New Music 2015 - Part 10 - Clara Engel - A Little Slander, A Little Lace

I suppose that Saturday lunchtime is an odd time to write a post but never mind.  It is a cold, grey blustery day and I have done all the things I needed to do that involved being outdoors so now I'm at home and doing domestic things while listening to music, of course.
This, released digitally today by Canadian artist Clara Engel who I have mentioned several times before and most recently here, caught my attention immediately.

The download [from US $2] also includes track 'What's The Damage'. Pay 50% more than the minimum asking price and it is still no more than really good coffee. It is bottomless too - you can have another dose as often as you like, for as long as you like. You won't find a deal like that at any coffee shop that I've ever come across. 

New Music 2015 - Part 9 - 'L' is for live music and also these artists...

Both these artists start their moniker with 'L' and both have connections to the forthcoming Behind The Castle Festival 2015. Of these two, one has just been announced as a headline act and the other is already announced for BTCF 2015. Lizzyspit playing live is a treat that I have had the good fortune to witness twice.

Tonight Lizzyspit is playing at the launch of her début album 'Villains'.

This is happening at Kings Place in London and is also the formal launch of music consultancy and label Upturned Pebble, which is the power behind Marnhull Acoustic Sessions and, of course, Behind The Castle Festival. There is a theme here.

Today Behind The Castle announced one, but only one, of the two remaining headline acts. It is Georgia, USA based Larkin Poe who I have never seen live. Larkin Poe is touring in the wake of the well regarded LP 'Kin' (2014) and a raft of EPs before that. I can hardly wait.
The announcement of the final act is eagerly awaited and it won't be long in coming.
Lizzyspit will be playing Behind The Castle again but, I predict, to a much larger crowd this time.
It is not going to be winter forever even though at the moment it might just seem like that.

End Of The Road Festival 2015 - The first artist announcement.

To cut to the chase here is the list announced today, completely without any comment on my part at least for now.

The accompanying video, which may or may not drop further hints, is here. 
The EOTR animals seem to have developed a taste for vinyl...

My ability not to comment further did not last long. Jessica Pratt was scheduled for EOTR last year but was unable to attend. Not only is it good news that she is on the first list of artists to be announced this year but her second LP 'On Your Own Love Again' is released, at least in North America, tomorrow (27 January) by Drag City Records. I shall add Jessica Pratt as my first 'one to watch' at EOTR 2015.

Reviews are all well and good. I have read several of this release already and perhaps I will write one myself in due course. The live truth will out in September and I'd be very surprised if I were disappointed.
Another inclusion that excites me is Torres. I bought the album last year, direct from her website.

I searched it on amazon.co.uk yesterday and the result, in terms of 'other artists I might like', was interesting.  Of the eight of them it suggested I have already seen all of them live at least once! I'm not sure whether this says more about me or Amazon's algorithm except to say that if I let Amazon choose suggestions for me based on all my searches in music it veers all over the place. It is often quite fascinating, however, so read into this what you will.

New Music - 2015 - Part 8 - Rae Morris - Unguarded

One summer Sunday morning, in North Yorkshire in 2012, I took this picture. There were not very many of us there to experience Rae Morris open the main stage of Deer Shed Festival 2012 as the ungodly hour of midday approached.

 It was clearly something special. I rarely make predictions like this. This could be one of the major label releases of 2015. 

Her début album 'Unguarded' is released tomorrow on Atlantic Records.

Old dog. New tricks. And a total bargain...

