Live Music 2012 - Grip of the Blues

While the title of the post is borrowed from a 2008 album by Finnish blues guitarist and songwriter Erja Lyytinen, who is not actually touring the UK until 2013 but I very much intend to see her live then; it happens to sum up my live music forays in the next couple of weeks rather well.
It all kicks off next weekend and involves only small venues...
If you were watching footage of the Diamond Jubilee Concert in London earlier this summer you might have noticed a rather special guitarist accompanying Annie Lennox for her performance. That was Joanne Shaw Taylor. She is a songwriter and singer too and has very recently released her third album on Ruf Records (Ruf 1181). Here it is.

Live at Bristol Tunnels, 11 October and Tavistock Wharf, October 12.

Having never seen her live before I'm very much anticipating that it will be amongst the live highlights of my 2012 - and there have been many.

  

This next artist I have seen live, in 2009 supporting Seth Lakeman, after the release of her excellent 2008 album 'Kitchen Table'. Bex Marshall also has a new album out and is playing at The Griffin, Frome on 20 October. Here is that album, released on House of Mercy as HOM 002.

The following day, Sunday 21 October, is the first Frome Blues Festival held at the Cheese and Grain. In an exciting line-up one highlight is Chantel McGregor, the recently announced winner of 'Best Female Vocalist' at the British Blues Awards 2012 and an award that Joanne Shaw Taylor had been the recipient of in both 2010 and 2011.
   

  'Like No Other' is her 2011 début album - released by Tis Rock Music as TRM001.

The twelve tracks on it include inter alia a splendid cover of Stevie Nicks' Rhiannon (3:39) and yet the self-written songs vary wildly in length. Track 8 'Cat Song' is just 2:16 but follows the rather remarkable 'Daydream' and another truly astonishing cover version...

The Procession - New Music 2012 - Part 24

Much of the new music that I have mentioned, and indeed purchased, of late has been driven by artists that I have seen over this summer's festivals. These two solo albums, both by artists whom you may know from their 'band' guise, were released in August. I saw neither live this summer.
Tamara Schlesinger, also of '6 Day Riot', released her second solo album and the follow-up to 2004's rather wonderful (but currently hard to source) From Home To Home. Her new LP is The Procession, released on Tantrum Records as TANTRUMCD008.

It is made up of many layers of her vocals recorded acapella with the subsequent addition of strings and some judicious electric guitar and percussion. The playlist is as follows:

The Procession - Tamara Schlesinger

1. Yai Yai
2. I Go
3. Can You See Me?
4. So Long
5. My Future
6. Get Down
7. Find a Way
8. My Home
9. Again
11. Who's Won?

The next is this is from over in Canada and the début solo album from 'Po' Girl' member Awna Teixeira.

It may well come as no surprise, if you know my likes in music, that both LPs cover a fair range of subject matter and far from all of it is cheerful but then neither is it overly depressing; it comes with a healthy dose of optimism and redemption inbuilt. This one is released by Hazy Tales Music.

Where The Darkness Goes - Awna Teixeira

1. Stand Tall 4:53
2. Minha Querida 4:09
3. Where the Darkness Goes 4:44
4. Some Kind of Dream 3:49
5. Faden 5:17
6. Prince of the Park 4:06
7. Rest Your Mind 4:36
8. Stargazer 3:44
9. The Little Review 4:57
10. Little Piggy 4:16
11. Blooming Bounty 3:12

I recommend these particularly if you are finding the current mainstream (radio, etc.) content lacking something new. It takes a little time and ingenuity, but almost no money, to legally discover more new music than you ever knew you didn't know about. The artists will be delighted for the publicity too, should you like what you hear and see fit to tell others about your finds.

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.

Summer Festivals 2012 - Deer Shed 3

I recently became aware of the fact there is that a whole lot about my experiences at festivals during the summer of 2012 that I have never mentioned. I think that I shall commence the remedy starting with Deer Shed Festival 3, Baldersby Park, North Yorkshire in mid-July. Before I start on the music the food stalls were amazing. When I find the card, I know it is somewhere just around where I am now, I shall name and fame the stall that sells the best pork pies in the world, ever: Sorry, Melton Mowbray.
I was listening to Simon Raymonde's show on amazingradio.co.uk this evening and it included a live session with, originally Southampton-based, four-piece Pale Seas and they are good even though they have yet to release their first album.

