'Want to Listen' Music - Part 6

It is at this time of year that the dreaded 'Christmas Factor' is usually starting to rear its ugly head again but at least 26th November 2007 will see one thoroughly fine album release:

Remi Nicole - My Conscience and I

I just hope it is released on vinyl since the singles already released, Fed Up and Go Mr Sunshine, both were. That issue aside, just when did we last see album art like this?
November 5: The release for this seems to have been delayed until December 3, although the single 'Rock 'n' Roll' will be released on November 26.

This album will certainly be on my Christmas list, along with the new album Overpowered by Roisín Murphy. Moloko was weird but also very involving - Do You Like My Tight Sweater? was their first album (three more were to follow) - and that it would seem (without giving Mark Bryden all due credit I suspect) to have much to do with the (actually accidental) vocalist who hails from Arklow via Manchester and then, later, Sheffield.

The title track Overpowered is available as a double 12".
It is well worth the search.

And the list could, indeed will, be so much longer...

PS:
As I'm very unlikely to compile a list of "Top EPs of 2007" I've already decided that 'My Manic and I' is right at the top of the list that I'm not going to compile. It scares me slightly and not much music does that! The rumour is that Laura Marling's début album will be released in the UK on February 4, 2008.

Irresistible vinyl...

I've just had a weekend that involved a lot of listening to music that I already have but some of which I had quite forgotten. The thing about that is that it is a dangerously counter intuitive experience for it reminds me only of more music that I would like. I certainly have the necessary will power to overcome that but only most of the time.
I can be broken down however and it happened this weekend because two of my favourites have decided to gang up on me, which is thus just far too much to resist...

London band The Duke Spirit are back, and while I could have had the Ex Voto EP on CD from Amazon, I have it ordered (on 10" vinyl and also signed) for the same price from the ever surprising Pure Groove Records in Archway, north London.
If that wasn't enough then Glaswegian band Sons and Daughters are also back, with the single Gilt Complex on 7" vinyl.

I can't wait and will review them as soon as they arrive!

These releases may even give some clues to the forthcoming albums by these bands but I wouldn't place a bet on that as neither band has been much inclined to the predictable.

More from Wales...

No One Can Drag Me Down/Disappear is the début single from Cate Le Bon and it was available as a free download in the spring of this year. It was more importantly limited to just 500 physical copies and it is still available on 7" vinyl as of today. It is GBP 5.00 (about €7,50 US$ 10) and these prices are exclusive of delivery. The delivery charges are both reasonable and plainly stated on the website.
If you want to buy it then try Spillers Records in Cardiff, which is also the oldest surviving record shop in the world as it was founded in 1894, and enter Cate Le Bon in the Artist section of the Music Search box. They delivered my copy in three days.
This release is label-less as it is self-released and also all copies of it are numbered by hand so, having already had the good fortune to hear her play live (as pictured below), I decided that this 7" was well worth the risking of a fiver!

The album, which is to be entitled Pet Deaths, should follow soon but as yet I can find no date or other information about this release.
One thing I can say is that she will be appearing live in Cardiff as part of the new Sŵn Festival, which will take place in venues across the city over the weekend of 9th - 11th November 2007.

Elegies To Lessons Learnt

I have mentioned this band before and this is one album that I have been looking forward to for a very long time. It is the first true album from iLiKETRAiNS and if you have heard the Progress:Reform EP then you would expect little else. While none of the tracks from that EP are repeated here the more recent single Spencer Percival does feature.
The album mainly addresses historical topics and this kind of music is quite surely not to everyone's taste but if you like it then you might well like this album a great deal. The label Beggars Banquet has also made it available on a suitably historical format too and the 12" LP edition is particularly worthwhile owning if just for the the artwork and the excellent quality of its packaging.

The cover artwork 'Tree of Eyam' was also created by the band. It is like the subject matter of many of the songs and is rather on the dark side. Reviewing the album is not as easy as I thought it would be and I think it is a "Marmite experience". Music-as-a-history-lesson is almost certainly either passion or poison!
I fall in the former category, and there is no doubt about that, but I'll try and provide some more objective commentary on individual tracks from the album no later than this coming weekend. In the mean time I'll end with one of my own images because, while the sun doesn't always shine, I like trains too.

This is Minehead shed, Somerset, at work on a misty morning in March 2006.

Think about this while listening to the to The Beeching Report, which is the final track on the Progress:Reform EP. While this route just survived the mass cull in the 1960s, and has eventually become a major tourist attraction, the great majority didn't.

