New Music 2017 - Part 35 - Angelina - Vagabond Saint

This follows from my previous post in that I realise sometimes it takes new music time to reveal itself to me. This is a more extreme case in that I first heard it almost a year ago. It has more recently become a a go-to album especially when I find myself in a somewhat ambivalent mood. There is something about it that works for me. That mood is not actually the case just now and probably why I have finally seen my way around to writing about it.

Vagabond Saint - Angelina (WONDERFULSOUND, 2 December 2016). D/l & vinyl.

Vagabond Saint - Angelina:

• Dark Heart 
• Rose Cascade 
• Mandolin Man
• I Don't Cry 
• January Butterfly
• Prayers and Grace
• Vagabond Saint
• Smokes Like A Dream
• Manola
• Wild Cloud
• Sometimes

It's soulful, smoky, southern, pastoral and she wrote the songs too. The artist comes from the nearest that the UK has to an island in the delta, the Isle of Wight, but don't let that put you off.  Had I found it in time last year it would have been on my year-end list. That it was released when it was is a great commitment to the fact that fine new releases no longer stop at the start of November in fawning to the 'don't-offend-anyone' Christmas market fare of decades past.

It is better to buy (or give, or be given) an album you love and an album you detest than end up with two albums that don't evoke much response either way. 

New Music 2017 - Part 16 - Heavy Heart - Keepsake

Another band that was new to me as the result of seeing it live at a festival is London-based five-piece Heavy Heart. This was courtesy of Truck Festival 2014 and here they are playing then.

Heavy Heart, Veterans and Virgins stage - Truck Festival (18 July 2014).

As I mentioned in my last post there are acts that once heard are not easily forgotten and Heavy Heart is one of those as far as I am concerned. Throughout 2016 the band raised its profile on social media by releasing a new song each month. If you missed all this you can download or stream the songs from these links. In early 2017 it was announced that these songs would also gain a physical status as 'Keepsake' through new independent label I Can & I Will Records.

Heavy Heart - Keepsake (I Can & I Will Records, 31 March 2017).

It is still available but there is a catch.  The release  is limited to 300 copies, all numbered and signed, and it is only available on raspberry-coloured 12" vinyl (£10 + p&p), which quite frankly is a bargain given the prices being asked for many main-stream releases on vinyl at the moment.
This is the track listing:

Side A:

Time Will Stand Still

Teenage Witch

High Dive

Pretty Thing

Fruitfly
Yellowbird

Side B:

What Became of Laura R?

Fever Dream

Late to the Party

The World Is a Gumball

The Way Home

Keepsake

Now all I need to do is see the band live once again.

Note added 12 June 2017:
Keepsake is now available on CD too:
https://weareheavyheart.bandcamp.com/album/keepsake-album

New Music 2016 - Part 18 - Moulettes - Preternatural

Brighton-based, Moulettes return soon with their fourth long-player. The band's core remains, with Hannah Miller and Ruth Skipper providing most lead vocals in the past as well as a variety of instruments less commonly seen, including bassoon and autoharp.  There is a new band member for this project and that is Raevennan Husbandes (vocals and electric guitar).
What I strongly suspect is that the Moulettes' universe of unpredictable alt-folk-prog-rock is going to expand again.
Whereas a loose theme of their last LP, Constellations (2014) was the unknown boundaries presented by cosmology this one is taking a journey into the last unknown frontiers of planet earth --- from a tiny nematode worm (Halicephalobus mephisto and the title of track 4) to all the strange creatures, both newly discovered and those yet unknown to humankind, that inhabit dark and cold (or otherwise the very hot volcanic vents) of the ocean depths and similar inhospitable environments. What I am quite certain about is that the musical vision that accompanies such esoteric subject material will not disappoint.

Moulettes - Preternatural (27 May 2016).
It can be pre-ordered here (at a discount) in many formats and also bundled with related merchandise.

Moulettes - Preternatural:

• Behemooth
• UnderWaterPainter
• Coral
• Hidden World (Halicephalobus mephisto)
• Pufferfish Love
• Patterns
• Rite Of Passage
• Medusa
• Parasite
• Bird Of Paradise (Part II)
• Silk

Moulettes tour the UK in April/May and internationally thereafter.