My liking for music in physical format needs no further mention. That is still true - I have not changed my spots all of a sudden.
When, however, Spotify offered me 'Premium' for three months at the princely sum of £0.99 and that payment is for all three months, not per month. It would have been churlish to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It will not alter the amount of physical music I actually purchase but, my goodness, it is facilitating the task of listening to new music and, especially if I'm uncertain about it, also making it a whole lot easier. It might even lead to me purchasing more physical music. It is not that it is impossible to do this with Spotify 'free' but the lack of advertisements actually does make a difference. The blurb said that the sound quality is also noticeably better. I was slightly dubious about that, but then again 99p is not a sum even I was afraid to wager on the possibility. Pending more demanding tests this coming weekend I'm inclined to the idea that this might actually be true.
What has impressed me, and again I could have done this with 'free' but this was the impetus to explore, was the coverage. The removal from Spotify of the music of Taylor Swift became something of a cause célèbre in late 2014 but it is just one small canon of work in the great scheme of things. It was an otherwise unremarkable and quite acceptable commercial response to perceived market forces. It, the music and the publishing phenomenon, is easily found elsewhere quite legally and not least in physical formats, including vinyl. Deleting pressings to promote the sale of newer ones is as old as the mass market for music.
What impresses me more is the sheer scope of the music to be found here - both old and new and across all genres - and with that comes the opportunity to discover, listen and then promote the music of artists less well known should one feel so inclined.
It is something human to look for the newest things and music is no exception - the internet is perfect for this. Finding older, often obscure, things has also been revolutionised but the foil is not so easy to overcome; the contemporary details are either unavailable or require lateral thinking and often more than a little guile to uncover. That, however, is also part of the thrill of the chase - and another use of foil.

I have an idea:
It is not scientific but nevertheless empirical observations can be of great value. It is to test Spotify by searching for a variety of recordings, both recent and old, that I know or believe are hard to source on a physical format and that I either already have or have tried to find in the past. It has already yielded, as a more or less random 'hit' -  an album of folk music from NE England that I was only faintly aware of hitherto and was released in 1975. The result... I have now bought it on original vinyl.
This new resource will quite possibly shape much of my thinking over the next couple of months. I'm also imagining those artists that I expect/desire to see at the festivals that I shall or even just may attend this coming summer.
Items never released in a digital format are, unsurprisingly, extremely unlikely to feature. This is not to be found therefore - Cate Le Bon 'Edrych yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg' (2008). It was released only on 10" vinyl  but the title is to a reasonable degree the Welsh equivalent of the English phrase 'to look a gift horse in the mouth', more literally it is 'to look into the eyes of a borrowed horse'. I rather like that - there's something about it that makes the horse, rather than the lessor, the more important part of the deal.
I know that it is not the weekend yet...
What the hell, I'm doing some testing now and not least because I'm thinking about those artists that I might be seeing at this summer's festivals. There are some big announcements coming soon.

This artist would be high on my wish list. To say she is underrated is only the half of it.

   
The Spotify search box is not, or so it seems to me, nearly as good at guessing your mind as some but it's worth a few tries to find what you are searching for. It is also less comprehensive in its results, so you need to be as precise as you are able to be for that reason alone. You can also do this reversibly to good effect - if you know only a song title and artist you can fairly easily get back to the album or other resource from which it came.
It is a collision of new and old technology and quite possibly not to the detriment of either. If you want an old physical recording then not only can you find a source of it on-line but, quite possibly, you can even listen to at least some of it the same way before you commit to purchase.
The sale of an LP that the purchaser regrets buying does neither party any good in the longer term: a fact that, in the quest for 'first-week sales' and 'chart penetration', the major labels forgot somewhere down the line.

New Music - 2015 - Part 7 - Ruby the RabbitFoot - New As Dew

I'll come clean here - this is actually a 2014 release - but I doubt that many in the UK are aware of the artist who calls herself Ruby The RabbitFoot. She hails from Athens, Georgia.

To some extent one of its greatest virtues is that it isn't challenging, but that can be a good thing in multiple ways. It is acoustic pop, more or less, and there is little country influence either. It certainly isn't all cheerful. This I expect was quite deliberate and, while that was a dangerous hand to play in 2014, I think it worked out for the best here.
It is the music equivalent of comfort food of the best kind (macaroni cheese and fish fingers with ketchup, possibly) and spending the evening wrapped up in a duvet in front of the fire. I'm planning to test this theory, believe me; especially if this coming weekend turns cold, as it is predicted it might.
New As Dew hints at the forthcoming spring and I can't wait for that. It is released by Normaltown Records and the LP is available on vinyl. I'm now curious to listen to the other artists on the label. If you don't actively go looking for new music then you don't find much at all.
It is not the kind of album from which I'm likely to choose stand-out tracks, even when I have listened to it more often, but that is no bad thing either. 

