A Balloon Called Moaning

A Balloon Called Moaning - what does that mean as an album title? Well nobody seems to know except those responsible, and they are not telling! This is the first release from a band that I had not heard of until I saw them play on the 'Sunset Stage' at Latitude 2008 and I think I've found live picture from that gig that I haven't used before.

L -R: Justin Stahley, Ritzy Bryan and Rhydian Daffydd.

Ever since it has been on my list of bands not to forget.

When I discovered in January that Pure Groove Records were to release their début album I could hardly wait.

Eight tracks and 29 minutes: some would call it a mini-album. It is however several minutes longer than they were allocated to play their set at Latitude - but it doesn't take long, for better or for worse, to make a lasting impression.

Call it what you like but there is no point reviewing the tracks individually.

I could easily have been disappointed by the weight of my expectations here, as has happened many times before, but this is just brilliant and I'm so glad that I saw them live first.

Driving to Idaho. What happened to Nerina Pallot?

Driving to Idaho...
The track that arguably took her from Dear Frustrated Superstar territory, after endless battles with the suits at the label that released her first album, had that title. Her second album was to be Fires and it was originally released in 2005 by the label 'Idaho' that she set up for that purpose.

Fires (2005) - IDAHOCD001

In 2006 she was signed to 14th Floor Records, a Universal imprint. Fires was then remixed (more sparkly, as the artist herself put it) and given a major re-release. It was good too, and it went platinum in the UK. Call me reactionary if you like but I actually still prefer the original Idaho version for its less intrusive production and have them both. For months in 2006 the songs from this album could be heard almost whenever the radio was on. The singles from it were largely well received and successful given the full treatment and promotion.

14th Floor 825646387076 14FLR16V LC003077 (2006)

They were good songs, well written, arranged and sung and then, as suddenly as she had appeared, she vanished.
Probably not for much longer though - she's now got to choose the tracks that will constitute her third album. That might take some time as, a prolific songwriter and lyricist, choosing at most a dozen from apparently about sixty songs is always going to be a challenge. It will, when it appears, be one that I'll be quite happy to buy even if I have not yet heard a single track from it.

Method of Modern Love

Six weeks in and 2009 in music is getting into its stride. It is sounding good and certain trends are clear:
Firstly, that festivals are not necessarily going to suffer as a result of the recession. Glastonbury sold out over a week ago and the only tickets that will be available in early April will be returns. After last year's wobble, that this happened before any acts have been officially confirmed surprised me at first. On reflection I have decided that perhaps this result is in part because of the recession. Perhaps folks who enjoy music and can tolerate camping have, while making cut backs to expensive holiday plans, realised just what good value in terms of both time and money a long weekend at a festival can be.

The second thing, and it will doubtless be apparent at this summer's festivals, is the subtle shift towards more music that is pop and fantasy-inspired and often electronically based. This is no sudden change, and it certainly won't stop the likes of White Lies conquering all the territory they lay claim to, but it should make 2009 very interesting indeed. It took a while but electro-pop finally returned to the mainstream in 2008 and I wouldn't be surprised if its disco-cousins don't do the same in 2009 and that is where some of these new electronic toys will see use live.
They've been a source of much controversy and creativity since the analogue Moog synthesizer appeared in the late 1950s, with the more compact, robust and practical transistorized version following in 1961. They are still used and have many devotees, not least for the warm sound they produce. The Dubrecq stylophone followed in 1967, a hand-held keyboard played with a stylus, and it was really mainly intended as a 'toy instrument' for children. It too gained a large following and was therefore successfully relaunched in 2007.

This is an example of the 21st century stylophone.

You will almost certainly see one being played sometime this year - it is well suited to the style of music favoured by Little Boots and others. Another much more recent and complex electronic instrument also used by Victoria Hesketh first appeared in 2007.

Yamaha Tenori on.

It is not obvious exactly what it does or how you play it but, put very simply, it is a computer specifically designed to be used to play music. As you probably know I'm a big fan of acoustic music and traditional instruments but I can't wait to see someone in the flesh actually playing one of these.