New Music 2015 - Part 65 - Thunderbitch - Thunderbitch

This is a bit out of the blue.
Not so long ago Alabama Shakes released the band's second album Sound & Color and I mentioned it then. Brittany Howard has now revealed this, on vinyl and download, as a completely-executed side project Thunderbitch. What is more at least for now you can stream it all here.

Thunderbitch:

• Leather Jacket
• I Don't Care
• I Just Wanna Rock'n'Roll
• Eastside Party
• Closer
• Wild Child
• Very Best Friend
• My Baby Is My Guitar
• Let Me Do What I Do Best
• Heavenly Feeling

I'm not going to mince words: this is exactly what I had hoped that Sound & Color would sound like but didn't.

A pressing problem. The Times They Are a-Changin'

I have never made any secret of my love for the archaic music format that is vinyl even when extinction, in the sense of new releases, looked inevitable. An obituary after the towel was thrown in, maybe.
I certainly never expected to write a post including an apologia like this.

Even before it got to this point, with almost no investment made in new capacity and equipment, the strain that was being placed on the remaining presses of which many are forty years old would prove to be a limiting factor.  Just keeping them running at all, but now almost flat-out, was causing issues all of its own. Spare parts were a physical one but so too is the knowledge of how to maintain and repair such equipment in an efficient manner. The rate of change is quite astonishing as this article, written about the problems facing the industry shows. It was written late last year and first appeared in The Wall Street Journal. It was probably behind the curve even then...

Independent label Fat Possum Records had already taken a big decision... to enter the manufacturing market by establishing its own pressing plant, as Memphis Record Pressing, in Bartlett, TN.  To do this it sought and purchased redundant presses and then found ways and means to restore them to full working order. It wasn't easy.
To write off the CD, as this article conjectures, looks like a mistake to me. Many of us have have about a quarter of a century of music stored on nothing else and I can't see us giving up that aspect of nostalgia either. What is more is that CDs are (now) cheap, light, transportable, ubiquitous and often surprisingly robust. That is not to mention the home-recordable aspect that was lacking, at least in readily affordable terms, for the first twenty years of their existence.
This is as true now as it was then:

• The Times They are a-Changin'

It was released by Bob Dylan fifty-one years ago today and only on vinyl (monophonic and stereophonic).

Music piracy (still) isn't just an internet phenomenon...

It is a while since I have written a post such as this but a news article today put me in mind of it once again. It may not be quite the topic that it was but it certainly hasn't gone away. I first commented on it in these pages almost seven years ago - how time flies! - with this illustration from the 1980s.

The means have changed but perhaps not so much as we might have thought. It still isn't all individuals or organised crime file-sharing by any means.
There is a waiting list, and often then delays to the promised delivery, if you want your latest released pressed on vinyl for legal release. Several acts have told me about this based on their own experiences. That is a reflection of the vitality of music in physical format.

Police in Germany have revealed that, after a two-year investigation, they have busted a huge counterfeit operation involving physical music, both CD and vinyl. The article comes with a stock picture of a collection of vinyl and this is not it.

This one is home-based.

New Music 2014 - Part 15 - Candy Says - Not Kings

Candy Says is the band that opened proceedings at Truck Festival 2013. Regular readers will already know the importance that I attach to seeing support acts and, in particular, festival openers. Here is Candy Says at Truck Festival last July:

Ten months down the line the début album 'Not Kings' is ready for release and, for lovers of pop-chic, here is a selection from it:

'Not Kings' is released on 28 May 2014 and is available in almost any format you could desire, including both vinyl and limited edition cassette tape. 

Cyclical thoughts on music

This post started with a comment I wrote on Facebook yesterday. That was itself born out of a question somebody asked me the day before and, therefore, put me in mind of something that I had half-remembered a few months ago. In some ways it has to do with the forthcoming Record Store Day 2014 (19 April) [RSD] too:

I've just been exploring the dark (often only metaphorically but sometimes also musically), dusty depths of my music collection. I have found plenty of dead woodlice and even more albums that I had forgotten that I owned. This is good - the albums that is, not so much the moribund crustaceans.
To tell the truth a few of the albums would have better remained forgotten in the sense that ignorance (or merely forgetfulness) is bliss and I shall not dwell on them. Libraries should not work on that principle. 
Some of the LPs I was truly glad to discover again; 'Songs About People I Know', Stricken City's 2009 début album, was just one. The small dead spider stuck to the playing face of the CD was easily removed. It really shouldn't have gone there anyway. It did make me wonder, when listening to the CD after its removal, what has happened since the band split in 2010...
That is also how new things are found.

