New Music 2011 goes Americana again.

This is something that is too good not to mention straight away. 
  

July 19 is the US release date for Stranger Me, the third studio album from Memphis, TN based singer songwriter Amy LaVere. It is, as were the preceeding ones, released by independent label Archer Records.

I have, quite literally, only just found out about it and currently know nothing more. I shall be equally surprised and disappointed if it has not been worth the wait since Anchors and Anvils (2008) and the amazing Died Of Love EP (2009).  I'll add more, and relevant links, asap but for now I just wanted to share the excitement!
It will be available, at least in the US, on vinyl too. Count me as being on-board. UK CD & d/l date is slated as July 4 and the track listing is as follows: 

• You Can't Keep Me
• Red Banks
• A Great Divide
• Often Happens
• Lucky Boy
• Tricky Heart
• Stranger Me
• Candle Mambo
• Cry My Eyes Out
• Let Yourself Go (Come on)

The album is produced by Craig Silvey whose recent production credits include 'The Suburbs' - Arcade Fire (2010) and 'Suck It And See' - Arctic Monkeys (2011).

Summer - Music, mud, cider and...

I hope that all of you who were at Glastonbury have now got home safely with memories that will last a lifetime - in the best possible way. Tired no doubt and with post-festival blues quite likely. It's not mud, certainly not the cider, that is causing the withdrawal symptoms - it is the music.  I watched/listened to as much of Glastonbury as I could remotely and I must say I did think that I wished I was there more than once and not for the most part because of the Pyramid stage headline acts.  In many ways I'm quite certain that I could have very happily spent the whole weekend at the medium and small stages poking around for music less well known.
I wasn't there and it is not the same, so that is just theory, but I do know that there are plenty more festivals to come this summer. I shall be at some and for many of them there are still tickets available. They say 'hair of the dog' is the best cure for a hangover, or at least it postpones it somewhat.

I'm now thinking about my priorities; those acts that I most want to see from amongst the long list of available options. I think I should start with Latitude 2011, as it is now only 2½ weeks away (tickets are still available as of today). This is a list in no order of perceived merit and not least because some may clash as I don't know the timings.
One band that will not now be appearing at Latitude (or other overseas gigs) in 2011 is one that I have already mentioned as being amongst those that I was looking forward to: Violens (see announcement). Rest assured that something or someone worthwhile will take their place. At any festival there are things that will not go according to plan - from absentees to lyrics fluffed or simply forgotten - it is all part of the mix.
  
The first dozen on my must-see list (and I might well change my mind) are here in alphabetical order:

• Avi Buffalo
• Cat's Eyes
• Chapel Club
• Ed Sheeran
• Iron and Wine
• KT Tunstall
• Lykke Li
• The Bees
• The Gentle Good
• The National
• Trophy Wife
• Various Cruelties

This list is also limited to acts that I have never before seen live.  There are plenty of others, including many that I have seen live before, that will be in the reckoning too. It is necessary to start the process somewhere but the limiting factor is that, however good the planning and my subsequent discipline might be, I can only ever be in one place at once.

Where The Music Never Stops.

Just reposted from Glasto. Live with guests (from the audience) @ 6:30pm.
One of the headline artists at EOTR 2011.

Thoughts on Frome...

A weekend spent at home, here in Frome, listening to Glastonbury coverage and considering my priorities for the three festivals that I am attending this summer. It has led me to some other considerations and one is that, several times recently, I have been asked something along the lines of "What is it like to live in Frome?"
I suppose that now I have lived here for over fifteen years I might have some ideas about that. 
I had recently changed jobs and was looking to move out of Bristol and buy a place of my own. One lunchtime I needed to visit a branch of the Halifax Building Society (as it then still was) and decided to use the branch the phone book told me was in Frome.
That worked out just fine for two reasons: I found the branch in the Market Place without any problems.  In to the bargain I found the town I just knew I wanted to live in. I can't really explain why but is just seemed right and what is more property was still affordable (unlike Bath, for example).

