Partly Porpoise

Moving!

2010-05-09T17:15:00.006Z

The Boy Wonder has set me up with a new account for Partly Porpoise. He assures me it’ll be better…

http://partlyporpoise.wordpress.com/

It was a pleasure meeting you. What's your name?

2010-04-25T14:16:00.003Z

I’m turning into an irritable old bugger…

I’m breaking my recent gig fast next weekend by making a trip over to Bristol and catching the venerable, if barking, reggae legend Lee “Scratch” Perry, his first gigs in this country for a good few years (seven I think).

So I thought I’d put together a little mix of some my favourite tracks by the old nutter and had started work on this. But then having mentioned it to some of the cronies I stand next to at The Home of Rugby, it became clear that everybody has their own Upsetter favourites, and that as his output is just massive, we all knew albums that the others didn’t.

So, anyway, I’m thinking I’ll use the iTunes Genius function to throw up a few random Upsetter gems.

And that’s when it all went pear-shaped…

I won’t go into details, suffice to say a combination of a new computer, lost passwords and bloody iTunes made it all very frustrating… The air was blue…

Anyway, here’s a fairly random Upsetter Lucky Seven, which ideally will introduce you to seven new (and appropriately goofy) insights into the mind of a fine old Jamaican eccentric.

Hold of Death (title track of a 1993 album)

The Dragon Enters (from Kung Fu Meets the Dragon)

Django Shoots First (a single I think, I have it on Bashment)

Santa Clause (from Repentance)

Having a Party (from Scratch Came, Scratch Saw, Scratch Conquered

Black Bat (No idea where from originally, but I have it on an album called Original bass)

Noah Sugar Pan (from Heart of the Congos)

Upsetter Lucky Seven

Here’s a video of an interview the man did in Austen, which made me chuckle…

Of course, as more than one person has pointed out to me, the whole gig could go very wrong …

Scream blue murder 'cause you need something for the pain...

2010-04-17T09:09:00.004Z

Dunno why this post has taken so long to put together (apart from the obvious, that is…)

One of the people that occasionally pops into this eminent organ is a feller who calls himself Devoted Hooligan, and has a damn good blog himself. He recently posted a link to an album called Fandom & Faction which featured local bands and singers. As he is based in Bristol, not a million miles from the old city, and as it featured a couple of artists I’ve seen (including dear old Men Diamler), I thought I’d give it a go. There’s some good stuff on it.

Babel

Including this band of groovy folkers...

Babel are five musicians from the Bristol area, who contribute a track called Pearl St Raga to Fandom & Faction. I see the word “Raga” and I think of Davy Graham straight away, a comparison which is over-flattering but gets you to the right area, if you know what I mean. It’s a track which has violins and a vaguely Indian feel to it, as you’d expect, but, driven on by a busy drummer, rhythm guitars and liberal amounts of clapping, it also really swings.

Pearl St Raga - Babel

Pearl St Raga is taken from a mini album from 2007 and there is another album released since, called Crooked Timber , both of which are available from Emusic, here, and which I’ll download in the near future. The last release from them seems to be in 2008, but they’re still gigging, as this review from February of this year confirms. I imagine it would be a good evening…

In the meantime, here’s a rather nice video of “Made Your Bed” from YouTube.

There are a few other videos available too, including one for Pearl St Raga, which I can recommend.

Once had a heart, could not be told...

2010-04-05T13:21:00.001Z

Here’s some mouth-watering news…

Will Sheff of Okkervil River has coaxed some material out of notorious acid-casualty and genuine legend, Roky Erickson, and a bona-fide album is due to be released in the next couple of weeks in the US (another couple of months for us Brits, I’m afraid). Apparently the record features new stuff and some archive songs recorded in Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. We’re going to hear a fair bit about this in the next month or so…

Wow…

Didn't mean to disappoint you

2010-04-03T09:55:00.006Z

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

And, yes, I know my behaviour’s been abominable, simply intolerable – I just breeze back in here without so much as a by your leave. (I don’t call, I don’t write…).

But, hey ho, you knew that about me when you first got involved, right?

Anyway…

Erland & the Carnival

(File this one under “Not breaking any new ground”, to use a Coleser-ian device…)

When you know people have been banging on about a band for a while, it’s easy to feel like you’ve missed your chance, that the ship has sailed, and that you didn’t really want to catch it anyway.