And Now It Makes Perfect Sense...

Powerful but mellow, autumnal and almost entirely different to the kind of music I bought before this time, this album could well be the one that started me on a different listening regime entirely although it seems unlikely that one album alone could have had such an effect.

In favour of this general theory is that I can find no earlier example and also, as far as I can remember, it was the first album that I bought having heard not a single release by (any of) the artists behind it. I read a review, in the Sunday Times I think, then simply ordered it. It was, very luckily for me, a good choice indeed because not only did I like it I also discovered that I didn't really realise just what more there was available to listen to.
I haven't stopped doing so since then!

Saint Low was formed, after the demise of US East Coast indie band Madder Rose, by vocalist and songwriter Mary Lorson and her partner Billy Coté and this album was their first release. Lorson wrote rather few Madder Rose tracks but both wrote and produced all on this album. She still provides the vocals that were already her trademark but the change defines a really marked difference in emphasis. The album is more consistent in style, actually much more claustrophobic, than the final Madder Rose albums Tragic Magic (1997) and Hello, June Fool (1999) on which Coté played guitars but also wrote most tracks. I subsequently bought those and have listened to them again several times in the last two days: I think that, actually, I like them quite a lot more now than I did when I first bought them seven years ago.

The album Saint Low (2000) remains unique in the true sense of the word; it would not have mattered one little bit had I been listening to it for the very first time today and this was its day of release! The music doesn't sound dated in any way whatsoever - far from it for in fact. Coté was freed to compose, and then play, guitar parts that are often mirages of deliberate, sometimes quite reckless, understatement. While sometimes "only just there" they often leave a solo 'cello to do much of the hard work on strings and that is "just so 2007". Saint Low deserve more credit than is often given...

It is also slightly unnerving given that, having listened to it quite often for about seven years, I still can't even figure out which are my favourite tracks let alone why - although Johnson City almost certainly is one - because it is actually very hard to work out exactly what they are about despite, or perhaps because of, the lyrics. To write a song that can mean totally different things, depending on the mood of the listener at the time but without simultaneously causing mental confusion, clearly isn't a trivial achievement: this album is built from them and very little else - Crash, A Thing Or Two, Keep An Open Mind or perhaps even After The Fall, the epic closing track that is over ten minutes long.
The growing list of albums I want to listen to has inevitably grown longer still. I told you I was falling behind and now I want to hear the following albums, some released as 'Mary Lorson and Saint Low' as apparently artist and band had become the source of some confusion.

• Tricks for Dawn, 2002
• Piano Creeps, 2003 (I overlooked this one at first, sorry.)
  
• Realistic, 2005

More soon but one thing, that is worthy of note if you are searching for these releases, is that although Saint Low are an American act their releases to date have all been on London-based independent label 'Cooking Vinyl Records'. The good news however is that none of these albums are currently remotely difficult or costly to source, at least in the UK.

I'm catching up; and so hopefully is Royal Mail...

It's taken me a long time to catch up after my unplanned absence and now there is so much new stuff that I want to get hold of to listen to, of which more below. To do that however I rely heavily on the services of Royal Mail, the UK Postal Service, to bring packages to my door and just recently this long standing organisation has been involved in protracted industrial action over the subject of changes demanded by the modern competitive environment. It is possible that, for all parties involved and not merely out of my self-interest, over the recent weekend a deal has been reached that will put all interested parties back on course.

Quite possibly the future of Royal Mail is at stake here and this kind of consideration somehow reminded me of the past, an increasing music collection, and then a 2003 album Give Up - The Postal Service.
I no longer even attempt to keep my CD and vinyl collections in any logical order and although this probably started as a matter of lassitude it has now become a quite deliberate policy.
By profession I'm a chemist, which seen in simple terms (that are almost always good) involves toxic cookery and, when things don't go quite so well, nu-alchemy! As an undergraduate therefore I had to go to lectures on quantum physics that left me cold and also seemed incredibly pointless and theoretical. The 'Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle' has few such simple and useful applications larger and thus more useful than the subatomic. Put very simplistically it states that it is fundamentally impossible to know "what some thing is and where it is simultaneously just so long as it is far too small to be useful in any sensible way" - but my life-enhancing discovery is that it also describes my music collection perfectly. By ensuring that remembered and sought for items regularly, but of course totally unpredictably, become mislaid a natural quid pro quo means that those which have genuinely become either forgotten or lost will inevitably come to light again!
Thus, while I was hunting for the CD Give Up, I preternaturally came across my CD of the (eponymous) 2000 album Saint Low. I had forgotten about it for several years and so I listened to that again too! In fact I found both and they are too good to be forgotten and so I'm planning to review both albums on here in the next week.