Pale Seas on the '(Far from the) Lake Stage' at Deer Shed Festival 2012.

Things beckon for them in 2013 much as happened a couple of years ago to this band that met at Cardiff University and then discovered that their planned career paths might need a slight rethink.

 Los Campesinos! on the 'Main Stage' at Deer Shed Festival 2012.

This was a band that I had long wanted to see live and one that certainly didn't disappoint. In fact nothing about this festival was a disappointment. It was also phenomenally family friendly so here is a picture or two of that aspect to finish this post.

This was free for kids to decorate before, once complete, it was floated in a pond.

In the main arena, Saturday afternoon.

Here We Go Magic - the internet and poster art.

In its strange way the internet has revived band art - and never more so than that for gig posters. Even in the heyday of bill-sticking you would have been unlikely to find this pair, although they are for gigs by the same band less taking place less than a week apart, side by side.

On the subject of Here We Go Magic please consider the band and the album 'A Different Ship', released by independent label Secretly Canadian, to be in the category of new music that has captured my attention of late and in this case mainly due to the ministrations of Amazing Radio.

EOTR 2012 - Thoughts on new music...

One thing that really appeals to me about End of The Road Festival is the chances it offers to see new music. I mean that - new - in a variety of senses; some of it simply entirely new to me, some new to me live and some about which I am aware (or was aware of) but have subsequently forgotten to follow up.
I really haven't any preconceptions about how this post will unfold, hence this preamble!  I'm not even sure how or where to start. Indeed I have only written this in order to commit myself to actually writing it...
I'm going to have my dinner first and then, somehow or other, get going on this. One thing that is quite certain is that it simply won't work in any festival time-line way.
This is what I decided to start with and for a rather strange reason - listening to a 2010 UK modern-folk album 'One Light Is Gone' by Josienne Clarke.  The reason being that when I heard Hurray For The Riff Raff (live, it so happened) for the first time it had the same impact that hearing the aforementioned album did: that is the admonition-to-self  - "WTF?  Why didn't I already know about this?"

  

Hurray For The Riff Raff, Woods Stage, EOTR 2012 at 12:00, Sunday.

Suffice to say it was 'one of those moments' and that this is another band that I saw twice at EOTR 2012. I promptly purchased the 2012 album 'Look Out Mama', to which I am listening while writing. On reflection there are not many times that I have consciously found myself trying to work out lyrics to songs that I'm listening to live and hearing for the first time. When it happens three times, pertaining to totally different acts in the space of three days, it is becoming something of an addiction! It is likely to define the rest of this post.
It became no secret that Alynda Lee Segarra and her band much prefer playing small venues in the early hours but the pictures above were both taken on the outdoor main stage just after mid-day...

OK folks. Fourteen hours later, on the Tipi Stage, 2am Monday!

  

If you think the story of the evolution of Hurray For The Riff Raff is convoluted than it is easily exceeded by that of the next...

Kai Welch and Abigail Washburn opening The Garden Stage on Saturday.

Bluegrass tunes, but sometimes ones with Mandarin Chinese lyrics.

  

This one was a case in point.

Whilst she explained the bones of how this apparently odd but actually extremely likeable combination, at least to my ears, came about there is a fuller history to be found here.

The article finishes like this...

" [She played] a recently written murder ballad, her delicate frame dwarfed by the surreal dimensions of the cello banjo.

"It's a cut that didn't make the album [City of Refuge] because the producer thought it was too morbid," she explains. "But all the old-time tunes have a female victim. I thought 'How about writing a song which gives the girl a gun for a change?' "

  

She did not have the 'cello banjo at EOTR but she played the song nevertheless, with Kai Welch on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, and the whole set was a highlight of the weekend - if only one amongst many. That only goes to show just how strong and yet diverse End Of The Road Festival actually is.

Bella Union is 15 (Part 2) - EOTR 2012

It has certainly taken me a little longer than I intended to put this, the second half of my account of Friday at End Of The Road Festival (EOTR), together but my ambition increased as I was writing the first part and I decided to include some stuff about bands that were performing but that for reasons of clashes I was unable to catch on August 31 but have had the good fortune to see live at other recent festivals.
I am indeed going to start with one of them, London four-piece 'Veronica Falls', fronted by Roxanne Clifford that appeared on the Big Top Stage at 20:30 on Friday (whilst I was watching 'The Low Anthem' on The Garden Stage).
Here they are performing at the first No Direction Home Festival at Welbeck Abbey back in June this year - a festival that has the same team as EOTR behind it.