On that general subject one of the giants of 1990s electro/dance pop is back. The single below is a new one released to promote the forthcoming 2-CD compilation - London Conversations - The Best Of Saint Etienne - but I wonder if there is actually rather more to it than that particularly given the success of Sarah Cracknell's collaboration with Mark Brown in 2008 - The Journey Continues.

This is the first Saint Etienne single in many years: 'Method Of Modern Love', was released on 9 February 2009. It is available to download but why would I want to? This is the real vinyl deal. This is 0116 of 1500, some of which were also signed.

Across the Atlantic they are at it too and they have also developed a liking for vinyl! More soon...

Chrome's On It - Telepathe (12" vinyl single)

Chasing The Tiger's Tail

As a kid you get on a fairground roundabout and you are probably not paying so you don't consider where you will get off, or even what might happen in the meantime. It is an adventure and about enjoying the here and now. If that is simply an ice-cream you didn't expect to get, then that is good enough when age ten...

'Fat Cat' bankers that made themselves rich on the cards of others' houses are the current bêtes noires but this is also how and why the established music industry went wrong. It did it rather earlier however, and without such global ramifications, but it did it none the less.
Did the world's financial sector notice the possible parallel?
Well, if it did we were not told. Now some senior bankers have said "sorry" in a lengthy and guarded way. The sort of tongue-tied language couched in weasel-words - against which Wikipedia would rightly rail on the grounds of lack of candour - but that at worst would come with the label 'Parental Advisory'. Had they had come up with a contrite explanation, that could justifiably be labelled 'EXPLICIT CONTENT', it would have been better.

There is that human traît, which we all have to a degree, to believe that good as things may be they could be better if...
The problem is when it runs riot. If I mess my life up because of the way I believe this to be true then you can just say "that was all your fault" and the rest of the world will carry on as it did before. It is all a matter of scale and, on that scale of reckoning, things globally are currently pretty bad.

As in life so it is in music and vice versa. Some artists are already funding their albums by selling small shares (typically £10/ $15) to supporters on which a return on future royalties will be payable if such happens - this mutual 'Credit Union' approach has a great deal of precedent in other times and situations. Given that it links diverse artists and their supporters directly, particularly in the digitally connected world, it could have profound implications for the music industry.
It is in any case a cyclical industry, not least in terms of consumer taste, for who would have thought in, let's say the summer of 2007, the US market would now be so enamoured of pop, that there would be so many UK winners at the 2009 Grammys or that the UK, while apparently already in a deep recession, is flirting not only with electro-dance but also italo-disco while simultaneously maintaining an addiction to much that is, more or less, acoustic?
Can you really imagine Emmy the Great collaborating with Norman Cook - the Cinderella of acoustic indie with pop and dance legend Fatboy Slim (DJ, and former Housemartin)?

No, of course you can't!

That is a good answer, and thank-you, except that it is wrong.

I make no apologies if the above seems like a Luke Haines lyric, from the Black Box Recorder School of Music, but the fact remains that you can: www.thebrightonportauthority.com

Try putting your mind, guitar, or instrument of choice, to this hybrid song:

I had a dream, no destination,
A sense that it would end like this...
In a trunk at Brighton Station
As an unsolved case.

I love the place I come from
I'm happy where I am.
I can't stop chasing the tiger's tail
I'm tempted to taste some forbidden delight

But I just don't get it.
I don't let it get to me.
The only way into this song is walking.
But you'd rather run.

Blue Roses - an update.

This is an update to my earlier post for those of you who have been looking for more information. The first Blue Roses single, 'Doubtful Comforts', is now scheduled for release in the UK on 2 March 2009 on Salvia (XL Recordings) and the album is due to follow sometime in April. In between touring with Guillemots and Emmy The Great she not only found the time to write it all; it is also self-arranged and self-produced. I do not know the album title or track list as yet.

If you can't wait even that long here is a 2008 single that, released as Laura Groves, is still available:

Salvia TIC 001 (2008) is available from Rough Trade.

The only problem I have with it is that it only makes me want the album even more! The 'b-side, and that it genuinely is for it is physically available only on 7" vinyl, 'Bridges' is very short but also a wonderful resumé of her musical style, fluid vocals and observational lyrics.
In a genre with much competition Blue Roses will surely be one of the 'must hear' acoustic artists of 2009.