I've also got a whole list of things I want to find an excuse to order - enough to keep me out of mischief at least until Christmas - and the first few arrived on Saturday and this morning. Coming soon are my thoughts on:
iLiKETRAiNS - Elegies to Lessons Learnt
Maxïmo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures

Already on order are (yet) another two albums from the hot-bed that continues to be Montreal and they are...
Patrick Watson - Close To Paradise
Letters Letters - Letters Letters

... and that is not to mention the latest album from Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War, which I have already mentioned!
Last for now, but not least is Awyren - Cerys Matthews' first EP entirely in Welsh, which was released today on CD by Cardiff-based KungFu Records. Sorry about the poor representation of the cover art - I'll add better as soon as I can. (24 October - at least one job got done!)

Amazon.co.uk does not seem to know about this one, and I can't tell you quite what it sounds like yet either, but I have just ordered it regardless! It is available, worldwide, from sebon.co.uk; always a good place to search for all music Welsh! The price is GBP 5.50 (for guidance only - US$ 11.00, € 8.25) and this includes post and packing in the UK. For delivery abroad add GBP 1.00 (about US$ 2.00 or € 1.50).

Underage Girl Thrown Out of Gig!

Getting thrown out of a gig is, at best, very embarrassing but to have this happen to you when you are the headline act is almost unbelievable. The Soho Review Bar in London is strictly for over 18s only and takes this matter very seriously, under pain of losing their public performance license, and an astute worker had remembered that the Evening Standard had said that Laura Marling is still seventeen. No arguments are possible: a singer-songwriter she may be, but age is simply a fact. I have this idea that 'artist management' is supposed to mean such things don't happen but if I'm wrong then please feel free to explain just what actually happened and why.

At least it wasn't raining and so over a hundred concert goers remained outside to hear her perform some of her set, totally acoustically, on the pavement outside the original venue! There is no rule against seventeen-year-olds busking, even for an artist newly signed to a major label (EMI/Virgin).
Within an hour there was an incredibly hastily arranged gig at The Exchange in Gerrard Street and she simply started all over again, at first solo but slowly joined by the rest of her band. They had been busy supporting the other artists who still continued to play in the original venue. In due course she was joined on stage in The Exchange by those bands as well!

This curious saga, which took place on 1st October, involved the artist behind the My Manic and I EP (Virgin/EMI) . The least I can do is review the My Manic And I EP (the 7" vinyl version, of course) for you.
(See here for a review of her London Town EP that was released in spring 2007.)
She has also said in a radio interview that she didn't much like the songs on her first EP but simply had to get them out of her system. Now that sounds ever so slightly disingenuous to me, or am I being overly suspicious here?

This is a review of the 7" vinyl version that has four tracks...

• A1 New Romantic (recorded live)
  
• A2 Night Terror
• B1 My Manic And I
• B2 Typical (recorded live)

Actually it matters not: 'My Manic And I' sounds little like the last EP and so the question has changed. All four tracks are good and I really like the change of direction, which I think is towards the more realistic side of alt-indie-folk; it is I think actually no bad thing at all but not everyone likes it one little bit perhaps because it is actually rather disconcerting.

That is their choice but who can blame her from wanting to try - given that she was clearly able to do so - to put some clear ground between herself and the anti-folk artists (that I also like and quite unashamedly so) however popular they currently may be?
'My Manic and I' is truly impressive but probably not what most would have expected it to sound like. Not me either - I was surprised too - but I'll surely play it more than 'London Town EP'.
If you can find it on 7" vinyl then do so and if you can find the "London Town EP" on 7" vinyl (MoshiMoshi Records, 2007) then just jump at the opportunity!

Borrowed thoughts...

I've never before done this on my blog but I hope that the Richard in question, who is no relation to me, doesn't mind too much that I'm plagiarising his post (see it in full here) from Amazon.co.uk. I've done it simply because I think it is an absolutely perfect comment on much of the best of 2007 and it is all done in just 150 words or so...