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

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

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

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

• The Times They are a-Changin'

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

New Music - 2015 - Part 6 - Salwa Azar - Black Feather Wooden Chair

I shall maintain the acoustic theme of my last post with LP 'Black Feather Wooden Chair', which is the début full-length from London-based Salwa Azar on which she writes, sings and plays ukulele for the most part.

 Release date: 15 January 2015

Quite a long time ago I mentioned her  'For America EP1', which is available to stream here and will give you an idea of her background. The first track to be released from the album is 'Clouds'.

New Music - 2015 - Part 5 - Small Houses - Still Talk; Second City

While it was some time ago that I became vaguely aware of Small Houses, which is the vehicle for the work of Michigan native Jeremy Quentin,  only now has it come to my attention again and then somewhat by chance. The song from the forthcoming album 'Still Talk; Second City' features guest vocals from an artist who was one of my favourite discoveries of 2014 festivals - Samantha Crain - and is 'Seventeen in Roselore'.
This prompted me to listen to Small Houses' first LP, 'Exactly Where I Wanted To Be' (2013) several times in the last couple of days. My feeling here is that I like this a great deal. Acoustic guitar, mostly picked, accompanies his songs about the trials, tribulations and delights that are just part-and-parcel of life in, probably, a small town. This certainly is not work that tells of the bright lights of a metropolis.  Here is the song that made me take notice and dig deeper.

If I had to choose a favourite from 'Exactly Where I Wanted To Be' then it would be the last of the eight cuts and that is 'Homes and Photographs'. It is a tough call I have to say and this has only served to enhance my anticipation of the forthcoming release. This is the artwork and track-listing for it.

The slated release date is 10 February 2015 in North America.

There is no doubt that I would like to see Small Houses live at a 2015 festival in the UK and I can think of some possibilities. Just as aside, can anyone think of other album titles that have a semi-colon in them?

A live recording to assuage the January blues.

It is not the best time of year for new music, or indeed much else to be quite honest. Here is a live recording by a band that has exercised my mind much over the last five years or so but has recently declared hiatus.
Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo 'Live at Swindon Arts Centre' in 2011 and recorded during the tour that followed the release of the LP Almanac is now available to download. I certainly love live music and thus also have a soft spot for live recordings convincingly done. This newly affordable recording possibility is one of the virtues of the digital world.

That is not to say that 2015 will be without interest: all four members are still very active in music. Emily Barker is playing Behind The Castle Festival 2015. There is however a great deal more than that to come.

Why do major labels vacillate?

If you think that a curious title for a post then I shall expound.
It is no secret that The Shires' début album 'Brave', dropping soon, has no known album artwork as of today. Or at least that is the catch-all position that amazon,com and amazon.co.uk is currently displaying. I have to say that, at this stage in the game, that is rather disappointing. The duo is signed to Decca in the UK and Universal Music Group Nashville in all other markets (the first ever UK act to be so). Be that as it may the labels still can't sort the album artwork such that amazon.co.uk or amazon.com can display it. This, in marketing terms alone, is really rather pathetic. No wonder that the independent labels, that can react fast, are running rings.
Be that as it may...

It is still likely an LP that will have an impact. It won't be the only one.

On the other hand apparently small and insignificant labels can insinuate themselves, and thus also their artists, into the consciousness of music fans seemingly without any fanfare at all. Sometimes emerging under the radar, and then staying there for a while, has advantages all of its own.

Particularly when pop - slightly old-style West-coast pop - is concerned.
Any influence and none, its just your ears that decide that in the end.

New Music - 2015 - Part 4 - Wildwood Kin - Salt Of The Earth EP

This release, unless you see them live and I wholeheartedly recommend that you do, is one that you will have to wait a little while for. A little indie-folk (or call it what you will) something to look forward to in expectation of the spring, perhaps. Live performance is what Wildwood Kin exists for...

The Exeter acoustic trio are (L - R below) Meghann Loney, Emillie Key and Beth Key.

Wildwood Kin, Cheese and Grain, Frome. 24 October 2014.