In summary it is big enough to have most things that are an everyday requirement, has a thriving and eclectic selection of independent shops and businesses, and yet it remains small enough never to overwhelm. If you have visited this blog you will already know that it has a thriving arts scene including live music. It is also one of the most remarkable architectural survivors of all English country market towns.
Yes, I am doubtless writing while wearing rose-tinted spectacles - of course it has flaws and a few architectural faux-pas - but more than a few gems.  Cheap Street is just one of them.

Cheap Street at 10:30 this Sunday Morning, June 26.

If I can I intend to expand on this theme in the coming weeks and months with pictures of the town and immediate surroundings.  If I succeed in that ambition, and there is interest, I might spin it off onto a page of its own.

New Music 2011 - Forthcoming album releases

I'll start with three - and all of them by artists appearing at EOTR 2011 - so the possibility of  hearing at leasts parts of them played live sooner rather than later is very real and all are also by artists that I have previously seen live at least once, which adds weight to my comment in the previous post.
  
Lanterns On The Lake - Gracious Tide, Take Me Home
This, the début album, is released by Bella Union Records on September 19, 2011.

The album track 'You're Almost There' is available as a free download.  The three self-released CD EPs are all sold out now but you can purchase them as downloads from the band's website. At least some of the songs will no doubt appear on the album in some form too. As well as Truck Festival and EOTR 2011 the band is playing  at Deershed 2011 [pre-booked tickets only - there are none available on the day this year] and, if you fancy a visit to the UK's highest pub and regular live music venue, LOTL is hosting a night with special guests at Tan Hill Inn on August 27 - £10 with camping included and no grumpy neighbours except sheep, one or two of which you might well find in the bar and likely in front of the fire (vying for prime space with the cats and dogs), and nothing else other than native wildlife and your fellow campers to disturb!
The band also played at EOTR 2010 - subject to a minor misfortune and ultimately a major victory.
  
Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know
September 12, 2011 is the release date for this, her third LP.

  
There is to be a limited version that will include 12" LP, CD and other goodies. You have been warned.  I can't wait to hear this live.  This is the track list:

• The Muse
• I Was Just A Card
• Don't Ask Me Why
• Salinas
• The Beast
• Night After Night
• My Friends
• Rest In The Bed
• Sophia
• All My Rage

Beth Jeans Houghton - [title as yet unknown to me]
An album some time in the making. Dodecahedron is promising and again another dab hand (and band) when it comes to live performance.
  
I'll add this one too, although it is an album already released, while I'm working in the genre of folk-influenced music. Much is written about regional folk music within the UK and Ireland but, in my recall at least, little of it specifically concerns that of Devon. I came across this and have now ordered it unheard, which is something that I like doing as you may well know.

The artists involved suggest goodness. Jim Causley is prime mover here but it also includes others unlikely to risk their well earned reputations on a dubious project. It was released by Wild Goose Records in March of this year.

The Longest Day - nearing half-time in 2011

There is irony in that now I have got reliable broadband after almost three weeks without I can't seem the pick up the threads again, which along with other events, explains the slightly cryptic, even diffuse, title.
The fact is that I don't really know what it is going to be about; it is a journey I just had to start before the destination was apparent. In that sense it is akin to last year's rambling (as yet still incomplete) that was New Music 2010 - Part 16 - Across America in music but is written two months earlier  in the musical calendar.
At this point I am only musing on the festivals that I am yet to attend but in many ways the picture is becoming clearer now that I'm actually writing again. That said it may take a while for this to become apparent, if indeed it ever does.
Those artists that I mentioned in the above might actually be a good place to start: Avi Buffalo at Latitude 2011 and Best Coast at EOTR 2011 - and I have seen neither live  but have spent much of the last six months listening to the respective albums.  Switching to the US East Coast two acts that I am very much looking forward to, although very different one from another, are Sarabeth Tucek, who recently released her second album 'Get Well Soon', and Brooklyn's Violens.  Having seen School of  Seven Bells, Chairlift and Telepathe at various points over the last couple of years I have high hopes.
As an aside while on the theme of East Coast artists, Marissa Nadler has just revealed  her fifth album ' Marissa Nadler' and the first to be released on her own label,  Box of  Cedar Records; and given that her 2009 album 'Little Hells' is still right up there on my playlist this is a definite must-have purchase.  I'm not, however and if the art work wasn't a clue, promising that this post will be a whole load of easily accessible summery music.  On the contrary some of it will likely be far more challenging, which is always a good thing.