Note added 14 February:
'Blue Roses' is also the title of the album and it is pencilled in for release in the UK on 27 April on both CD and 12" vinyl. It is now available to pre-order in both formats from Pure Groove.

He doesn't like it when people love me
But he can argue so eloquently.
His words are like knots
Which cannot be unpicked by the likes of me.
Sometimes bridges burn themselves down.
I never knew when to...

One album, two possibilities - and it fails on both counts.

I doubt that I would have bothered to try to drive through the snow in order to get to work today were it not that this album was in the CD autochanger. If it had been indoors I would have just stayed at home instead (like, as it turned out, almost everybody else). It took me so long to get to work that I was actually able to listen to it once-and-a-half-times and, at over 43 minutes, it is not short. It is my first received album release of 2009 and so it is obviously my favourite, but I think it likely to remain one and if the rest come up to this standard then it is going to be a year to remember.

An album with such ambitious intent could quite easily have become arch and pretentious or, on the other hand, just another formulaic indie-pop-rock cross-over. I think it does neither hence the title of the post - the music and lyrics are both very strong throughout but, ultimately, it is the singer that makes the song and sometimes so much more than that which is merely written.

Nina Persson demonstrates that facility in spades.

It is very different to the music she made with 'The Cardigans' or indeed her duet with Sir Tom Jones - a cover of 'The White Stripes' Burning Down The House. She also duets on Your Love Alone Is Not Enough with the 'Manic Street Preachers' and that appeared on the Manic Street Preachers' album Send Away The Tigers (2007).

I've listened to Colonia twice more at home this evening. The best general description I can muster is that it is equally comforting and disturbing and I'm certainly not getting bored of it. As for my favourite tracks that is truly no easier to say than after the first time I listened to it. That is the sign of a really good album - if you want three then try these:

• The Crowning
• Love Has Left The Room
• My America

The achievement no less remarkable is this: it is never obvious just what an incredible tightrope this album actually treads. It involves both Nathan Larson, her husband who is better known for film music and it shows to great effect, and fellow Swede Niklas Fisk. Joan Wasser (Antony and the Johnsons and, perhaps more importantly, Joan As Policewoman) also provides violin and viola.

Just buy it!

In Europe, except Scandinavia, it is released on CD by Reveal Records (REVEAL 50), the inlay booklet contains all the lyrics and this album will also be available on vinyl. In the US it currently only available on import, handled by 101 Distribution, but available from amazon.com at a price.

A thought and a rumour.

A thought:
This is an unusual post as it is something of an operational announcement.
I regard all visitors to my blog very highly and, to try and discover what inspires you, I watch the very limited blog statistics that I can gather accordingly.
I think I have noticed a certain problem:
You are looking for items I mention in my 'I've Just Listened To...' list located in the side bar and the post associated with it has nothing about that artist. There could be several reasons for this but these are the most likely:

• I haven't posted about that item.
• I have posted about this artist but that post is not on the page that you are currently viewing.

I'm currently trying to improve links, including forward ones from old posts, but it is an endless struggle. I try to make links from 'I've Just Listened To...' to items, even if only as an aside, of artists that I have mentioned. If the side-bar mention is a clickable-link then that should take you straight to a post of at least some relevance. If there are problems please let me know (see below) and, similarly, if you think some pages should be cross-linked please suggest which ones and, for the benefit of everyone not least me, why. You might think that obvious but in different ways, that, to one who writes and thinks in a different way that may not seem so. If not then try Google: search "rpgreenhalgh", complete with the quote marks and the item you are looking for, again enclosed in quote marks. Here is an example:

"rpgreenhalgh" "fur and gold"

It will likely return many 'hits' (and you may have to view similar searches not included, as offered at the bottom of the page) but you should be able to pick out the more promising ones from the synopses. Please don't feel bad about it; I do just this when I can't remember where and when I posted something and, for goodness sake, I wrote and posted it in the first instance! I need to do a bit of work there.
If you can't find something then please feel free to contact me directly. I can't promise that I will respond to every question but ask me a simple one, like 'What is the catalogue number of ***some album*** that I have mentioned?' I probably can and will. Either post a comment/question or e-mail me: contact details can be found in the sidebar: About Me>View my complete profile.