New Music - 2015 - Part 3 - Caitlin Rose - Been Thinkin' 'Bout You All The Time

This is quite possibly the least new, new music of 2015. It however satisfies the criterion and then some. To be honest she can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

It is, so we are lead to believe, just another demo. 
Written with Willie Breeding of 'The Breedings' some time ago.

UK Blog Sound 2015

I'm delighted to say that, for the second year, I was a tiny part of this project organised and collated by Robin Seamer of Breaking More Waves and few others have the ability to find new music in the way that it offers.

I did think about commenting on the long-list, when it was revealed in early December, but this time it was a conscious decision not to. In order to try and reach a conclusive answer the way the votes were counted was modified this year - this was made quite transparent as are the blogs/bloggers that are invited to tender votes (BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards please take note...).
I thought about it and then decided to take a gamble and wait for the denouement.
In retrospect I'm very glad that I did. There was a clear winner in 2015, one that I didn't nominate incidentally, and that was Låpsley. If that moniker seems slightly Scandinavian, courtesy of the accented vowel, then so be it. It could hardly be more appropriate.


Holly Lapsley Fletcher hails from Formby, Merseyside (formally a part of Lancashire) and Formby is indeed a Scandinavian place name in any case!
Do I reckon that 2015 in music is looking set fair?
Yes.
That is my honest answer. It is in safe hands and sound hearts.

New Music 2014 - Part 43 - Trash Kit - Confidence

When I wrote this post, about their self-titled début album back in 2010, I didn't really anticipate reviewing its sequel. Although I had liked it, as the years passed I thought nothing more of it. It seemed just to be a case of the three artists doing exactly what they felt like doing on the spur of the moment with little thought to convention, let alone thoughts of the future, as it blasted through seventeen tracks in twenty-seven minutes. I am glad to say that once again I was wrong!
The core trio of Rachel Aggs, Rachel Horwood and Ros Murray remains, as does the contribution (brass in this case) of Verity Sussman, on recent release 'Confidence'.

In this the eleven tracks make up a play-length of just over 29 minutes. The second one 'Medicine' nears the four-minute mark!
Fear not - the self-imposed restrictions on song structure, particularly the lack of chorus, and the ways and means to avoid problems with that are reason enough to persevere. So too the often almost impenetrable vocals, that are usually low in the mix. This tendency is brought over from Murray and Sussman's previous life in Electrelane - I'm really thinking 'No Shouts, No Calls' (2007) in particular, though the prog tendencies are much less pronounced here.

Betwixt the old year and New Year.

At this time every year I feel like writing; that inclines me to think I should be able to write either about the past year, the coming one or even both with some insight. The fact is, and this year is no different, that to a great extent I cannot and that is not for a shortage of content.
Be that as it may I still feel like writing and so I have settled on a suitably time-indeterminate solution. Here are a couple of LPs or suchlike that I have not mentioned in 2014.

This first, released as the end of 2014 approached is a good example of the fact that some of the best Americana comes out of Canada and it isn't that easy to find on physical format in the UK at the moment.

'Chasing The Sun' is the third LP from the female three-piece The Sweet Lowdown based in Victoria, British Colombia. The sound is entirely acoustic and based on traditional and Appalachian playing but many of the songs and tunes are self-written.

Little May is also a female three-piece, but in this case from Sydney, NSW, Australia., and again not that easy to find all that much music from except to say that which I have heard I like. More about this very soon.

To finish a post that has wandered the world more or less on the theme of Americana perhaps less well known I will finish with one from the USA. That is this release by Pennsylvania-based Caroline Reese and The Drifting Fifth.

Electric Year EP (2014).

This track is not from the above but from the 2013 album Slow Code.

I can't wait to see and hear any/all of these artists, and many more, live in 2015. Now that I have started listening, reading and writing after the welcome Christmas break who knows where this will go next? I'm not sure that I do but when I started I didn't know that either. 

Ten years of writing - and some thoughts on music

Having finally got something of the festive feeling, and also read the suggestion from one of my fellow bloggers that writing a blog displays a certain vanity, I thought I might indulge myself a little.
First things first and a very simple luxury - make a tartiflette and sit in front of a real fire to eat it, accompanied by some wine and recorded music.
This specific idea for this post actually came about as the result of a Spotify advertising link - “What did your 2014 sound like?”
My thought was "Why did my 2014 sound like it did?"