Marissa Nadler is someone that I have never seen perform live and as far as I know she is not gracing UK stages this summer season.  Getting side tracked like this is something that I'm rather good at; should I mention the forthcoming album by Rosi Golan?  Later maybe...
  
Another realization is that, increasingly so, I have the opportunity to see acts that I have seen in previous years so that I should be able to compare and contrast.  This is something that I am looking forward to as, and this much is always the case, the new acts and artists.  Here are two, starting with the more guitar led:  British Sea Power  and Foals.  On the other hand there are  new guitar bands that I have never seen before: The Vaccines being just one amongst them...  It is going to be interesting, which ever way you look at it .

Real - Martha Tilston live at Rook Lane Chapel

I have mentioned the album Real - Live at Union Chapel before. It is amazing but only half as good as the real deal.  Imagine then my delight when I discovered, some weeks ago now, that Martha Tilston was including Frome's Rook Lane Chapel on her itinerary.

This is what happens when the late Victorian Gothic revival of Union Chapel is replaced with very early 18th century 'reformist' architecture.
Is this sacrilege? Hell, no! this building had served its original purpose for more than a quarter of a millennium before it was left to go to ruin - only then to come back again.
  

Rook Lane Chapel is simultaneously Frome's oldest and most modern live arts venue and, needless to say, the music and performance were quite equal to the challenge.  For those that weren't able to be there new songs were performed - perhaps three or four, come to think of it in retrospect.
  

Yes there was banter, there was chat with the audience, but in the silences you could have heard a pin drop and for all the right reasons.
And then there was the encore...

Hello again!

I'm back...
It is not that I've really been anywhere but ISP issues are, I sincerely hope, now a thing of the past. This has not, of course, meant that I have been unable to listen to music... not least because I prefer mine in physical format.

Acoustic+ 27 May

There is always a problem in store; one of ever increasing expectations. Another one is where to start. In this case I'm going to heed some old advice...
"Start at the beginning, continue to the end and then stop."  First to play was Douglas Hamilton and I must say it took a while for me to appreciate his song writing style.
Originally from Nebraska and very much American, this is not a problem musically or otherwise to me, but this time it just took a while for me to get his line. These songs he sung and played solo, either on electric keyboard or acoustic guitar.
  

Sometimes that lack of immediacy is actually a good thing. Currently based in Somerset, for the last track he was joined by a couple of members of Appalachia for a song that, he commented later, American audiences don't understand...
  

This was about the English belief that whatever has gone wrong it can be solved by brewing a pot of tea. It is not that of a sardonic outsider looking at the foibles of the English, which accounts for its reception in the US perhaps, but a rather acute observation.
It reminds me of two things: the commentary that Bill Bryson routinely makes in 'Notes From A Small Island' - and the reason we later adopted him as the head of the Council For The Protection of Rural England. Outsiders can sometimes see and explain the value of what we just take for granted. The song itself is also probably one of the best that Flanders and Swann never wrote or recorded and I don't suppose that even the irascible W.S. Gilbert would be particularly disappointed.
  
Next to play was Katie Marie, all the way from Totnes, with some very accomplished acoustic guitar and fine songs - traditional in many ways and certainly entirely acoustic but not hidebound in style or content.
  

I'd seen her play live before as part of Nicky Swann's band but this was quite something: Great songs, great singing and oooh... that guitar.  If you doubt me go see live... in the meanwhile get the album 'To The Journey'.  It is currently sold out on CD but available to download (Amazon, iTunes, etc.).  I was assured that another batch of CDs is on order too. I would buy this on vinyl if that were possible and I said as much.
  

Leonardo's Bicycle were next on stage. They hail from Frome but their twin harmony guitar and vocals have a great deal of influence from across the Atlantic; a neat counterpoint to Douglas Hamilton. Fascinating were their, rather successful, attempts to imitate the sounds of pedal steel guitar. Now that's something I'd like to see at the Cheese & Grain for real...
Last, so headlining, were The Pigeons. This was a good contrast and also a very good performance indeed. Somewhat less acoustic than the forgoing but very taut and well thought out.

