New Music 2017 - Part 17 - The Vintage TV Recordings - Danni Nicholls

Three months into 2017 and the days are longer. I have some 2017 festival tickets booked but the summer still feels a way off. Over the Easter weekend I intend to embark on another virtual road trip through music whilst also considering the fact that logic dictates at least some of the defining LPs of 2017 must have now been released, the consequent problem there being that I may not actually know about them yet.
Before that I'm going to indulge in my liking for live recordings; to wit that which is the title of this post. I finally saw Danni Nicholls live at Truck Festival last July after a couple of false starts due to venue issues resulting in shows cancelled to the detriment of all concerned.

This comprises tracks from both LPs and I have mentioned them before in posts. They are 'A Little Redemption' (2013) and 'Mockingbird Lane' (2015).  The play list here is as follows:

• Long Road Home
• Leaving Tennessee
• Beautiful Game
• Hey There, Sunshine
• Beautifully Broken
• Between Forever and Goodbye
• Where The Blue Train Goes
• Let Somebody Love You
• A Little Redemption

If you like this you will like both the studio LPs too.  I believe that her third LP is in the works. Be that as it may I strongly recommend that you also need to catch the artist live-for-real because even the best, most sensitively produced, live recording doesn't hold a candle to being there in person.

Danni Nicholls, Saloon Bar stage, Truck Festival, 16 July 2016.

New Music 2016 - Part 54 - Yola Carter - Orphan Offering

Another post and another perspective.  This is released next week and the excitement around it is as deserved as it is palpable. What it is not is the sudden appearance of a new artist.  A change of moniker, yes, but still the star that she always was.

Yolanda Quarty as she was then known is a singer and, very importantly, a song writer from just outside of the Bristol metropolitan area of the UK. Far enough outside the city, which is significantly multicultural, to be a real problem. She toured the world as vocalist with Massive Attack, playing to crowds numbered in the tens-of-thousands, but that was no outlet for her song-writing.  She also became the lead vocalist and songwriter of a band called Phantom Limb. Yes they were good, very good indeed.
I first saw Phantom Limb live when they played The Griffin in Frome one Sunday afternoon in August 2008 playing to an audience of tens (just a few tens). I wrote about that here. They recorded two studio albums, Phantom Limb and The Pines (2012) as well as Live in Bristol (2009).

Now Yola Carter is the new best thing. This is her, writing for herself, with a band chosen to make that what she wants it to be. 
My first comment is that it is amazing. It doesn't really matter if you have or have not heard the earlier works but you might well find them interesting. There are some stunning songs on both LPs and the live versions certainly don't disappoint. In fact that is the way to seek them. Yola Carter is therefore very much towards the top of my list of artists to see live in 2017.

Yola Carter - Orphan Offering (Ear Trumpet Records, 1 November 2016).

Yola Carter - Orphan Offering:

• Home
• What You Do
• Orphan Country
• Heed My Words
• Dead and Gone
• Fly Away

Orphan country, live at The Golden Lion, 244 Gloucester Road, Bishopston, Bristol. I'm not sure who is playing percussion here but that aside, l - r, this comprises Nuala Honan (guitar), Kit Hawes (guitar), Yola Carter (lead vocals), Beth Porter ('cello) and Aaron Catlow (fiddle).

New Music 2016 - Part 45 - Lady Nade - Hard To Forget

When you are at a little gig and you hear something that seems too important to ignore...  I am glad to say I have been in that situation plenty of times. Some of those artists are now well known, some are not. There seems to be little rhyme or reason concerning which fall into one category or the other.

Any which way, this is one such; Bristol artist Nadine Gingell whom I first saw play live here in Frome, Somerset way back in 2011. This is her first full length release.

Lady Nade - Hard To Forget (Kitchen Sink Records/Lady Nade, 12 August 2016).

• Hard to Forget
• Waiting for You
• Mind's Made Up
• Those Late Nights
• Don't Make Him Wait
• I Got You Daddy
• Complicated
• Kiss This Troubled Mind
• 6AM
• Get You on My Own

The genre floats effortlessly between acoustic soul, pop and folk and that's not remotely a problem. The lyrics raise the bar and then the voice that sings them nails it.
That's what made me take notice back then. In that sense alone the title of the album is absolutely spot-on too.

Mind's Made Up

New Music 2016 - Part 22 - Cale Tyson - Careless Soul

While this is about a forthcoming LP, Careless Soul is the first full-length by American artist Cale Tyson, it is also a very appropriate vehicle for the continuation of a number of themes concerning the music industry that I have espoused over a period of a few years.

Cale Tyson - Careless Soul (Clubhouse Records, 8 April 2016).