Whilst I am thinking about the direction this theme is heading, be aware that the direction of music was never very predictable when observed in retrospect. With RSD fast approaching, consider this article - 1o UK independent record shops to visit before you die. Of course I was going to mention this; one of the ten, Raves From The Grave, has its original store in my home town of Frome. It has more recently opened stores in Warminster and Bath too.
To be quite honest I got bogged down with this post for a couple of days but, just now that problem evaporated when I remembered about this. It also reminded me about just why the small stages at festivals, as well as support bands in general, are always at the top of my list of things to see. This is Oklahoma City based band Horse Thief playing End of The Road Festival 2012; Cameron Neal on guitar and vocals.

The début album, Fear In Bliss, is released today by Bella Union and Horse Thief is booked to play at End of The Road Festival 2014.
   

It is, of course, available on vinyl.

New Music 2014 - Part 8

While my recent posts about live music have a very obvious UK (indeed English) folk bias, and the next live act that I'm going to see is Spiers and Boden, that is not the case with the ongoing posts on new music which, even if the artists are UK based, draws heavily on US traditions and that is certainly true of both the artists featured in this post.
Both are 2014 releases by US-based independent record labels and both are by female artists. These are not country, alt-or-otherwise, but neither are they country rock either. They are not an incomprehensible change but, ultimately, they are what they are. I like them, which matters more than anything, and that is why they are here.

Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness - Jagjaguwar Records, 2014.

   

Slightly more challenging is this next, released by Bloodshot Records and an album perhaps inadequately described as 'country punk'. It is a demanding listen, no doubt about that, but it is well worth any effort that this involves.

Somewhere Else - Lydia Loveless - Bloodshot Records, 2014.
   

If you are left stranded, wondering what that might sound like...

  LYDIA LOVELESS - Learn to Say No from Kitchen Sessions on Vimeo.

Record Store Day 2014 - old favourites

I thought I'd go back to the future with my thoughts on the forthcoming Record Store Day 2014. What are your thoughts, perhaps from RSD past, and what you would like to see in 2014?
To take it all back a step, what are the possibly unusual records from years ago that you own and treasure? There is no need for these to be rare or valuable... I own 5 copies of Thin Lizzy's - Black Rose (A Rock Legend) on vinyl but the one I am listening to right now is Vertigo 60 63 169. It sounds just the same as any other but is, in fact, the original Spanish release (1979).
To own a few curiosities, even if they have no particular pecuniary value, is appealing for some of us.
Rather soon after I went away to university, in the autumn of 1983, I was exposed to much new music some of which I liked and some not. Some of both still always reminds me of that time. Another factor is that time more or less coincided with the renaissance of Radio Caroline. As I was in North Kent and MV Ross Revenge was not that far away the station was almost receivable with the radio turned off! 
It also had, and still does, the tendency to play albums. It is arguably, along with my decision to go to festivals from 2007, one of the defining moments of my music-listening life. I credit it with, amongst others some of which I did not appreciate at the time, introducing me to the work of Bob Dylan.

I don't recall this album from that time, maybe it was deemed old even then, but I doubt that was the reason as I certainly remember the station playing Free, which was again largely new to me but just as old.
I actually have some rather strange memory-evidence for this assertion. Another artist that Radio Caroline introduced me to was Jimi Hendrix and while I well remember hearing his version of 'All Along The Watchtower' back then it was probably twenty-five years before I actually realized that it was a Dylan cover, from the aforementioned album of course. How naïve was I?
You could reasonably pin a great deal of my musical taste on that which I heard in my time at University. I still hate Phil Collins' music, for example.

This is becoming rather more "Thoughts On Music" than I planned (because I didn't actually do any planning for this post) but I'm rather enjoying it. None of this endeavour was planned anyway, and I did say that in the event that I reached 100 posts I would retire.
I'm sorry. I changed my mind: this is the 838th.

Record Store Day 2014 - A Prelude

It is now just a couple of months until Record Store Day 2014, an event that seems to be gathering momentum with each passing year. To set your mind thinking about the changes, in both the music industry and the marketing strategies involved, here is an inner sleeve from forty-six years ago and of which I took a photograph just now.