My verdict is that it was another stunning Acoustc+.

  

The question is that, because it raises the bar yet higher, how can it top that in July?  There is also an announcement coming - there is another Acoustic event on the horizon in the greater Frome area...

Live and Local - Zora and The Tatsmiths

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon if that is not a short walk from home, at one of the best pubs anywhere, one that brews its own beer too, listening to one of the best new live acts that I have heard in some time?   No "rapture" for me as I clearly don't know what heaven really is.  If this is just life however then it is certainly good enough for me.

This was the last date on their first ever tour - a four-day jaunt around Wessex - and I think it fair to say that it went down very well indeed with the audience at The Griffin. The Brighton-based five-piece played a long set that was as well paced as it was varied. The only tinge of sadness came with the announcement that for Belinda, playing electric violin, it was her last show with the band as she is relocating to California.
  
For a band that only recently evolved from being an all-acoustic three-piece as heard on the 2010 Places Like This EP, which I highly recommend, to perform so much material so well, and interspersed with banter with the audience that was often of true Ealing-inspired comic genius, was something to remember.

The songs are all strong and distinctive. 'Secret', which I have mentioned before, is a highlight for me as is 'Mary Jane'. They played this twice - the second time being as a request for an encore at the end.

This one is just a warm up...

Zora McDonald playing some of 'Secret' solo.

  

This being Somerset it is worthy of note that a poster has crept into all of these photos...  one announcing a performance by the long reigning kings of 'Scrumpy and Western', The Wurzels!

Kitty, Daisy and Lewis - Smoking In Heaven

This is an outfit almost as far removed from the 'major label music industry' as it is possible to get. Three siblings, in their early twenties at most, on a mission to subvert the perceived digital obsession of their peers. Not just in a superficial way but from start to finish - one that not inappropriately has an almost religious fervour.
  
Their first true album, the eponymous 'Kitty, Daisy and Lewis', was released on the label 'Sunday Best' in 2008 and consisted mostly of covers that would have seemed quite straightforward in 1958, if not before. Therein lies the catch, and the total deceit, for not only was the music old-fashioned it was entirely performed, recorded and mastered on collected and restored valve-driven analogue equipment of that era. Lewis is the retro-electronic wizard behind most of that part of the endeavour. The result did not meet with critical approval all round; sometimes because it was mostly covers, also because the equipment produces a sound that is to most now rather unfamiliar and because not many artists sing this way any more.
I bought it (on CD, which was a misjudgement of a criminal nature) and yet it was certainly interesting and, once I got used to the sound and styling, really quite appealing. The issue came to a head at Latitude 2010, late on Thursday evening or perhaps early Friday morning, in the Music & Film Tent when, as part of a 'Blues Brothers'-themed film-dance-music performance they were doing some of the live music part. This is, unfortunately, the only half-worthwhile picture I have.  The poor photo is entirely my fault. For some reason I always get off to a bad start.

  Kitty and Daisy a capella at Latitude 2010.

While 'Smoking In Heaven' will do nothing to spoil the bliss in analogue heaven it certainly does address the other critical point; this is all their own new material, new in a relativistic sense. 

Released on May 30 by 'Sunday Best' it will be available on two vinyl formats: 2 x 12" 33 rpm LP, a collectors' edition of 6 x 10" 78 rpm and also on CD. I have no way of playing 78 rpm, and in any case it is a very costly package, but given my earlier comment I shall be certainly be taking the 12" micro-groove option on this one!

Rarely, if ever, has Kentish Town seemed this far south!

Looking forward to festivals...

What with this last weekend being BBC Radio 1's outdoor 'Big Weekend' and Brighton's multi-venue indoor 'Great Escape', a fortnight after 'Camden Crawl 2011', I have been busy remotely listening to, watching and reading about the very best in new and established live music as it marks the start of the 2011 festival season.  I also watched the Eurovision 2011 Grand Final in its entirety. It is always important to maintain a sense of proportion and perspective.
This has of course made me think more about all the acts that I will have a chance to see and hear live at festivals this summer.  As my last post concerned new music from Canada where better to start than with more music from Canada?

Just added to the line up at EOTR 2011 is a Canadian act that I first mentioned back in 2010 - Slow Down, Molasses. Walk Into The Sea is the second album.