  

They were excellent then, notably including several new songs not on the album, and I heard similarly good reports about their more recent performance at End Of The Road.

    

The act that had preceded them on this stage at EOTR was the Swedish electro-gaze duo of Fredrik Balck and Maria Lindén, with bass and drums for the live gig, otherwise known as 'I Break Horses' and touring their 2011 début album 'Hearts'. It proved to be a quite fascinating dichotomy. Whilst on the recorded version, to which I am listening as I write this, the music is really rather soothing and fittingly autumnal - evoking mists and mellow fruitfulness - the same proposition live is by turns squally and unpredictable; decidedly that of the darker side of autumn, of gales and lashing rain but also sudden, striking glimpses of the sun. Given the recent renewed interest in releasing live albums, which really ought to be the basis of a future post, this would certainly be an interesting prospect.

'I Break Horses', The Big Top Stage, EOTR 2012 performing Winter Beats.

  

The first Bella Union act to grace a stage on Friday was a four piece from Oklahoma that, in terms of live music certainly, was quite new to me. I was impressed...

'Horse Thief' live on the Big Top Stage at about 11:55 on Friday morning.

So good in fact that one way and another I saw them play two complete sets within the same calendar day - and there aren't very many acts or artists about which I can say that.

As for the next band what can I say? It is the third time I have seen them live at EOTR in four years... It is of course 'The Low Anthem'...

On the Garden Stage, where else, at 20:20 on Friday.

  

Then came the really big decision. 'Midlake ' headlining The Garden Stage at 21:45 or 'Beach House' doing that duty on the Woods Stage from 21:30. This was for me one of the easier decisions of the day and there was no chance that it would be anything other than watching all of one or all of the other. I have seen 'Midlake' twice live but never Baltimore's 'Beach House'...

'Beach House', The Woods Stage at EOTR 2012 at 22:03 Friday evening.

        

This was one set, of only a few, where I had no particular interest in being right at the front --- for me it was almost entirely about the music performed live and it certainly did not disappoint.

When they came off stage, at about 11pm, there came the realization that it was now 11 hours of live music today and with four hours more still to go - and then to do it all over again for the next two days.

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.

New music for autumn? Just go find...

It's not difficult, nor is it illegal, to find new music...
Here, therefore, is my choice for today and it has nothing whatsoever to do with End Of The Road Festival this weekend just gone.

It is the second album by Seattle-based trio Seapony.

At least for the moment you can legally stream it here and I just thought that I'd give it a shout-out. It is most remarkable for what it is not.

Now explain this...

It is what live music is really about: 02:40 BST on September 3, 2012.
They are as thick as thieves.

London Calling - if only for London 2012

If only...

Were he still with us Joe Strummer, born John Graham Mellor, would have been sixty today. He was, as the result of a congenital and undiagnosed heart defect, taken away in December 2002.
Were that not so I can hardly imagine that he would not have been on the stage at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympiad. 'The Clash' was not the first punk band, by any means, but they gave the whole genre wings...
They focussed their anger on sensible issues. In fact the members were from really quite comfortable backgrounds; and while they were genuinely angry they were also rather annoyingly but curiously, simultaneously, disarmingly literate.
This 1979 album was, I think, not just the defining moment of British Punk...

Had it not been for this album, and the inspiration it provided, the whole punk movement might have faded into obscurity - a bright spark, lit for the most part by angry young men in a fit of pique, that lasted for so little time.
There would thus have been no Green Day, just to make a single example.
The bad behaviour in this image is all down to Paul Simonon, who lives on, and so does the bass guitar in question (in bits as destroyed in this rampage, something that he later much regretted doing), in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH.
The inspiration for the album cover is down to that of Elvis Presley's first.

What the Hell. It's what we were born to do.

I hope I don't need to tell you about the three women who were today sentenced to two years in prison for singing a song.  It is true that it was controversial in its lyric and that they chose a rather dangerously high profile location to do it, but even so.