A few words of warning:
Your contribution can be credited to you or, if you would rather remain anonymous, I will respect that. You can post an anonymous comment via Blogger and it is simply your choice. It will not affect my decision, as moderator, whether or not to publish it and you can disagree with me as much as you like but - for the good of all - posts that are clearly offensive, libellous, etc. will be not be published and I'm glad to say that I have never had to invoke this yet.
I'm not saying that you can't tell me that you think my current favorite act is utter s**t, because you can, and I might unwittingly post something similar about yours. Maybe I already have!

These are merely some ground rules.

A rumour:

It's the BBC story that just runs and runs; the one that says TOTP could be back for good and 2009 looks to be an extremely appropriate year for it. Booked to run for just a few weeks when it started in 1964 it ran weekly for over forty-two years, in it's heyday had a UK weekly audience of around fifteen million, and that was on a Thursday evening! What channel wouldn't kill for that now?

The title screen in 1968 but not the icon I remember.

I might be wrong but I think that for many of a certain age, and I am one, this single is still inextricably connected with Top Of The Pops.

Back To Bat... Music I Want in 2009 - Part 2

The only reason this blog exists at all is because of my innate curiosity. The only reason that, rather than just wondering about it, something actually happened instead is entirely due to one album. That album is 'Fur and Gold' and the artist is Bat For Lashes.

Live @ Latitude 2007

The UK release date for 'Two Suns' is 6 April 2009.

As winter turns to spring, and almost two-and-a-half-years after that début, the second Bat For Lashes album will appear, even fuller sounding and more eclectic than the first, and it is 'Two Suns'. Written and recorded, even if that were not the original plan, in New York, California and mid-Wales the result is something quite different.

Never yet one to turn down an opportunity to raid the costume box, one thing that you can rely on is that, seen live, Bat For Lashes will be nothing if not a true all-round stage performance.
This summer's festivals? Let's hope so!

Doubtful Comforts - luck can do you like a shotgun.

'Want To Listen' Music 2009 - Part 1: Hot on the heels of my recent post there is a début single from Blue Roses. 'Doubtful Comforts' is released on March 2, 2009 by Rough Trade. It is available for pre-order now and there is a limited vinyl 7". For an update on this artist see here.

If you want temptation, but don't blame me, then start here:
http://www.roughtrade.com/site/

An album that has very much become on my 'want to listen' list is by an artist who is well known, particularly for the band she once fronted; it is 'Colonia' and she is Nina Persson, formerly of The Cardigans, in her 'A Camp' persona for the first time since the eponymous album in 2001. After the passage of eight years it is, rather unsurprisingly, not quite the same beast and, arguably, it is an even better one. [See my update on this item - 6 February 2009]

Well that has dealt with Shipley and Stockholm, at least for now.

'True Love', and the patience of a saint?

Good things take time but ever since I mentioned the 'Bad EP - Emmy The Great' 7" vinyl EP in August 2007 I have been, and continue to be, amazed by the number of people looking for it.

Well here is more good news in 2009 - at long last I can tell you something important!
One of the long-mysterious, yet hardly underground, treasures of UK nu/alt/anti-folk (or whatever you care to call it) is about to release her début album True Love. If you are really quick you might get a signed copy of the CD for £10 + p&p, which would be a bargain, mail order from Pure Groove in London.


I'm certainly no saint here because I've put my money where my mouth is - I've already pre-ordered my copy - which is why I'm telling you this. That said, a vinyl release is also expected (no release date known to me as yet) but don't say that you weren't warned!

Rain On My Window - Jill Jackson - lyrics

Thank-you to whoever just asked for this lyric: I've been meaning to do more lyrics for ages and you finally put me up to it and it is, as it happens, raining on my skylight window as I write.

This is what I think the lyric is but it comes with the usual proviso:

Rain On My Window

How do I begin?
How do I begin?
Now, to fly away...
When I can't feel the wind on my face.

I've been running out
I've been running out
Of these things to say...
There's another girl in my place.

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

There's nothing like the sun
There's nothing like the sun
That I see in your smile
And now the day is gone it leaves me cold.