Now we're cooking, 21 Aug 2007

Here is the recipe required to make the perfect 'Fantastic Playground':-
Firstly we will need the core ingredients of: New-Rave and New-Wave. Try not to worry if you don't have any New-Rave in because a touch of 'Electro-Clash' will do just as well. The important thing is that we create a rhythmic dance groove.

We will now need to add in some layers of synths, plus lashings of angular guitars. I recommend the use of: Blondie, B-52s, New Order, David Bowie (think his 'Scary Monsters' album - what with all those bleepy synths and angular guitars) and Duran Duran (it's that 'Girls on film' style bassline).

We will now need to add in a very large amount of sauce - judging by the suggestive lyrics.

Finally, give it a good stir and bring to boiling point, then serve.
* This is also suitable for vegetarians, vegans, CSS and Klaxons fans.

.... and it is also, while music is often intended to be taken seriously, so very light-hearted as was the single 'Ice Cream'! That is a wonderful touch and one in which, with 'Fantastic Playroom', we have been truly indulged by New Young Pony Club should we care enough to listen. I'm quite sure that in our formative years we were told - at least a thousand times and by all and sundry - to listen carefully, pay attention and to do what we were told to do.

Be that as it may at least I now know what all those really boring précis exercises at junior school were really supposed to teach me (I suspect that they didn't...) but I promise to add some more original material very soon!

Talk is cheap - the danger of eclectic shock.

At first spell-checker wanted to change eclectic to electric, which truthfully also has its real dangers, but that is not what I had in mind. Electricity is, in its useful forms, almost invariably under domestic control and makes almost everything from the fridge and freezer to the CD player run in a totally normal way.
Eclectic, put quite simply, isn't in the same category but will probably still involve the former for its usability, these days very little doesn't, but when it comes to music it is still dangerous and last weekend I had some friends over, which made it seem especially so to me. They proved to be a fascinating research group for an, admittedly very non-statistical, social experiment. As all good animal experiments involving sociable animals do it is best to make sure the subjects start off well fed and are then allowed to drink ad libitum. The researcher is not really supposed to take part in this, but we were a bit short on participants...

I was feeling brave: it is, as I said to them, my music collection but for the weekend it is at your choosing because when I am at home alone I can play anything I own at any time that I am able to listen; and that is simply not the same thing at all. We had a great evening on Saturday and listened to all sorts of utter nonsense that, in all probably, none of us would not otherwise have been brave enough to admit liking, let alone possessing, for some years.
A little of it turned out to be music two or three decades old but by far the most of it was not. We happily listened to such definitive pop albums as those by 'Las Ketchup', the first 'Sugababes' album and a sample of early solo works by former members of 'The Spice Girls'. (I didn't check with the other guinea pigs yesterday - so I can't say for sure that none of them tried to get tickets either or at least perhaps they just lied convincingly - but I promise that I didn't try to do so.) They did however remind me that we also listened to the whole of Billie Piper's second album, Walk Of Life (2002), and in all probability twice.
The odd thing was had I been hiding the rather more varied and eclectic nature of many of my more recent purchases in what seemed to be an apparently more secure way then I would have succeeded far worse than just by not even trying. They simply remained just where they already were, which was and still is, scattered amongst all the rest of them on the various shelves in different places and thus in the essentially random order that I favour!
The thing about those pop albums, however dubious they are, it that we all enjoyed listening to them and thus I also enjoyed owning them again.
Pop matters if for no other reason that it, or particular songs, provide anchor points in time between friends. I actually don't care if it is total trash (although I think I ought to) , and I think we would all have agreed this is true. Then again I doubt that we enjoyed anything more than 'Walk of Life', Billie Piper's second album (2002), and my thanks go to whoever saw fit to choose playing it. It is a splendid example of its kind and nothing more can be said!

To quote a pointed lyric (from another album entirely) that is as true now as it was then: "Talk is cheap when the story is good..."
Long may it remain it so because if it does then pop will surely remain as important in the next fifty years as it has been in the last half century - and who could ask for more than that?

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More...

The album that I've listened to most in the last six weeks, and the one which I continue to do so without fail, is this one.

This is actually the cover of the single I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, which is also available on 7" vinyl, but the album has the same title and the cover illustration is in a very similar vein. This is the début album by Candie Payne and the UK indie label 'Deltasonic' has also had the great sense to release the album on vinyl with an illustrated inner sleeve.
What is more is that it is also frighteningly good, if rather different to that which might usually make the charts, and when she needs backing vocalists she calls on her brothers, including Sean who is the drummer with the Zutons, and also Abi Harding who is the saxophonist with the same. All are actually very good backing vocalists but neither this album or their contributions to it sound remotely like the Zutons own works.