It is interesting to consider what were the perceived threats back in 1968.
Equally so, what the marketing people would have thought about vinyl in 2014.

New Music - Part 25 - Nepenthe - Julianna Barwick

Well, you can say what you want but UK festivals will always bring surprises! Here is another artist who is to play at End of the Road Festival and, at the moment of writing and in my local time, Julianna Barwick's LP 'Nepenthe' was released in the UK today and will be released in the US tomorrow!
Born in Louisiana, raised in Missouri and now resident in Brooklyn, the album was in large part recorded in Iceland with Alex Somers - Sigur Rós and others - on production duties.
This, I think, says a great deal about the new order in music marketing - and it certainly is not a major label release. Independent US label Dead Oceans is responsible for this and good for them.

The album is available on vinyl of course. If you can wait then you can stream it here.

  

She is performing at End of The Road too, on the Tipi Stage on Friday evening. This is something that I'm not planning to miss.

New Music - Part 18 - PJP Band - ...and so it goes

I can honestly say that, whilst most of my family live there, in the more than six years of writing this blog I have never once mentioned a band that is based in Plymouth.
Until today...
... and so it goes - PJP Band. I certainly didn't see this coming, so thanks to Amazing Radio for alerting me this evening. It is a fine album, indeed I have since spent too much time listening to it streamed. Better still it is available now either as download or as 2 x 12" LP contained in a gate-fold sleeve (limited to 250 copies).
It is not cheap but their bargaining chip is good...
"This is a deluxe run, and a beautiful product to own, even if you don't have a record player... yet." 
Well, at least that is not a problem for me and both have very recently been treated to a new stylus too. It is, as far as I can tell, the first release by Plymouth-based independent label OUF Records.
I hope to hear more music out of Plymouth, in any genre, sooner rather than later. To state it another way - Plymouth has a population broadly similar to the whole of Iceland...

Rock and Roll Joe

This is a little something for this dark, cold Sunday evening. It's been in my head all day so I decided to let it out...

Joe is every guitar player
Who played it from his heart.
Here's to Joe.
Joe is every funky drummer
Who knew when to stop and start.
Way to go, Joe.
  
And we all bow down to the ones that took us to him
The ones that took us some place where we needed to go
Then we all bow down to the ones that got us through it.
Here's to Rock and Roll Joe.
  
Joe is every bass player
Who played it from his balls.
Here's to Joe (Here's to Joe...)
And Joe is every fiddle player
Who slammed us to the walls.
Way to go, Josephine.
  
And we all bow down to the ones that took us to him
The ones that took us some place where we needed to go
Then we all bow down to the ones that got us through it.
Here's to Rock and Roll Joe.

Joe is every keyboard player
Who played it like he's from the South.
Here's to Joe.
Joe is every sweet horn player
That pressed that thing up to his mouth.
Way to go, Joe.
   
And we all bow down to the ones that took us to him
The ones that took us some place where we needed to go
Then we all bow down to the ones that got us through it.
Here's to Rock and Roll Joe.

First Thoughts on Record Store Day 2013

Record Store Day 2013 is looking to exceed all previous events and all expectations. It takes place, all around the globe, on Saturday April 20, 2013. More special releases than even before, more locations and stores than ever before, and that's just the start.

Here's someone who has done quite well these last couple of years...

Who, or what, is going to be the next big breakout?

There is certainly no shortage of new music out there that is well worth listening to.

New Music 2013 - Part 9 - Rhosyn - Elbow of Capture

Rhosyn, the stage name taken by Rose Dagul, was one of several acts from around the Oxford area to which I was introduced by the organisers of Truck Festival 2011 and Oxford-based collective Blessing Force. Since then I have been keeping my ears open for more. Here, I'm delighted to say is the first Rhosyn EP 'Elbow of Capture' inspired by writing and recording sessions that took place in a remote cottage at Rhoscolyn on the coast of Anglesey last year.
In its string arrangements you can almost detect the winds and the waves in a landscape where things change only through the forces of nature. It is music for moments of reflection.  It is released on the usual formats. It is also available, to the extent of 250 numbered copies, on translucent 12" 33 rpm vinyl.

The 5-track vinyl EP also comes with a code for a free download.
  