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

Tears are in my hands
Tears are in my hands
And they cut like ice
How am I gonna live without my soul?

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

And there we will meet
Somewhere between
A prayer and dream
God only knows how my heart goes on!

Without you, without me
Without you, without me

I could walk the world
I could walk the world
A thousand times
But I could never find a love like this.

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

Without you, without me.
Without you, without me.

It is a brilliant album from start to finish and one that should be far better known. If I were sent to a desert island with just one album from 2008 then this would likely be the one.

Richard

Fefe Dobson - Miss Underestimated

This is as much hope as fact - release dates have come and gone but it is true that ever since I wondered and then posted - What Happened to Fefe Dobson - it has been one of the most accessed posts I have ever written. The problem has been that which made me write in the first place! I didn't know and it seems that, popular though she obviously is, neither did anyone else willing to tell.
This is a brief resumé, as I understand it now:
Album #2, Sunday Love, was binned when her recording contract was terminated by Universal and since then the rumours have just run and run. I don't promise, as this is just a preliminary post, but there could be light at the end of the tunnel!

This single is now available, as an mp3 download, from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and she appears to now be signed to label '21 Music'. It is said to be the first single and also the title track from her new album though I have no idea of a release date - here, there or anywhere. If you know if this is correct or not, can add more, even if it is only hearsay, then please post it and let us all know.

Blue Roses

Blue Roses will possibly be new to most of you but the artist behind it has actually been mentioned in these posts before. In the spring of 2007 I bought a compilation CD of tracks released by new artists titled 'Something I Learned Today' and released by UK independent label Dance To The Radio. Of the artists featured thereon several, including I Am A Cub Scout and Sky Larkin', have become better known especially on the UK Festival circuit. The modest price of the CD was, for my money anyway, worth it if only for just one track 'Coast' - an acoustic, deceptively simple song with eidetic imagery and the creation of unsigned artist Laura Groves.

She is back as 'Blue Roses' and is no longer unsigned as she has joined the already eclectic roster signed to XL Recordings, which includes such well known acts as Radiohead, The White Stripes, Vampire Weekend and Sigur Rós .
While I can not imagine it will sound remotely like any of the above, an album is in the making and I for one can't wait - another one to watch out for in 2009.

Something I Remembered Today

It is that time again when, and never more so than this year, somehow looking forward seems more appealing than looking back. It is true, but the two can happily co-exist in a world that seems to have become just too complicated and frantic of late. Yes, we can have the immediacy of the internet, MySpace and the all rest of the new technology, but it also means we have hitherto unimagined access to music of all kinds, both new and old.

This really matters for it is more realistically indicative than almost anything else. I think it is not a sign of bunker-mentality, rather the opposite in fact. While it may matter to the individual listener the fact is that, be it acoustic folk, thrash metal, wonky, dub step, anything in-between or even something as yet unknown, it can be made available to millions of potential listeners almost as soon as it is recorded and - although it might help oil the wheels - that no longer necessarily requires major label backing.
Twenty five years ago it was a thrill to spend hours in dusty, sometimes flea-ridden, second-hand music stores on the lookout for anything rare or unusual on vinyl. There were things called "stock lists", available by snail mail and typed on wonky manual machines, that were probably out of date well before they were completed! I still adore vinyl but would be amongst the first to admit that the technology that we now take for granted has bought with it both new opportunities and, if used wisely, untold potential. The real challenge, and that is which is almost always the case in such circumstances, is a matter of balance; it is to make the best of the newly revealed potential and the avarice that will probably accompany it.

When 'folk' meant only one thing...

Folk music, and the influence it has on music in general, has had a bumpy ride in the last half-century. It's influence is, particularly in times when largely disregarded as such, just as important as it is actually indefinable. This applies not only to traditional music from Britain but to that from many other places as is now rather becoming obvious again...

This is not least because, and it was ever thus, it has a remarkable tendency to renew by borrowing from far and wide while also maintaining and reflecting its own place and time, so it somehow still keeps its innate and definable integrity. Here is a thought: why would it be otherwise? It has adapted over centuries, in many cultures, to be memorable - that is to play, to sing and dance to; and that is also a definition, which explains a later phenomenon, that we now know as pop!