The opening track, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, may sound rather like a James Bond theme tune that is just slightly too realistic and melancholy to be real and so, and therefore also in many other ways, this is the track that goes far towards defining the whole theme from the start. If an album can be wistful and sometimes nostalgic, but also both positive and realistic at the same time, then listening to the first side will probably seem too good to be true. The second side might actually, however, turn out to be the better one and that really is an achievement.
I have found three singles, all taken from the album, that are available on 7" vinyl; these are 'I wish I could have loved you more', 'Take me' and 'All I need to hear', which are tracks 1,3 and 5 respectively on the first side of the 12" LP.
For the dates of live performances see here.

I didn't intend to vanish for five weeks...

All sorts of theories about my disappearance have been suggested by my friends, but they are all untrue. I have not been kidnapped, in prison, or even any of the far more improbable suggestions! In fact - as well as still being very much alive (thanks to the people that e-mailed me to ask me just that, or various versions of it) I'd love to thank, above all, absolutely everyone who has looked after me or out for me in one way or another.

I did at least do the whole 2007 "environmentally friendly" thing by being an unwilling victim of a carbon-neutral road traffic accident. I was a pedestrian who was run over by a pedal cyclist... the cyclist luckily suffered no injuries but I ended up in hospital in Lancashire for eight days. It was simply an accident - nothing more or less - but, having experimented when I certainly didn't intend to, I can say without doubt that I don't regard this kind of contribution to an environmentally friendly lifestyle in any way worthwhile.

You might think that I had therefore had so much more time than usual to listen to, and blog about, music but actually it didn't quite work out that way. At first, and maybe apart from an intermittent headache, I couldn't understand why I felt this way but I simply had little interest in listening to any music at all. After a few days I had the desire to listen to music, but only a few albums out of those (thirty or so) that had stayed with me. The one that I listened to most - and it was the one I had most recently acquired - it had actually arrived at home, on vinyl, from a record store barely a mile from the hospital I ended up in - but the better part of two hundred miles away! This fact actually never occurred to me until I got back home and, while I've since regained my interest in all the other music I have, I've certainly continued to play that one and it is the subject of my next post. The only other I played to death in that time was very predictable: 'No Shouts No Calls' by Electrelane.

Home Taping is killing music... piracy.

With all the fuss about copy protection in the digital download age it is very easy to forget that this kind of concern has proven to be of concern before the digital age.
Copying copyright music, or anything else subject to copyright for that matter, is illegal - IT IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT.
The real issue is therefore how best to deal with the threat of infringement of such copyright and the major labels have, for several decades, worried about just such things and tried a variety of approaches.

When vinyl was still the predominant format they were worried about the impact that home copying on to compact cassette tape might have.

Yes it is true, the tape was a major advance in technology but mainly because you could record your own and play them in car players (the personal tape player became widely affordable somewhat later), rather than as a format for purchased music, and it is that what really prompted the worries that led to the above, which I took from the sleeve of a 1978 vinyl album.
Now, however, the mere thought of cassette tapes has a slightly strange effect on me: half of me thinks I should view them with childhood nostalgia while the other half remembers that they were a pain. They were always getting wound either too tightly or otherwise too loosely or even worse self-destructing in a tangle of knotted tape (a kind of road-side pollution, as car players were particularly prone to this, now happily all but forgotten) that could also take the player with it into oblivion. Well, music is still with us...

Even assuming one's tape of choice was behaving as it should then actually finding the start of any given song was a lottery with no winning numbers given those little "counters" that were hopelessly unreliable (and a really good case of an analogue but apparently digital accessory). I'm sure, and actually hope, that there are die-hard fans of the cassette tape out there surely as there are those whose "comfort food" of first choice would be rice pudding topped with pineapple chunks, or with rose-hip syrup for that matter.
I salute you, but just can't bring myself to join in!
My antiquated format of choice for music actually has almost any number of extra limitations and impracticalities that tape overcame at a stroke but it also has one advantage - that of locating the start of tracks - that CD shares. It is nothing other than choice and, unless this is the first time you have had the misfortune to somehow stumble across this blog, you will have noticed that my foible is vinyl. Yes, it is nostalgia pure and simple: It is an odd kind because, while I do have "old" vinyl from the pre-cassette days, what I like most of all is current vinyl! Of course I listen to CDs, which unlike vinyl are usable in a car, and I am quite happy with using mp3 and other related digital technology and I would not wish a return to a vinyl-only musical world for a moment - unless perhaps the only alternative was cassette tape only!
For me the real thing about vinyl is simply the reality of it - and also, for 12" in particular, the platform it allows for cover artwork - because the pleasure of handling, cleaning and then playing it is exactly the same regardless of if it is as old as BBC Radio 1 (that is actually slightly younger than I) or if it actually first went on sale today.