Elbow of Capture - Rhosyn

• A1 - Glass
• A2 - Birds
• A3 - Volcano
• B1 - Euridyce
• B2 - Since The Air Became Frantic

You can listen to the track 'Glass' here:

Music from the past - discovered (Part 1).

The history of this; it became something of a project that in essence goes back a long time and to 1977, at least for me. This is the first post on that, and it involved this album originally released in 1971:

As I mentioned then, back in early 2012, it had taken me almost thirty-five years to actually track this down. For some reason, in early December 2012, I decided upon a more ambitious project. That was (to attempt to) track down the two albums that preceded 'High Level'. The proviso was threefold:

• it would be done on a tight budget, with no particular time limit therefore
• the albums had to be playable (not mint or wrapped, as I fully intended to play them)
• the albums had to be the original vinyl releases

You might wonder about this, as did I but a little searching it proved what recordings I was actually looking for. Knowing what you are trying to find is always a good place to start.  It turned out to be this trio:

• Northumberland For Ever (1968) - Topic Records 12TS186
• The Lads of Northumbria (1969) - Trailer Records LER 2007
• Keep Your Feet Still Geordie Hinnie (1970) - Trailer Records LER 2020

I was already aware in essence of the first two of the above, which are studio albums, but not the third and that is how it turned out to being a search for three albums. The last was the final one to succumb and also the most expensive although not by much. Keep Your Feet Still Geordie Hinnie is a live album recorded in a single take at Balmbaras, an old-time music-hall pub in Newcastle.

Here are the covers of the three albums that I purchased, as taken by me just now:

  

  

So there you are. The total cost for all three, including all delivery charges, was £33.71.  In Part 2 of this post I shall try and comment on the music and also the history behind some of it, not least that of Balmbaras.

The Fall of Glorieta Mountain

I thought I saw you by the side,
Illuminating foreign climes.
A figment, a splinter, a vessel for me.
To wander as freely as I'll ever be.
  
Shrapnel stars puncture brightly,
Wounding skies that stretch so widely.
Other dunes of dust, in shades of rust
Where shadows claim the both of us.
  
Is that an answer or is this an echo?
Are you the answer or are you an echo?
  
These godly skies kindly provide
The perfect scene for our goodbyes.
A providence, so palpable
It sets aflutter, palpiter.

Bleached by the moonlight
Bathed in bone white
Undercover of cobalt and shelter of slate
You appeared immaculate.
  
Is than an answer or is this an echo?
Are you the answer or are you an echo?
  
I know that distance lends enchantment to the view
But I know that I see you and I know you see me too
And so I called out.

See more here:
New Music 2013 - Part 1 - Wash The Sins Not Only The Face

I just felt like some lyrics. Not particularly cheerful but then what did you expect? The album 'Wash The Sins, Not Just The Face' is released  by Matador Records on vinyl, CD and d/l. Let us celebrate the third Monday in January at it is often said, by those that believe this sort of thing, to be the most depressing day of the year.
You can currently listen to the whole album streaming on Pitchfork here.

The lure of the 'Live LP'. Again.

The third 'live LP', that I alluded to in my earlier post has finally arrived at the additional cost of £3.07 in VAT to George Osbourne (no relation of Ozzy, we are led to believe) and a further £8 that went to Royal Mail for conniving with the UK Border Agency. Enough of that, which I suspected might happen anyway, the question is was it all worth it?

Just to have it on US vinyl (complete with the dire piracy warnings) most certainly is!

That all actually matters less than I thought that it would and I couldn't care less about the customs charges now. This is very possibly the best live album (on vinyl or otherwise) since forever though you may suggest others; indeed I invite you to do so - PLEASE DO.
It contains songs from his time with the Drive-By Truckers, material from his 'solo' albums including the AMA-winning 'Alabama Pines', and finishes with (the vinyl that is - it comes with a free download code that contains some extra things!) a cover of Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane'.
If people say there's nothing good today, and no point in revisiting old themes, just point them here. The album was recorded over two live performances in August 2012; at WorkPlay, Birmingham, AL and Crossroads, Huntsville, AL on 16 and 17 August 2012. I can only try and imagine what it must have been like to be there.

Some things just go out of fashion for a while.

The 12" vinyl "micro-groove" LP was one of them.