Little did I suspect that the band would be added to the confirmed artists for EOTR 2011. Indeed so unlikely did it seem that it never even occurred to me to include it on my list.
  
Be careful what you wish for.  Be amazed by what you don't.

New Music 2011 - Clara Engel - Madagascar EP

The chain of events that led to me purchasing this pretty much sums up everything that I like about music and writing a blog all rolled into one. Three days ago I knew nothing - not even the existence - of this artist.  By yesterday evening I was listening to physical music by the same... something that only the combination of the digital age, independent artists, labels and stores and snail-mail-on-speed could achieve.

Clara Engel is a singer-songwriter from Toronto, Canada and a very prolific one so my research since Wednesday attests.  The Madagascar EP is however her first physical release and it is, even for purists and I am not one of them, a 'proper' EP - three tracks on vinyl, in this case of the 12" 45 rpm variety and only in this format.  It is released by new label Vox Humana Records as VHR01. It is available from Rough Trade Records, always a dependable source for new music.
  
Now to the music.  I don't tend to write about music that I don't like and this is certainly no exception. Many of the UK-based comments on Clara Engel's music compare her to Anna Calvi, indeed the Rough Trade website and sticker on the cover did so. That is unfair, if a little understandable. Yes, they both write, sing and play guitar big time but actually Anna Calvi is the newcomer here if already better known in the UK; we can do parochial just as well as anyone else and I don't think lumping both artists together does either of them a favour.
Take a listen to this EP or indeed any of the other downloads available from www.claraengel.bandcamp.com and make up your own mind. There is plenty as her next album will be her eighth or ninth! The three tracks on the EP come from two albums; 'Blind Me' and 'Madagascar' from 'Secret Beasts' and 'Accompanied by Dreams' from 'The Bethlehem Tapes'.  There is a new album in the making, so long as she can get the funding together to make it happen. Another track from 'Secret Beasts' is 'Lick My Fins', which is available as a free, legal download.

You owe it to yourself to listen to new music. If it turns out that you don't like it then that is just fine but at least you will know and so it will influence your future forays in to the unknown.  What I want to do is take it out (on vinyl) and find people to play it to...

"I Will Return I Promise" - Beth Jeans Houghton

It has been a couple of years since she first popped up on the scene with the EP 'Hot Toast - Volume 1'. I first heard (of) her, and then immediately bought the EP at the Rough Trade pop-up store, at End Of The Road 2009.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the toast is getting stale, and there certainly hasn't been a second round, but now things are moving fast. Here she is, in the then rather basic 'Local' tent, at EOTR 2009.

It is very easy to forget that this is actually not much more than eighteen months ago.

This may well have actually been her first festival performance but, due to The Horrors having to cancel due to illness, she did a slot on the very much larger Big Top stage later in the weekend, which I did not see, and again to much acclaim by all accounts. There is something very EOTR about all this (as Caitlin Rose proved in 2010)...

The début album has taken a while longer than anticipated, though it is now (May 2011) complete. Nevertheless she appeared again in the meantime with her band The Hooves of Destiny on the Lake Stage at Latitude 2010 on Sunday afternoon.

Both these photos do not however include an absolutely vital part of the live 'Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny' experience, so it is high time to put that right.

Rory Gibson on bass.
  

She is good on her promise too: on Monday it was confirmed that Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny are to appear at EOTR 2011 with, no doubt, the album to showcase.

Now signed to Mute Records the track Dodecahedron is available as a free, legal download in the meantime.

More New Music for 2011 - UK acoustic

Having yesterday purchased my ticket to see Martha Tilston live at Rook Lane Chapel, Frome, that I mentioned in a recent post I thought it time to mention some more new English music in a broadly similar genre, which has recently been released.
  
Tarry Awhile -- Gill  Sandell

This is actually the first released of the three, by Rowan Tree Records in November 2010.  I had first become aware of Gill Sandell when I saw Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo at EOTR 2009, with which she plays piano accordion and contributes backing vocals.  This is her first full recording as a solo artist and, as far as I can tell, is currently only available as legal d/l. It comprises twelve tracks, all but two her original compositions, with backing provided by Red Clay Halo members amongst others. It also shows a true multi-instrumentalist as she predominantly plays guitar or piano on this outing, which has been six years in the making.
  