In recent years copy protection of CDs has sparked a number of attempts to make this more difficult but there are problems. Some systems have been only used in specific markets and issues concerning what is, by law, actually allowable in different countries have proved to be merely the tip of the iceberg since made much more difficult the threat of illegal downloading.

Would you be discouraged to buy an album that, even if you never attempted to do anything illegal, might somehow damage your equipment and, if it somehow did, you would have no legal claim for your loss.

Such consumer contracts are not illegal, at least in the US in 2005, but is this kind of approach really the best when totally illegal downloading - which accrues nothing to the label, artist or anyone else legitimately involved - has now become the major threat?

Emmy The Great - The Bad EP

See a new post about Emmy The Great: January 23, 2009.

Here, for those that like nu-folk and vinyl, is another EP for your collection. Better be quick though as there are only 750 7" available (ch01, Close Harbour/Moshi Moshi - Monday 20th August) but it also available as a digital download with a bonus track. Thanks to the helpful folks at Action Records I'm reviewing the 7" for you...

Emmy The Great has actually been around for several years touring both as support and on her own but one previous very limited 7" aside this is her first release.

'Want To Listen' Music 2007 - Part 5

The problem is that, much as I like wandering off on excursions into musical byways and backwaters, I can certainly still find and enjoy plenty of releases by artists well known who have recently released new material, or are shortly to do so.

Here is one of each of mine as of now...

Kelly Clarkson - My December

Yes I know; she was the first winner of 'American Idol' and I'm usually pretty unimpressed with such 'reality TV' artists but, amongst all the choss, there has to be a something that shines...

Kelly Clarkson turned out to be less the diamond, more a seam of bright coal, and the further she moves away from her 'Idol' beginnings the better she becomes. My December is another big shift from her 2005 album Breakaway - and one that is taxing her home fans. On the other hand it seems perfectly placed to take Europe, Japan and Australasia by storm - they are already no strangers to her music - because this time it's darker and more confessional.

KT Tunstall - Drastic Fantastic

The 200% girl (she's 100% Scottish, but also 50% Irish and 50% Chinese) returns with a second studio album, the follow up to her multi-platinum 2005 début 'Eye To The Telescope'. It is due for release on 10th September in the UK.
If you feel you might need to hear her play acoustically then that's actually "YOU NEED TO HEAR HER PLAY ACOUSTIC": it is an imperative, not a suggestion! You need 'KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza'; on the face of it this was a stop-gap release after the amazing success of 'Eye To The Telescope' and it consists of some re-workings, some covers (rather interestingly chosen) and various other acoustic odds and ends including hints for the new album... The real point to note is that, while it was recorded live on the island of Skye over a couple of days in 2006, it has a lot to recommend it and it is now available fairly cheaply from amazon.co.uk. It was originally available only on-line through her label and, while the packaging may not be the same, the recordings are apparently identical.

America 3 - Revenge...

Few artists have had such a 'rock 'n' roll' ride as Vanessa Carlton. Her 2002 début 'Be Not Nobody', which provided the international hit single A Thousand Miles, saw her hailed as one of the greatest US female artists of all time. The follow-up album, also released by A&M, was 'Harmonium' (2004) - which, although it was a critical success and without doubt a huge progression musically, was met with disappointing sales. Indeed it was not even properly released in the UK for at least twelve months after it was released in North America - I bought my copy as soon as it was released and that had to come from Canada.
This unfortunately coincided with the "great panic" that engulfed the major labels when they suddenly realised digital downloads were really here to stay. The label's instincts were wrong - rather than sticking with those artists with the potential to develop careers they ditched their best up-and-coming artists in favour of old-timers.

Vanessa Carlton was a big-time loser here but she' s back, probably bruised, battered and better than ever, in 2007 and the first single to be taken from her forthcoming third album, 'Heroes & Thieves', is Nolita Fairytale and there is no doubt whatsoever what it is about...