What they did may well have been wrong, illegal indeed under the law that prevails there, and so some punishment due. On the other hand, ask yourself this. Is the outrage, let alone the sentence of two years in prison, a reflection of a system that is not really at peace with its own identity; uncomfortable politically, religiously and culturally?
Maybe it is not for me to comment but here, because you had the nerve to do it, is my slightly irreverent (because that was the whole problem here) take on it:
  
Poor choice of venue maybe, Pussy Riot.  Had you chosen Frome's Cheese & Grain instead we would have bought you drinks and looked after you rather than arranging for your arrest.
Look at it this way:  Did we arrest and then imprison 'The Sex Pistols', back in 1977, for their seditious version of 'God Save The Queen', our National Anthem, because it was arguably in rather poor taste? No.
They had their day as anti-heroes and punk remains a vital part of the curious thing that is British culture. Her Majesty The Queen, very respectfully, waited a further thirty-five years before taking her revenge by appearing with James Bond.

Lyrics once again - Can't Make It So

It's a long time since I've turned my attention to song lyrics but since someone asked about those of Ellen and The Escapades today I just have to try. Yes I certainly can, but probably not until next week.
  
Oh well, I relented after a fashion but this might have to suffice just for now.  This is the song 'Can't Make It So', from that album - All The Crooked Scenes:
 
It's a no go
Telling you to come home
Saying that you can't go
I'm sorry but I can't make it so.
  
Could I have been there?
My words can make a change
Can my actions now compare?
They know they did you wrong.
  
Its up to me 
Just wait and see
  
You were so close
Now to even let go
Why'd you wanna take me?
I'm sorry but I can't make it so

It's a no go
Telling you to come home
Saying that you can't go
I'm sorry but I can't make it so.

Could I have been there?
My words can make a change
Can my actions now compare?
They from thy did you wrong
  
It's up to me 
Just wait and see
  
Just let me make you happy.
  
Actually, I have now just remembered why I started the whole lyric thing in the first place and it is rather simple - I enjoy doing it.

Live & Local - some dates for the diary

It seems that I haven't written so much about musical things taking place in Frome lately, so it is time for an update on some future events. For another view of the town I recommend this blog highly - Frome With A View.
Here, however, are some musical happenings that I am really looking forward to:

• Acoustic+ returns after its customary summer recess on 28 September and this is with its 10th Anniversary edition that features all four of the acts that performed at the first! For more on that aspect see here. It is at the Cheese & Grain, as usual, but the ticket price is the £1 of the original (donations are much encouraged).
• Sunday 21 October - The first Frome Blues Festival, organised by Seahorse Productions that is behind the Frome Folk Festival (of which see below). This is also at the Cheese & Grain.
• Saturday 24 November - Sean Lakeman and Kathyrn Roberts. They were just amazing at Frome Folk Festival 2012 but this time are appearing at Rook Lane Chapel.
• Saturday/Sunday 17/18 February - Frome Folk Festival 2013, the second edition of this event. An announcement of the firsts acts and artists who will be appearing is coming very soon and tickets are already on sale both locally, from the Cheese and Grain Box Office, and also through well known on-line sellers; these latter tend, however, to add a booking fee. If you want, and of course only if you can sensibly do so, the cheapest way is almost always to pay in cash at the Cheese & Grain box office. It offers real-time on-line ticketing, so there is no waiting and wondering if and when they will turn up in the mail. There is no booking fee either, for cash purchases. On the other hand it is up to you not to misplace them!

Deer Shed Festival 3 - New Music 2012 - Part 23

You might have suspected that this was coming. Festivals for me are, as much as anything else, a chance to go and catch up with some new artists that either I have never heard live or sometimes that I have never even heard about. This first trio of acts all fall into the former category and they all featured on the Saturday. I present them simply in the order in which I saw them play:
First off, and indeed the first music artist to perform at Deer Shed 3 on the Saturday, was North Yorkshire's own Pip Mountjoy on the (Far from the) Lake Stage. The stage was thus re-named as it had finally been erected far from where it was originally intended to be, owing to the very wet conditions prevailing before the festival took place.

She accompanied herself on acoustic guitar and played most of the six tracks from her début EP 'Louisiana', which I have already mentioned here and also included a couple of very recently written new songs that were extremely promising, not least the one that she introduced with some obvious reluctance and embarrassment, yet to considerable acclaim thereafter. I had already bought the EP digitally but as it is now available hand-made, including the sewn CD sleeve and CD-R, I bought a real one for £4 and here it is. 

These are now also available on-line, also for £4 (p & p extra) from her website.

She is off travelling, something that features in many of her songs and may impact on the availability of the CD, but returns to the UK for a tour in October/November 2012. 

  

This next, who played on the main stage at 3.40pm, is a trio of sisters from Hertfordshire who perform under the title of 'The Staves'.