One thing I must say about 2014 is that without doubt I have listened to more music, both live and recorded, than in any previous year. I can't put numbers to that but, trust me, it is true and by some considerable margin. I'm not sure that eight years of writing a blog has done much, whether positive or negative, for my vanity. What it has certainly done is provide me with huge satisfaction and at times a sanctuary from the everyday and the mundane. Not just the writing that is, although it has; the live and recorded music that I have heard and all the people that I have met along the way and the ones that I anticipate meeting in the future. One thing is certain; it is both absorbing and time-consuming. It is also absolutely fascinating. I have spent a great deal of time mulling (perhaps I should have done that with the wine too) over the music of 2014 this last month or so. I suppose with good reason that my 2014 has been dominated by acoustic-folk-Americana-roots. I can see that trend continuing in 2015 but that's not all that I like by any means.

The first time I wrote about music in the public domain was some amazon.co.uk reviews in 2005. I was reminded of this the other day while reading reviews and suddenly finding myself confronted by one of my own - that for the LP 'Old World Underground Where Are You Now?' (2003) by Metric.
That I suppose, and then the desire for freedom to write just what I wanted, led to this blog starting in September 2006 if only by accident rather than design. In 2007 this led to my going to festivals although it had been on my mind for a while. This was hastened by the new-found need to have original material to write about. Then came photography to go with it because festivals are as much about watching as listening. This bare-bones timeline says nothing at all about the music that accompanied it .
This got me thinking about how my current tastes in music have evolved to the point at which they are now. That is proving a tricky thing to do and harder to explain, not least because of the self-analysis that it predicates.

This evening I decided to listen to absolutely any LPs that I thought inspired my, or the purchase of which was inspired by my, decision to start (and then continue) going to festivals back in 2007. Whilst my liking for acoustic folk goes way further back it would seem, on reflection, to have had nothing to do with this particular decision. It seems to have been largely indie-driven; my choice of Latitude Festival 2007 as a starting point was specifically because Arcade Fire was headlining the Sunday. One thing yesterday's playlist demonstrated was that I still like much of what attracted me then and not all of this indie in the period 2007-9 was indie-rock; that appellation doesn't apply to New Young Pony Club or Polly Scattergood, both of which I first became aware of by seeing them play live at Latitude Festivals. I then bought the LPs and indeed have continued to do so. Both have disco as a pulsing heart - the twisted nature of 'Bunny Club' (Polly Scattergood) and 'Ice Cream' (NYPC) have both stood the test of time I think. 

To use a geological analogy, the growth of my music collection in the last ten years has been a largely sedimentary (rather than volcanic) epoch. It does, however, include a couple of fault planes within it. The most obvious of these is connected with my decision to go to End Of The Road Festival for the first time in 2009. This decision was certainly responsible for stirring my interest in Americana and roots and (while I don't much care for the descriptor) 'alt-country' too.
This fed-back into a revived interest in UK folk music (both traditional and new) that served to fill the gaps in live music between festivals.  That is when things became really interesting. It gave me the idea to go looking for new music myself, be that local in origin or further afield, rather than just wait for it to come to a venue that I was at.

Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Pete Robson & Rodney Branigan

I have just returned from another excellent evening at Marnhull Acoustic Sessions that was arguable made even more special as a result of a minor electrical hitch, of which more later. As I have mentioned before I count myself as truly lucky to live within easy reach of so much good live music of all kinds. For anyone within reasonable travelling distance, if you have been wondering whether to give it a try then I strongly recommend that you do. You get to see and hear artists of national stature, at the very least, in an intimate venue. To whet your appetite Marnhull Acoustic sessions return on 22 February 2015 with Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston headlining with, no doubt, some cracking support.

Support artist this evening was Pete Robson whom I had never seen live before. This saw things get under way with a distinctive acoustic blues slant and a melange of covers and his own compositions. I listen to quite a bit of blues inflected music, although more often of the electric and rock-blues persuasion, so this made an interesting and very welcome change.