[Click above image to see it full size in this window.]

The signature song 'A Thousand Miles', taken from her first album, also featured prominently in the 2004 film 'White Chicks' and only enhanced her reputation as the definitive white New Yorker (ballet dancer, pianist and more recently singer-songwriter) that she is, or arguably was until she moved to San Francisco.
Nolita Fairytale is about being betrayed by A&M and what happened thereafter.

Fast-forward to 2007 and her third album is to be released by 'The Inc.', formerly 'The Murder Inc.'; the label is run by Irv Gotti and hip-hop is his history - think Ja Rule and Ashanti both of whom he discovered - so this might just seem a peculiar signing.
It is probably not as strange as it seems and neither is there anything whatsoever to suggest that Vanessa Carlton has undergone a change of musical direction either.

More from America...

Lily Allen has had her US 'O-1 working visa' revoked by US Immigration authorities, apparently because of a contretemps with a press photographer in London earlier this year, as a result of which she was not charged with an offence let alone convicted. It should all be sorted out in time for her to attend the MTV awards in September.

This photo, taken from Reuters.com today, surprised me more than any other however...

Say "hi" to the new, and remarkably dark-skinned, Lily Allen!

Ghosts, Mice & Vagabonds - hard to find music from America...

A few weeks ago I mentioned US artist Stephanie Dosen in this blog and I commented that her first album, Ghosts Mice and Vagabonds has not had a UK release and the only copies available (on Amazon Marketplace) were about £25 (US$ 52) - and were dispatched from the US anyway. I suggested, but with a caveat, a possible alternative in that blog post and that was to order it direct via her website.
I did exactly that and it all worked out perfectly - the CD arriving in about eight days, despite the recent industrial action by Royal Mail in the UK! What is more the $12 I mentioned included shipping to the UK, where it was not subject to customs charges (individual packages valued at less than £18 are not usually subjected to the collection of VAT when imported in to the UK by an individual).

More important is the fact that Ghosts, Mice & Vagabonds is a very fine album in its own right. In many ways she is the perfect modern alt-folk songstress - she doesn't write or sound like an American; neither does she have the traditional lyrical 'hang-ups' that tend to hinder her UK counterparts.
I've been listening to both albums a great deal in the last week. I don't think that I could really choose between it and A Lily For The Spectre if I were asked which I preferred overall; certainly they are subtly different but, as far as I'm concerned, it is more a matter of my mood rather anything particular about the music.
Anyway at $12 delivered it is an utter bargain - if you like A Lily For The Spectre just buy it! Even if Bella Union should decide to release it in the UK it will probably cost more than it currently does ordered as described above.

Wales, Welsh artists, and the Welsh language...

Just about thirty miles from here as the crow flies lies a country that has produced at least its fair share of well known popular artists of many genres. Here are a few that come to mind, in no particular order: Shirley Bassey, Aled Jones, The Automatic, Lostprophets, Super Furry Animals, Charlotte Church, Catatonia, The Stereophonics, Tom Jones, Goldie Lookin' Chain, The Manic Street Preachers... and so the list goes on.
They all of course hail from Wales but what few of them do is sing in Welsh. [Just in case anyone here is confusing Welsh accents or dialect (of English) I'm referring to the Welsh language here - that which sounds, and if seen written, seems about as familiar as would Finnish for example.] I'm already on record as saying that I have no problem with foreign language music and I've mentioned one Welsh language artist already...

Well, if you are curious to hear what modern Welsh language music sounds like I have two more you might care to listen to!

Cerys Matthews, formerly the lead singer with Catatonia in the late 1990s has released two solo albums - Cock A Hoop (2003) and Never Said Goodbye (2006), on which only the occasional track is sung in Welsh - but she is however well known as a collector of traditional Welsh language songs. I have just learned today of her forthcoming EP, entirely sung in Welsh. I haven't heard it as yet, but I'm working on getting a copy. It is entitled Awyren (Aeroplane) and is due to be released on 15th October 2007 on Cardiff-based label 'Kung Fu Records'.

Then there is Cate Le Bon, who is yet another artist I saw live at Latitude 2007. Like Gwenno Saunders and Cerys Matthews she is a native of South Wales and is bilingual. She is also fine writer of what some reviewers have labelled nu-folk - a term I don't actually particularly like and indie-alt-folk is probably far better if rather clumsy. What sets her apart from most is that she writes and sings pretty much equally in Welsh and English. She was the second act on the 'Lake Stage', promoted by BBC Radio 1, on Sunday with a set consisting of four tracks sung in English followed by another four sung in Welsh and, if truth be told, they were all very good. The relatively small crowd was probably a result of the collective hangover that can come from two full days spent at a festival... I've since read more glowing reports and she's definitely one to watch in 2007/8.