This, their three-track 'Mexico EP' from 2011 has already appeared in the side-bar of this blog but here they are live and acapella.

And in standard mode - this is Mexico from the aforementioned EP.

The Staves release their début album in autumn 2012, hence the new music category. 

The final act of today's trio is in fact the only one to have released an album so far. That is Leeds' five-piece Ellen and The Escapades and I have mentioned their 2012 début album 'All The Crooked Scenes'. In fact it is a great example of what I like to do...

I was idly listening to Amazing Radio a couple of months ago and, having no previous knowledge of the band at all, a track from it came on. I didn't even attempt to listen to any other tracks on it: I just ordered the album from the band's website, all the more so because I found that for little extra cost I could have it on gate-fold vinyl. It arrived very swiftly and it certainly didn't disappoint.

My next mission was to see this band live and Deer Shed Festival soon came to the rescue as Ellen & The Escapades headlined the Lake Stage on Saturday evening and here is something from that set.

Ellen Smith has a way with song-writing and a voice that matches it perfectly.

  

You could just possibly compare her to Amy Macdonald at her very best but, more than anything else, it makes me think that backed up by such an amazing band she both writes and sings songs that are the modern equivalent of Lowry paintings but never quite so modern as to alienate those who know the originals.

That is an astonishing achievement.

Deer Shed Festival 3 - one week on

This is incredibly hard to write and not for the reasons that over the last five years and some I have become used to. I've even gotten somewhat inured to the fact that I write as a Briton (if never a great one) to a potential audience of millions. All that was put in to perspective yesterday - with the opening of the 30th Modern Olympiad in London. We, as host Nation, were never planning to upstage the sheer scale of the equivalent event at Beijing 2008, nor did we ever think that we might try to do so in budget, scale or pale imitation.
Britain just had to do it the only way it knows, which is what defines us - a wonderful mix of contradictory things that everyone but almost nobody - myself included - really properly understands and a certain penchant for comedy and self-deprecation.
It involved a lot of music, both old and new, but none of that from Deer Shed Festival 3 that I'm planning to mention now. It does however prompt me to mention that for every well known artist featured yesterday there are plenty more who aspire to gain our attention and are worthy of doing so. Aspiring athletes do not start at the Olympic Games, just as aspiring musicians do not headline Glastonbury, but they are there at the smaller festivals and local venues every week of every year. One thing that has made changes for them, and it was featured by the appearance of Sir Tim Berners-Lee at yesterday's event, is the internet. Without it I might not yet have even heard about these artists that I saw performing live at Deer Shed Festival 3: Think about what that really means.

As it always was, it only needs a little sunshine to get us in a party mood but a bar also helps too. Without the internet I would not be writing this and you, wherever you might be, would not be reading it. Yet, for all that, the reason that almost six-thousand of us were gathered there at all was for the entertainment - modern music,  live and strictly non-digital primarily, but also that most human of desires that is like-minded comradeship.

The sun first made an appearance on Friday evening when Belfast five-piece Cashier No. 9 were playing on the main stage.

I have seen this band live before, at Truck Festival 2011, and I was impressed then. I still am and they appear again at EOTR 2012, as part of the 15th anniversary of Bella Union Records on the Friday.

The very first act to play at Deer Shed Festival 3 was Leeds' Moody Gowns on the tented 'In The Dock Stage'. Not exactly the least abrasive of welcomes, perhaps...

...on the other hand a worthy welcome to the orthogonal world that is a good festival.

End of the Road Festival 2012

Before I comment further on my trip to North Yorkshire for Deer Shed Festival 3 last weekend here is a little shout-out for the next festival that I shall be attending (unless that is I add another in the intervening five weeks). I mention it because tickets are fast running out, indeed those in some categories already have done so.

I'll comment on my desires, and the possible conflicts between them, soon.

  

This does not even mention the unmentionable - the secret performances for which EOTR is rightly famous and those of you who were at NDH 2012 might also have discovered.

Deer Shed Festival 3 - The future is the young.

If the title of the post is true, and I believe it to be so, then for all the changes in the music industry things don't look too bad for the future of live, acoustic music. Gary Stewart and his supremely adaptable band on the (Far from the) Lake Stage, Saturday lunchtime.

  

The adults, in all probability, were enjoying it even more.