Songs Lost & Stolen --  Bella Hardy

Although this is Hardy's third album (after 'Night Visiting' and 'Lost In The Shadow of Mountains') it is the first released by Navigator Records and also first to consist of entirely self-written material; the previous two having been at least predominantly intriguing re-workings of traditional material.  I saw her live towards the end of last year and it was an excellent performance and given this new material I would not be at all surprised if she were a whole lot better known by the end of 2011.

  
Time Travel -- Alessi's Ark

It was a bad start to 2010 for Alessi Laurent-Marke.  Following her 2009 début album 'Notes From The Treehouse' she was dropped by ever-insolvency-defying EMI.  It is true that Laura Marling remains with EMI, at least as far as I know, as her third album release nears but it has always struck me as an odd home for the new folk movement.
Cast adrift, the eponymous Ark soon found a new haven and one that to me at least seems a far more spiritual home and so she was back in the business of releasing her music that can probably never simultaneously be assigned a place and a time. Bella Union, for it is they, wasted no time in releasing the 2010 EP Soul Proprietor.

For her part she has wasted no time in coming up with her second full-length album and a scattering of covers, including Lesley Gore's 1964 hit 'Maybe I Know', only serve to show how good the new songs and their arrangements are.  This is, freed from major label meddling with content and style, all EMI's loss and our collective gain.
If there is one place that this sort of music should fit in just perfectly it is a sunny afternoon in the English countryside. To that end Alessi's Ark is appearing at Truck Festival 2011.

Arts venues.

Frome is, for a town of approximately 25,500 inhabitants, blessed with a remarkable selection of arts venues, both for static displays and performance arts.  In the latter category the Cheese and Grain, capacity 800 and hopefully soon to be augmented in both capacity and facilities, is the most versatile if not particularly architecturally distinguished. It is a 19th century produce-market hall that has been adapted many times since. Frome also has two theatres, The Memorial Theatre completed in 1924 in memory of those killed in the Great War and the more recent Merlin Theatre, which seats about 250 and is part of the Frome College campus. All three are used for all kinds of performance arts and other live shows.
Then there are many historic pubs, some of which regularly feature live music: amongst those most active are The Griffin and The Olive Tree (link currently broken, phone 01373 467140) and also many other venues that are used from time to time, most notably for the annual Frome Festival - taking place this year from 8 - 17 July.
One however, that survives at all more by luck than judgement, is the most architecturally significant and spectacular by a long mile.  Built when Frome was a town very wealthy indeed, based on the wool trade, it spent 251 years in continuous use as a non-conformist place of worship before it was declared redundant and then spent the next quarter of a century falling into decay. It was eventually compulsorily purchased by the local authority and restored.
It now houses, appropriately enough, an architects' practise in the ante-rooms while the main section is used as a space for static and performance arts both traditional and modern by the trust Rook Lane Arts.

As well as being an early example of such a building on a grand scale the bountiful finance saw to it that it did not have the minimalist functionality of many and that its patrons succumbed to more than a flourish of the baroque. Nobody - whose mission was truly to live the life of an ascetic - would ever have sanctioned windows like those!
When it was built John Wesley certainly wasn't preaching simplicity and sobriety to the masses in open-air sermons across Britain, such as became his trademark, not least because he was then only a toddler (b. June 28, 1703)!
   
I'm not the religious kind in any traditional sense but wish to thank those that were for the venue.

Cover Versions 2011 - Thea Gilmore - John Wesley Harding

Song lyrics and cover versions put a great deal of traffic here and I have intended to address more of both for a while now. I'm going to start with the latter as it happens and this is released in the UK today.
It is a dangerous thing indeed - not an album of covers but the cover of an entire album - and is a tribute to one of the most inspiring and widely covered artists in honour of his seventieth birthday, on May 24, by one of the most prolific singer-songwriters that the UK has and, very importantly, one to whom sticking with traditional music industry conventions is quite alien.

Including 'Loft Music' (2004), which was an album of covers, this is only her second venture into such territory but between 1998 and 2010 she has also released nine studio albums, a live album and several (often limited edition) EPs.