Rodney Branigan does things with guitars (or occasionally a mandolin and hand drum) that Health and Safety would advise that you never try at home. He hails from Texas and so, although now resident in Somerset, the rules don't apply in his case. Some of them are not actually dangerous; just both hands to the fret.

During the first half-hour or so of the set there was an intermittent issue with the sound and this resulted in a brief pause to investigate the problem. It was swiftly resolved: the performance would continue front of stage. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for.

We got to hear a couple of OutKast songs played in a folk-roots style unplugged, interspersed with his own compilations, some of which are very much blues influenced and all punctuated with the tricks that he does (only video could really do this justice - the point when he swaps them over without ceasing to play either, in particular).

WTF live - this went from the amazing to the quite astonishing almost by accident.

New Music 2014 - Part 42 - The Leylines - Let It Go

The problem with this time of year is that amongst all the others I get to discover some of the things that, due to inattention or oversight, I have managed to miss over the previous eleven months. This is one of them and only made worse by the fact that the band is fairly local and the influence of another although not local, The Levellers, of whom I was writing praises in June, is clearly important but not overbearing.

The Leylines is a five-piece, based around-and-about Weston-super-Mare in Somerset. The first release was an EP Let It Go at the start of 2014. Better still have a listen now and then buy it.

The Leylines are most certainly on my list of acts to see live in 2015 as are another, somewhat better known and longer-established one. Mad Dog Mcrea, to pursue the above analogy, might just be Plymouth's answer to (the early days of) The Pogues.
The recent song 'Am I Drinking Enough?' certainly suggests a kindred spirit. More importantly, so does their reputation and especially that for live performance.
Simply because such a thing is possible, here it is - recorded live in a very special shed in Somerset!

My 2014 in Music - Live Albums & New Music 2015 - Part 2

A few years ago I thought that EPs were a dying breed. I was wrong about that. More recently I thought that live LPs were for the most part a highlight of the 1970s and 1980s; I have plenty of those, almost all on vinyl, that attest to that. My inclination even then was that the costs involved were something that only well established acts, with major label resources both logistical and financial, could really contemplate and that therefore they tended to be recorded at large venues or festivals and where such facilities were more likely to be found in any case, only served to reinforce that idea.
I am happy to report that I was seemingly wrong about this too. Whilst obviously no replacement for seeing the artist actually playing live they have interest. Here, in no particular order, are a few that have caught my attention in 2014.

• Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin - Live in Calstock

Overlooking the Tamar in far-eastern Cornwall this venue is something of a hidden treasure.

In a wider sense that was also somewhat true of the artists until they won the 'Best Duo' award at the BBC Folk Music Awards 2014. I have been lucky enough to see them live on a number of occasions. Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are confirmed to play Behind The Castle Festival, Sherborne, Dorset on 13 June 2015.

• Rachel Sermanni - Live in Dawson City

I have mentioned this in some detail here. Suffice it to say that Dawson City makes Calstock and Carrbridge seem like accessible places to play and record! The march of technology has had more than a few downsides in music - the ability to make very respectable recordings at reasonable cost in small venues is not one of them. I'm hoping that her follow-up to Under Mountains (2012) will appear in 2015.
That turned out to be more prescient than I could have known when I wrote the foregoing paragraph last week. Sometimes, but rarely, not finishing posts has unanticipated advantages!
It was announced only today. 

'Tied To The Moon'. This, I believe, will be the album artwork. It is due for release in late February 2015.

• Dana Fuchs - Songs From The Road

In the last couple of years the live CD/DVD format presented by Ruf Records 'Live On The Road' has been a major influence and I have mentioned several of these already. This one by Dana Fuchs is the latest to find favour with me and the album artwork is, as ever, totally generic. It was recorded in a single take before a sold-out audience. In this case it was the Highline Ballroom, NYC, March 14, 2014.

The label favours blues but the remit is liberally interpreted and I don't have any problem with that - soul blues, blues rock; whatever and however it comes it is likely to at least catch my attention, to be quite honest. The production is, however, uniformly top-drawer as are the performances so recorded.
I will probably never understand why, as I approach fifty years of age, I like a far wider range of music than I did when I was eighteen or twenty-one. I reckon that I am amongst the lucky ones.