New Music 2012 - Part 22 - The Haunted Man

Before starting on the music that I saw and heard live at Deer Shed Festival 3 this past weekend it is time to mention this; the third album from the artist whose first, Fur and Gold, was the inadvertent genesis of this particular blog!

Tracks:

1. Lilies
2. All Your Gold
3. Horses of the Sun
4. Oh Yeah
5. Laura
6. Winter Fields
7. The Haunted Man
8. Marilyn
9. A Wall
10. Rest Your Head
11. Deep Sea Diver

The Haunted Man is released early-autumn (October 15 in the UK) and it will be available on vinyl. After Two Suns, which she shared with her alter ego Pearl, I wonder what it will reveal. Natasha Khan has been an influence on more new artists since her 2006 début album than she may care to admit. That is one thing that I learned this weekend.
I'm just wondering when someone will first ask me to comment on the 'best albums of 2012'. It hasn't happened yet...
I have, for my part, a few in mind already.

To see her upcoming live set at Bestival 2012, Isle of Wight, UK see here:
http://www.youtube.com/bestivaltv

17:25 BST (UST +1)

New Music 2012 - Part 21 - Record Store Day 2012

One blog that I always follow is Too Much Music (is a good thing). 
Here's an item, a Record Store Day 2012 limited edition 7", that we came to discuss only very recently: It is, basically, Alex Turner's lyrical sensibilities filtered through Caitlin Rose's astonishing avidity for making cover versions her own.

Round 2: over to you Alex.

New Music 2012 - Part 20 - Difficult to resist?

Amazing live in the UK last summer.  She Keeps Bees.  Released July 17, 2012 in the US.

'Blue Moon' is a cover version to be filed alongside such veteran songs as 'Ghost Woman Blues' (1928), as re-recorded by Low Anthem on the 2011 album 'Smart Flesh'. Written a little before (1933-4?) it was first recorded in 1935 and, as it happens, is also the unofficial anthem of the supporters of both Crewe Alexandra and Manchester City Association Football clubs. The exact lyric may not be strictly followed but then even the original lyric had at least four re-writes before it first aired as a bona fide single in its own right!

It has been covered many times down the decades, including that by Elvis Presley on his eponymous début album in 1956, something that without doubt contributed to its early adoption into the canon of 'American songs' although both Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were English. It appeared in snippets in the film 'Grease' and again in Glee (season 1) and in many other films, performed by a myriad of artists, in the meanwhile. It was originally written for the purpose of film accompaniment but went through three sets of lyrics before it was actually used in a film release. Both Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart have been known to perform live cover versions of it.

It is, therefore, a true song-survivor.

New Music 2012 - Part 19 - Across the Pond, again.

There has been plenty of coverage concerning the quantity of UK music making it into the higher reaches of the Billboard charts of late: Just don't imagine otherwise --- we are well able to do partisan self-congratulation too.
Here are two that are nothing of the kind, yet also a reflection on trans-Atlantic trends in music that I particularly like at the moment. This first is an album from 2011 which, although you will hardly find it all over radio in the UK, is well liked by those whose taste in music extends to this genre. Without any doubt they are far more numerous than they were not so very long ago and quite unashamedly I count myself amongst them. If you read my meanderings you would likely have realized this some while back.
In general subject matter, although I left specifics obscure, it was the basis of a post entitled 'If you want to torture yourself, beautifully...' that I wrote in May.  Neither am I going to recant words I have written concerning my love of vinyl even at the risk of suffering discrimination as the result of being an insufferable audiophile.
This is a combination of both 'sins'. It is serious, yet witty and varied, and so well done that it has impact for all the right reasons. In all probability you could absolutely detest every song on it; it is that consistent. The truth is, I just don't care.

  RCA 88691-96876-1 (the US 12" 'Record Store Day 2012' gate-fold vinyl LP release).
  

This next is an even more recent release; Los Angeles' trio-of-sisters Haim with their bud Dash Hutton on percussion. This has seen some play on BBC Radio 1 in the UK and it is dusty, slightly-careworn pop. In some ways, however, it also puts me in mind of me of the output by LA's Warpaint. 

Good stuff then. It's a 10" vinyl EP available directly via the band's label for its physical release. http://nationalanthem.bigcartel.com/product/haim-forever-ep-10-vinyl.
  

Updated: July 9, 2012 (22:55 BST or, if you prefer, UTC+1):

It was available until earlier this evening but all 300 vinyl copies have now been sold. The label says that 'a few more' might become available. Hold your breath.