Well, everywhere I turn people seem to be raving about Erland & the Carnival, to the extent that a Mercury nomination seems inevitable… What with a number of other “difficulties” (for instance, there’s some sort of Blur / Verve connection that I can’t be bothered to investigate…), I’ve been putting off any investigation at all.

Anyway, turns out they’re rather good…

(With apologies to Mr Ashby, why do I never listen?)

The younger, cooler member of the family has just drifted in, and when I tried to suggest he might like this, instantly replied

“Sounds boring…”

No telling some people, eh?

Honey, take a run down to the beach!

2010-03-11T21:31:00.002Z

Did something very old school Partly Porpoise this evening. Haven’t done it for ages…

Long time readers of this Blog may remember how I used to go about finding new music by muddying my hands in the waters of Myspace. A pretty good yield it used to afford me too, for a while. For some reason though, Myspace changed the way they do things, and suddenly no downloads available anymore.

Anyway, I just thought I’d have a look…

The Drums

The Drums are a New York based band, who (if the stories are to be believed) decided to make a conscious move away from synths etc towards guitar-driven pop, without actually being able to play guitars. I like the story, so I’m choosing to be believe it.

Turns out the results are rather fun, lots of sixties harmonies, jingly guitars, bouncy bass lines and jaunty whistling. A winning formula.

Watch this:

You can download five (moderately) different versions of “Surfing” from here, including the “straight” version, but I thought I’d host one of the remixes.

This is the Nothing but the Girl mix:

Surfing

Not enough whistling in music theses days…

Ooh, we could dance and be free!

2010-03-09T19:34:00.002Z

Well, I’ve gone and joined that Twitter thingie.

Not entirely sure what I’m doing yet, but if the only fruit it yields is the exciting news that there’s a new Ted Leo album out – today in fact - well that’s something…

No videos or freebies yet, (and although, his site claims that you can stream the album on his Myspace, that’s not up yet), so we’ll have to go for something old to celebrate…

I think I’m ready for a new album from the Pharmacists – the last one passed me by…

Oh, and as you’re asking, it’s @Sweeny99… And yes it would be a pleasure to have you following me.

You’ve got a rabbit in your hat! You’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve!

2010-03-06T21:39:00.002Z

My blogging chum and I are becoming increasingly infatuated by the ever-enjoyable Classic Albums Podcast – basic format: two fellers talk about records they lent to each other. A simple format but a winning one, that I wish I’d thought of myself – although I doubt my ability to carry it off in such an affable and urbane fashion. I look forward to each new edition and am gradually working my way through the back catalogue.

One of the ideas Gary and Steven have got me thinking about is the idea of a record having space - quieter moments in which ideas can grow and take hold. I like the notion that the listener needs the occasional pause in proceedings in order to gather his thoughts – a metaphorical parting of clutter as he picks his way across the room and onto the bed.

The Soft Pack

Anyway, I’ve just bought myself the eponymous first album from California’s The Soft Pack, and I’m afraid Gary and Steven would be disappointed. Basically, there’s no space, none at all, not a second to catch your breath at all. Ten bursts of punchy, Garage Punky, sixties fun (there’s even what sounds like a Farfisa organ, God’s choice of keyboard, I feel) and all of it delivered with bursts of youthful energy and exclamation. It’s catchy, exhilarating stuff that you’ll either love or find utterly empty-headed. Or maybe both.

Here!

And there!

Bought the record at the height of Ofsted fever, during the week (and yes, as your asking, it was fine, thank you), but now in the lavish post-Ofsted position of being able to read magazines and browse cool websites at my leisure, I find that pretty much everyone’s (Everyone) all over this already.

Honestly, bees round a honey pot…

2010-02-28T20:01:00.004Z

Any good Green Man ligger will be well aware that Welsh music (or indeed music in Welsh) has become really rather cool over the last few years, with folk such as Gruff Rhys, Euros Childs, Richard James and Cate le Bon making terrific records that are usually acoustic and distinctively Welsh, all of which are firm favourites of this Blog.

I’ve got something different for you here but definitely of a similar ilk…

Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree

Moving swiftly on from another … shocking… name, (thankfully there’s no sign of people with skye in their hair or stars in their brows…), the Magickal Folk are some sort of collective of musicians travelling the British Isles making recordings in traditional settings, previously only available on long sold-out CDRs. Deserted Village records have now re-packaged and released a couple of these together with some other songs as “The Soup and the Shilling”.