Cale Tyson, born and bought up in Texas, now calls Nashville his adopted home.  Both these facts, perhaps unsurprisingly, have had a considerable bearing on his music but in ways that are either not immediately apparent to the mainstream Nashville music industry of the major labels or not to its liking for artistic (and by implication audience) control...
There is a great deal of tradition involved here - this is country soul - but very little pastiche. It was recorded in Muscle Shoals, AL, at Fame Studios and with top-drawer acoustic musicians. This is part of a wider revival and indeed re-invention of traditional country subject material. Careless Soul comprises twelve songs:

• Staying Kind
• Somebody Save Me
• Careless Soul
• Easy
• Traveling Man
• Pain in My Heart
• Railroad Blues
• Dark Dark
• High Lonesome Hill
• Gonna Love a Woman
• Pain Reprise
• Ain't It Strange

A fact perhaps more surprising is that it will be released in the UK before its North American release. In the last decade the change in attitude in the UK towards this kind of music - let's group it under the broad church of folk, roots and Americana just for the purposes of the here and now - has been nothing short of seismic. The traffic in artists has been bi-directional. A look at festival line-ups either side of the Atlantic, for 2016 or in the previous few years, will soon show that to be true.

Why has this happened?
Well I certainly don't know that, but it appears not to be a result simply of a single generation. Both artists producing such music and the audiences attracted by them have been becoming younger without, unusual historically-speaking, alienating older listeners; it pains me to feel I ought to count myself amongst the older listeners. The most encouraging thing is the egalitarian nature of the younger ones and the everyone-has-something-to-bring attitude to all this.

Cale Tyson came to the wider attention of UK audiences in 2015 when Clubhouse records released Introducing Cale Tyson, which is a complete synthesis of his previous two EPs/mini-albums High On Lonesome (2013) and Cheater's Wine (2014) that had only had official US releases.
As a taster, because I like it and it displays some of the old-time flavour, I have chosen this original song:


'Old Time Blues', the song later appeared on the High On Lonesome EP, live in Nashville, 26 March 2013.

Should you be wondering who the backing vocalist is, on the left as viewed here, it is Erin Rae and she releases her début album Soon Enough together with her band, as Erin Rae and The Meanwhiles and again through Clubhouse Records in the UK on 3 June 2016. I mentioned it here a couple of months ago. The pedal steel player in the above video, Brett Resnick, is also one of 'The Meanwhiles'.
I think it important that music is starting to rediscover that there is real value to be found in simple links like this. Music as a space to be shared by all those involved, from musicians to audience, rather than dog-eat-dog, short-sighted exploitation. That is another reason why learning to trust artists, independent labels, festivals and one's own instinct is coming to the fore again as a community aspiration after far too many years under the patriarchal hegemony of the major label system.

Added April 7, 2016:


Cale Tyson and the making of Careless Soul.
Another example of the change that all this represents are the possibilities provided by crowd funding. My next post is likely to be about an album made possible that way.

New Music 2015 - Part 39 - Kansas City blues...

There is no particular rhyme or reason to this. It is just the result of my innate curiosity, I suppose. My last post was about a modern blues artist from Kansas City, Missouri - Samantha Fish, and she releases her third LP soon and I am well aware of the previous ones.
The result was that this evening I found two more that I deem worthy of listening and I think that neither are much known in the UK.
The first is power trio Katy Guillen and the Girls. The connection here is that they supported Samantha Fish in KC just the other day, as she previewed new album 'Wild Heart'. This is Katy and the Girls playing 'Grind' live at International Blues Challenge 2014 and the band's self-titled debut album, 'Katy Guillen and the Girls' (2014) is already released.

  Katy Guillen & the Girls - Grind live at IBC 2014 from McKinney Makes Media on Vimeo.

My personal thought is that this next is even better and yet almost certainly less well known. It is 'Down In The Dirt' (2015) - Amanda Fish Band and the two Fishes are not related, in as far as I can tell.
This is slower, more soulful and measured, than the aforementioned LP. I could listen to it on repeat (well actually I already have).
It is rare that an album, let alone an artist, that I have only just discovered provokes that kind of response. I must turn it off and go to bed instead.

New Music 2015 - Part 22 - Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

It has been a whole week since I added a post to the series 'New Music 2015'. These days a week seems like an age in new music to me and that can only be a measure of my appreciation. 
In this case I shall move away from the acoustic scene and indeed the UK. This is the forthcoming second LP from Alabama Shakes, a band that I was lucky enough to see live at End of The Road Festival in 2012. The cover art is as simple and restrained as that of its predecessor 'Boys and Girls' and, I hope, again a good reason not to judge the album by its cover alone. I have even recorded similar thoughts about this band before.

It is released in the UK (Rough Trade Records) on 20 April and North America (ATO Records) on 21 April.

I have heard only snatches of some tracks (listing below) but even so I am intrigued to say the very least. It could turn out to be even more of a revelation than the début, which it is worth remembering was recorded just months after the band coalesced. I am not currently aware of any planned UK dates, but I want to be there...
End Of The Road or Green Man would be ideal for me!

1. Sound & Colour
2. Don't Wanna Fight
3. Dunes
4. Future People
5. Gimme All Your Love
6. The Feeling
7. Guess Who
8. The Greatest
9. Shoegaze
10. Miss You
11. Gemini
12. Over My Head

This is the official video to 'Future People'.