Call it what you like - folk, roots, traditional or any of the bijou genres (and I'm guilty of this sort of categorisation) such as nu-folk, anti-folk, freak-folk - for whatever it is called it is alive and well in the 21st century. So is much truly traditional folk music and that is a real bonus for, in 2008, it was no longer a surprise to hear a mandolin played in a band that would not, in any traditional way, be regarded as folk-influenced. So what if it is an electric mandolin? To me that doesn't matter much in the context of new music but the fact the instrument is used at all certainly does.
Imelda May plays bodhrán on several tracks on her 2008 album but does that make mean she is any more or less 'folk' than the all-electric Thin Lizzy covering Whiskey In The Jar in 1972?

Of course it doesn't!

Look at the sun, stare in the mirror...

It's not me, it's her!
If I mentioned an artist who, to be fair, has lived much of the last two years in the lime-light of tabloid newspapers you might think that I was referring to Amy Winehouse but I'm not.
I'm referring to one who has comedy in her blood and the presence of mind, given that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit and that flattery is little better, to turn the tables to her advantage. The double double-entendre of the title, which is a lyric, is a case in point.
While rather updated for the 21st century it is a trait that harks back to the heyday of British comedy film. If she were to wander into a 'Carry On' comedy, in a retro-inspired dress of the kind she favours anyway, and then tackle the character that Sid James happened to be playing at the time with some leading questions...

It's Not Me, It's You is released in the UK on February 9, 2009.

In a recession everyone needs a bit of old-fashioned smuttiness, innuendo and the feeling that everything bad is actually someone else's fault and, while politically correct for purists it is not, neither is it generally offensive (although sometimes rather lyrically graphic).

Added: February 6, 2009
For those of you on the far side, who are lucky enough to be at the Bowery Ballroom on February 10, enjoy...


It is unlikely to be timeless but few albums are and given the here-and-now it is essential listening. It is not the first album of this name to appear on this blog so here is a link to the previous one:
http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-not-me-its-you.html

New and recycled. New Music 2009 - Part 2

I'm not quite sure now why, when writing my post on that music I am looking forward in 2009, I decided to stop when I did. I intended to add some more soon but didn't intend to do it this promptly as I couldn't decide what direction to take first. This morning I woke up with a migraine - hence the title of the post - but as things go the odd such episode is hardy something to complain about and, like dreams, if it serves a purpose then it is one hard to define in importance. I mention that because I suspect that, being both brain-based phenomena, they may not be entirely unrelated and a sort of living version of a soft-reboot followed by a hard-disc defragmentation. One thing I have noticed is that if I have a few vivid dreams (that I can remember) in a couple of days then a migraine might well follow. I woke up on Saturday morning and was mystified to discover that I was not in a tent but at home instead! My dream of being at a festival, though no particular one, was reality at the moment I woke up... Having slept the worst of it off I started to spend the rest of the time this afternoon, that I would normally have spent at work, drinking weak tea with sugar (the best palliative that I have yet found) and thinking about the problem. I don't know if others find this but, in the immediate aftermath, I discover that I have a new perspective on the scheme of things and even a renewed optimism.
In 2008 I listened to a great deal of music from the US and it was more in quantity and far more varied that I could have anticipated.
New York is always a good bet and, while some are particularly championing Chairlift and the 2008 début album 'Does You Inspire You' and it is yet another album left hanging around in my wish list of 2008, I'm going with this one for now and it is the début full-length album from Telepathé who are now, mostly, a three-piece but with collaborators a-plenty.

'Dance Mother' has been long in the making but also preceded by several vinyl and/or CD EPs, commencing with 'Farewell Forest' in 2006. It is released in the UK on January 26, 2009.

This is just a temporary image of the album cover but, judging from the EPs, the whispers and the fact that production duties on the album were in the hands of Dave Sitek, this shouldn't disappoint in terms of off-kilter cheer.
From this side of the pond here is another band that, although also not new, for most of us might as well be so. In 2007 a band called 6 Day Riot released an album 'Folie à Deux' and it didn't click with me then either.

They are back in 2009 with a new album that may or may not be called 'Have a Plan', which is due out by the summer. You know, the long, hot one that we are going to have, and to think that the 'festival season' is only six months away. You see, I've cheered up already!