Acoustic+ 29 April

Another fantastic evening courtesy of Acoustic+.  The date had been set before a certain well-known couple chose the same day for their wedding and I did wonder if the public holiday on Friday and resultant four-day weekend would severely dent the size of the audience.  It probably had some effect but not a huge one and those of us there were treated to four excellent acts. This time I would not be willing to choose my most or least favourite.
To start things off was singer-songwriter Mark Wynn, who had travelled all the way from his home city of York to play Acoustic+ solo.

Next up was Anna Young, who hails from Bristol, and she was playing her own material while accompanying herself on acoustic guitar.

The second half comprised two bands the first of which was 'Rivers of England'.

Rounding off the evening was a band consisting of a lead singer originally from Frome and three compatriots from Brighton, which has to be one of Britain's most musical cities.

Glass City Vice normally play as an all electric outfit and were somewhat concerned that this, their first ever public largely acoustic set, might go awry. In fact it was excellent: definitely something they should do again although I would like to see them in their normal incarnation too.

The were several moments during this set that made me think of 'Last Night On Earth' era Noah and The Whale, which is no bad thing as I have seen them live several times through the years.
So there you have it - and all this for an entry charge of £5.

New Music 2011 - coming live to Frome

Like buses, like bands... one can wait for ages and then several are announced at about the same time. Thinking about it, in Frome that is actually far more likely with bands...
  
They may not be very famous, yet, but no matter.  Here is one that has caught my attention as being in the latest e-newsletter from The Griffin, arguably Frome's best pub and also that with the best beers (the winner of both Somerset-wide accolades in the 2010 'Taste of Somerset' awards that were voted for by the public), and which also does live music.
The May programme looks good too but I'll start by mentioning this, although there is much of note to come before.  
On Sunday, May 22 The Griffin plays host to Zora & The Tatsmiths. If punk-jazz-folk was never before a genre then, so they have decided, it is now. And I can't wait!

  

It is a five-piece from Brighton and if you wish to avail yourself of a legal listen before May here is a link.
The track 'Secret' should be, along with the band, one-no-longer and it is available as a free, legal download for the price of registering your interest. It is on repeat here at the moment and I'm minded to post the lyric for it tomorrow...  it is simple and yet rather scarily real.

Intrigue & Stuff - More new music I have.

Where to start given that this is about ostensibly UK - perhaps even English - music?  It is clear that music which is at least in part electronic is going to play a big part in trends in the UK in 2011 - the incredible achievements of Adele notwithstanding.
I'm going to start with the stranger option - from an artist much older than the others that I'm likely to mention - it has just been released and comes to us from Stockport via Berlin. In 2009 James Leyland Kirby released, in three tranches each of four sides of 12" vinyl, a stupendous collection of ambient, entirely lyric-free, electronica.
It was not mainstream - to put it mildly although it is now available on 3 x CD - but, for me at least, it fitted perfectly with the all-pervading mood of economic gloom and despondency at that time.
He has just returned with a follow up - which I believe is to be the first of a four-part collection, each on a single 12" - entitled 'Intrigue & Stuff - Part 1'. You have been warned. It also has award-winning cover artwork...

It is not likely to see you and friends - if you still have any after playing it - dancing around your vinyl player. In fact it might well be just as tentatively cheering as the post-Soviet glimmers of hopes of reform in Cuba; so don't think that it is going to be influenced by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club. If so much as a quiver in a Stalinist rictus is evident then that will have to count as progress.
  
Such considerations are probably not those that preoccupy the latest two widely-known frontrunners in UK electronic/dub-step-influenced music. My personal opinion is that Katy B will prove the winner out of these two in 2011 but their rivalry should prove to be for the good of all.

On A Mission - Katy B

Who You Are - Jessie J

    

I have listened to both albums in their entirety quite a few times now and my comment is not really to do with the music or its performance from track to track and artist to artist, although of course I have my favourites (on both albums) and I was immediately made to take notice by their respective lead singles.

  

Perhaps the clue is in the album titles - On A Mission appears to me to have a much clearer sense of what the artist set out to achieve while Who You Are has a slightly scattered feel - that of attempting to be something to as many people as possible.