Apart from singing she mostly plays guitar, but sometimes keyboards and it is rumoured, but I never saw it myself, drums. Her début album, Pet Deaths, is due out before too long. Rumour has it that this may actually be preceded by a Welsh-language EP.

She seems to have the support of young fans too...

These three girls spent the whole set utterly absorbed in the music, probably planning their future careers, and as I left for the Obelisk Stage in order to catch The Hoosiers they were busy "interviewing" the camera operator for good measure!

Back in April... a belated review of Robyn

I mentioned this self-titled album - Robyn - in passing in my post on 12th April and as I threatened to do actually bought it there and then. I really should have reviewed it promptly too because, out of all of the electro-pop albums released so far in 2007, it looks to be the one that might actually make the mainstream.

Last Sunday the single 'With Every Heartbeat' entered the UK singles chart at #5 on downloads alone.
For this kind of track and artist that is actually something quite remarkable. On the face of it her album, by an artist who has been around for some ten or so years but until now was rather little known, and that is the first released on her own label (Konichiwa Records) seemingly did not stand a chance in hell.
How quickly things can change! It certainly does now and it is due for a full UK release next Monday (13th August). Most of the tracks seem to be the same as the promo version of the so-called EP release that I have been enjoying since mid-April. The full UK CD has a bonus track - Jack You Off - that does not appear on the version I have and I believe that several other tracks on it have also been remixed for the new release.

What does it sound like?
If you have heard nothing of Robyn, then imagine Annie and Pink were somehow combined as a single Scandamerican singer-songwriting chimera. It might possibly sound as good as Robyn (who is Swedish, not Dutch as some sites have claimed). Now imagine, improbably, that other stations and sites championed it and then eventually even BBC Radio 1 loved it. The first bit is clearly a flight of fantasy - it is beyond current bioscience - but at least the rest, including the Radio 1 thing, is true.
If the full UK release sounds anything like the version that I already have, and I suspect it does in which case Gwen Stefani's solo material would be another point of reference, then I think it would be well worth giving it a very careful listen...

Always a bridesmaid...

The kind of dogged, and very closely fought, battle for the UK #1 single that has been played out over the last six weeks has not been seen since the mid-1980s so, in other words, it simply hasn't been done by any artist in her lifetime!

Two weeks at #2 in the UK charts, a week at #3, and now another three weeks at #2; last week just sixteen sales kept her from the #1 spot and she missed out again today. It is something of a theme: naturally more at home on keyboards, she started writing songs on guitar when laid-up after she broke her foot on a trip to the cinema, which was to distract from/commiserate the fact that she had just been rejected by the 'Bristol Old Vic' stage school.

One faceless (female) exec. for a major label was heard to say, little more than a month ago, "She is so utterly irrelevant... I just don't see the point." and this was the finalé to a rather incomprehensible diatribe on the rise of new female artists. Clearly she felt threatened in some strange way; I can only hope that a 'P45' will provides her with some kind of closure because she deserves nothing less. On the other hand acting's loss is very much music's gain and these bitchy comments were aimed at someone for whom such petty feuds quite simply don't matter any more.
If she does anything at all it will be to write them into a future song and that is certainly not what the villain, now the victim, would wish to hear! She's already playing to far larger audiences and on her own terms - her Autumn 2007 headline tour sold out within hours of the tickets being released - and all that in advance of the release of her début album. Maybe that was part of the problem...

In just six weeks Kate Nash has almost single-handedly demolished a key tenet of the modern (for which read 'late 20th century' if you will) recording industry with her first single to be widely released - 'Foundations'!
I'm sure she didn't plan it this way but the lyric "holding on to the cracks in our foundation" has never seemed more apposite and nothing before it has done more to undermine the industry dinosaurs. It's fun, but also quite serious, and it grew to such prominence largely of its own accord - it virtually sold itself - and a did a very good job of it.

Nash is made of stern stuff and her album "Made Of Bricks" is released tomorrow; distributed by Polydor in the UK. It is incredibly good by the way and if anyone knows of a vinyl release of this album - I can't find one - could you please contact me here asap!