Revolution74 - to whoever asked...

I must admit that I'd never heard of them so many thanks for your query. If they are from England (Chichester, on the coast at the bottom of the UK and somewhat to the right of that diamond shape that is the Isle of Wight, which is near the middle) is it this band that you mean?

http://www.myspace.com/revolution74

The band website, revolution74.co.uk, appears to be currently unavailable and I wonder if this is because the band has hit the rocks in one way or another...
If this isn't correct or you know more then please let me know by posting a link, adding a comment or just e-mail me.

Thanks,
Richard

Happy New Year 2009

What is happy about 2009, you might ask? Well you have three options:

• I'm an optimist
• I'm resorting to escapism
• I'm doing both

Well, in my first post of last year I didn't include 'happy' and look what happened in the world in 2008. Not all of it was bad of course but I'd rather be one looking forward in anticipation than that dwelling on what happened (or didn't) and fortunately music lends itself to this approach.

This is thus my thoughts on 'New Music - Part 1' What to look forward to in 2009. I have just pre-ordered my first 2009 release and it is the curiously titled début album by a band I mentioned last summer, having seen them live at Latitude 2008, and that is The Joy Formidable.

A Balloon Called Moaning - The Joy Formidable
UK release: 9th February 2009

This is the first 2009 album that I have ordered so far and I rather hope that it will be just the first of many. That looks likely because 'Two Suns', Bat For Lashes' second album, is set for an early April 2009 release, which will then be followed by a short UK tour. Music in 2009 will provide endless surprises and even the main reviewers know that, sometimes.
Pop, and curious fantasy, will be prominent again - Victoria Hesketh who (after many band-related trials and tribulations) seems to be the main stream reviewers' favourite in her true-self incarnation 'Little Boots'; likewise I've already mentioned Florence Welch (and The Machine) and that could be pretty scary until you add the apparently cute, but often lyrically shocking, SoKo (newly a singer and songwriter but long an all-round performance-artist, Stephanie Sokolinski) to the list whereupon 2009 starts to look decidedly special and that is that is just for starters! [See here for a recent review of her performing live and here for my review of her set at Latitude 2008.]
I will mention Phantom Limb again. I want to remind you about the album and point out that they are performing live at The Griffin in Frome, where they are already something of a phenomenon, on Friday 16th January 2008. If things go the way they should then in six months time that will no longer be possible! Then again it is a little luxury to live within walking distance of a pub that brews its own beers and has its own MySpace page!

Major labels beware!

That which I wrote in my post yesterday made me think more carefully about the changes that happened in 2008 - and here I mean especially those in music and more specifically in the UK charts.
It should be very obvious to you that I am a huge fan of vinyl and sometimes critical of the lack of 'background' that is still so often associated with even legal downloads. Of course the internet can provide that but surely the need to find it elsewhere isn't exactly the best advert for legal download sites? That can easily be fixed, and just sometimes it is, but why has it taken so long to get to even this place?
I will however give downloads a huge thumbs-up on a different front; a few years ago the UK singles chart had become increasingly moribund and pointless but since all legal downloads were automatically eligible it has experienced a rather curious renaissance. The best part of it is that despite, or perhaps even partly because of, the influence of Reality TV shows the results have been very surprising.
The UK Official Singles Chart has clocked over fifty years but until the last chart of 2008 two versions of the same song had never simultaneously been #1 and #2. The song that was #1 was of course Hallelujah, with UK X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke at the top and Jeff Buckley's version at #2. Ultimately it is Canadian music again and the original Leonard Cohen version was also in the UK singles chart that week. Three versions of the same in the same chart simultaneously and one taken from his 1984 album, his seventh and the one his long-time label Colombia Records refused to release, that was released by independent label Passport Records instead!
Even before the current flurry of attention in the UK it was the most covered song of Cohen's career to date and, while the version by Alexandra Burke is very good indeed, for sheer impact I'd still go for that recorded by fellow Canadian k.d. lang that appeared on her 2004 album Hymns of the 49th Parallel.

Search for her live versions too, for they are often even better!

The CD album is still readily available and it too was released on independent label Nonesuch.