I hesitate to say that it is in any way "typical" of the album because I don't think it will be an album that can be judged in that way and is certainly not album like 'Boys and Girls'. It is therefore very high on my list of albums that I want to hear in its entirety. It is also one that I am very likely to buy on vinyl.

29 April 2015:
'Sound & Colour' now sits at the top of both the US and Canadian album charts.

New Music 2014 - Part 23 - Joanne Shaw Taylor - The Dirty Truth

Barely a year after the release of the live LP/DVD 'Songs From The Road' and less than two after the release of her third studio album 'Almost Always Never' in 2012, Joanne Shaw Taylor returns on 22 September with her studio LP 'The Dirty Truth' and this is the artwork for it and the track list.

1. Mud, Honey

2. The Dirty Truth

3. Wicked Soul

4. Fool In Love

5. Wrecking Ball

6. Tried, Tested And True

7. Outlaw Angel

8. Shiver And Sigh

9. Struck Down

10. Feels Like Home

It is to be released on her own bijou label 'Axehouse Music' on physical formats including two heavyweight vinyl options. For this project, more blues rock than the last two LPs perhaps, she is reunited with Jim Gains who produced her début 2009 LP 'White Sugar' and if you haven't listened to that then now is the time to do so.

If you have never seen her play live then you ain't heard nothing yet!

        

The most recent time I saw her live was at The Brook, Southampton on 12 June.

New Music 2014 - Part 20 - Free The Honey - In Our Hands EP

Much as I like my music in a physical format, sometimes vinyl, I have to say that (legal) download and the internet has the huge bonus of immediacy sometimes.
This EP is a great example of that. There is probably no physical release and its digital release was only yesterday.

My attention was bought to it by Folk Radio UK and it is one of the most stunning pieces of Americana that I have heard all year. That isn't for a lack of such things. If you like Carrivick Sisters or their more expansive outlet Cardboard Fox then likely you will covet this and, at seven tracks it is more of a mini-album. It is available to download here (in almost any format) and I chose MP3 320. It costs from $4 but that seems so mean when a pint of beer costs more than that and I know I will, indeed probably already have, got more enjoyment from it.

The three young women hail not from the perceived home-ground of Americana or bluegrass rather from Gunnison in the high mountains of Western Colorado but don't let that put you off, and not least for the other sounds that they bring to bear.  


This is 'Iridology', the third track on the EP and one that has touches of gypsy fiddle on it. Given the status that folk, roots and Americana is currently enjoying in Europe don't be at all surprised to see them touring over here in the coming year.

New Music 2014 - Part 6 - Harriet Jones

Barely a week after I discovered one new act from Plymouth (WHOANOWS) as I was listening to Kathryn Tickell's show, on Amazing Radio this evening, along came this statement of intent from 20-year-old singer-songwriter Harriet Jones also from Plymouth.

The track Dealin' Man Blues is released as a single today and is as good a slice of soul-blues as I have heard in some time. It is remarkable for, amongst other things, the minimal accompaniment to her vocal and that works because it simply doesn't need more. Another one to watch in 2014 and I would love to see her play live.

If I were to meet her I should be very wary: If I am reminded by this of any one other song in particular then it is a cautionary tale, with a moral ending - 'The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest' and I'm not convinced that I would come out on the right side of this.
It may seem a curious comparison but it works for me. What she might conjure up next is anyone's guess but hers. I'm fascinated by the possibilities.

EOTR 2012 - Thoughts on new music 2

The reformed Grandaddy and Grizzly Bear were both awesome and some of my friends might have regarded one or other as their own particular highlight of the festival but were I forced to do so, and somebody just posed this question, the highlight of End of The Road Festival 2012 for me was Alabama Shakes. This is, in some ways, a justification for buying an 'early bird' ticket. Just like trusting labels it is a convenient opt in - I know that I can trust the EOTR organizers to put on more bands that I want to see/hear than will actually be possible - and so I already have a ticket for EOTR 2013 (and NDH 2013, too). This means that as the booked artists become known, over the ensuing months, the excitement is purely that of anticipation. When I came to know that EOTR 2012 had Alabama Shakes on the list anticipation started to take full control. I had pre-ordered the début album 'Boys and Girls' on vinyl and at the first opportunity, so I already knew the songs quite well, and then this happened...

Alabama Shakes, the Woods Stage, at about 19:45 on Saturday.
Songs that do not appear on the album were awesome too.

  

This is soul-blues of the of the highest order and they are generous with it too appearing for a second time, on the Big Top Stage on Sunday evening and also various other unadvertised performances. This is another picture from the Woods Stage on Saturday.

Simply astonishing. 

Brittany Howard does have a phenomenal voice on the recording and yet still chooses to wear glasses while performing live, simply out of choice.  It is quite the statement of who she is and this authenticity is at the heart of Alabama Shakes. When heard live that voice makes the vinyl recording sound rather ordinary and, good-as-she-is with guitar and there is no doubt about that either, live the band is tight as hell.
Live music probably doesn't get much better than this but please feel free to prove me wrong.