I saw School of Seven Bells, as support to Bat For Lashes, in Bristol and they were very good.  'Alpinisms' remains a fine album, and I still like it, but when I was lucky enough to catch them playing live, once again, at Latitude 2010 I was in for a real surprise.

Here they are in the tented, 6500 capacity, 'Word Stage' early Saturday afternoon.

They were absolutely captivating playing songs from their second album 'Disconnect From Desire'. With my limited abilities this stage is not one at which I find it easy to take pictures but, although I say so myself, I'm rather proud of the above. It is unaltered except to shrink it to a blog-friendly size but, far more importantly, it encapsulates almost all that I like about festivals and live music in general.
The other NY band that I was absolutely delighted to see live is one that has divided opinion to some considerable extent.  I will say that I have pretty well all their recorded output, as it pleases me, but Brooklyn-based 'The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart' is clearly not to everyone's taste and I respect that.

They played the 'Sunrise Arena' early on Sunday evening. Some say that their music is derivative shoegaze, shambling, or even cutesy.  I'd say that it is actually all of these, and also so much more, simultaneously. I find it both captivating and also quite charming escapism.

New Music 2010 - albums, festivals and things

Don't second guess your feelings

you were right from the start.
And I noticed she's your lover
but she's nowhere near your heart.

This city is for strangers
like the sky is for the stars.
I think it's very dangerous
if we do not take what's ours.

It is true that I have written little in the last fortnight but that is in large part because I have been listening to and reading about new music. But not just new music, as the above lyric implies...

Some cities come round again and again; and New York is one of them. Only by luck did I happen to catch some of Jamay (Jaime Seerman) at Latitude 2007 - I had never heard of her then but the lyrics above are from 'Blue or Gray' on her album Autumn Fallin'. One that I then bought and have never forgotten. In many ways I am far better informed these days, which is mostly good, but the thrill of discovering quite unknown acts at a festival is not something I would wish to forgo. Another New York band, that I am already aware of so the foregoing does not really apply, is this:

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, recently added to the line up for Latitude 2010, is one I'd much wished to hear live though did not expect to and this was, in my opinion, one much under-rated album of 2009. 
Levelled against it is that it is not particularly original - shoe-gaze circa 1986 being something I read as a criticism. Well the band members are certainly not old enough to remember that first time around and so, although it seems to have passed me by, I see no reason not to take it at face value now and given the more recent EP (the excellent 'Higher Than The Stars') it is something that I'm now even less inclined to concern myself about.