They are beautiful recordings, sung in English, French and Gaelic, and supplemented lavishly by strings (plucked and bowed), pipes and gorgous backing vocals. I rather like all this clever, linguistic dabbling around – it adds a certain outlandishness to a recording and avoids the tricky business of making an old lyric sound fresh. The result is a bunch of quirky, moss-covered folk songs that are not a long way from some of the early Gorky’s records.

Deserted Village profess to know nothing about these Magickal Folk, claiming that they find the recordings in a hollowed out tree stump (I believe them...), and I’m quite happy for this to remain the case – a little unfamiliarity does us no harm.

We do have a few samples made available, however, by the good people at Deserted Village.

Is Iomaidh Coiscéim Fada

Le Bon Marain

Bewitching stuff…

If it's not for ever, just know I love you now

2010-02-20T13:44:00.003Z

In a futile (and I suspect, unsuccessful) attempt to convince the outside world that I do indeed have my finger resolutely on the pulse of modern music, I do try to keep up with a few choice labels. To be honest, it would probably be fairer to say that one or two labels do stick with sending me emails, in the hope that every now and again I might be stirred into action.

One of these labels is Loose Music, who have quite an impressive roster these days but maintain an appealingly homemade feel to their operation. Over Christmas I bought the well-regarded The Duke & The Spirit album Nothing Gold Can Say, but I have to say it hasn’t really worked for me, and has drifted to the pile of albums that I really should give another listen (never a good sign).

Danny & the Champions of the World

Not to be deterred, however, I’ve just today bought the new Danny & the Champions of the World record, Streets of our Time, and am enjoying a much lighter country sound which works very nicely.

Danny is apparently the former front man of Grand Drive, and so has some considerable pedigree already. I don’t really know a whole lot about Grand Drive but I probably need to investigate their catalogue further.

I’m not keen on defining a band’s sound by referring to another band (very lazy) but it’s hard not to talk about this record without thinking Springsteen, the Byrds, Neil Young or Dylan. To be fair, however, the influences go back a lot further too, sounding very old-timey, with banjo to the fore (I do love a banjo, me).

Anyway, I was scratching around YouTube looking for a video to play, but the only video up that refers to the new album was this one. It’s not an official video and not really a video at all, just a series of photographs, by a bloke called Tony-Ray Jones. Now, I’m not going to claim I knew who Tony-Ray Jones was, (a trip here soon sorted that out) but the photographs chosen by YouTuber Victoory (who seems to have a rather a nice line in this sort of video) are gorgeous and fit the feel of the title track from the album very nicely.

Loose Music and Danny and the Champions of the World don’t seem to have much up in the way of freebies or even videos to watch but what they do have is this Spotify playlist which is made up of tracks that obviously inspired the record (sure enough, we have Dylan, Neil Young, the Byrds etc).

The younger, cooler member of the family has been telling me to take advantage of Spotify playlists for a while now, and I am reluctantly forced to agree with the young hopper…

I’d go blind to save you…

2010-02-14T21:34:00.004Z

Despite my best intentions, I am beginning to get a little animated by the prospect of going to Green Man again this year. If you remember, I’d pretty much sworn off buying a ticket ever again after two successive wash outs, until my friend and fellow Kingsholm crony Martin had come up with a late ticket last summer. The rest is history, as they say…

This year, Green Man have already ensnared me with the news that the magnificent Beirut have been persuaded to come over. Now, this was also announced a couple of years ago, mind, only for Zach Condon to pull out at a fairly late stage; so I’m still a little wary at this stage… (Even so, Alastair Roberts is also appearing…)

Cate le Bon

It became something of a standing joke last year that everywhere we turned we seemed to come across Cate le Bon on stage – coming on for a guest spot with Richard James here, performing a few songs for Will Hodgkinson there. I don’t think we even caught here actual set. (I’m sure she performed with Gruff Rhys a previous year as well…)

Anyway, there is now an album from Cate le Bon, Me Oh My, which came out at the end of last year, but which I have only just picked up from Emusic. It’s really rather a charming record that I’m enjoying greatly at the moment. She has a dark, beautiful voice and a slightly melodramatic delivery that gives her songs something of a jarring edge.

And now, it seems that those clever buggers at Green Man have sent her out with her bewitching ways as a sort of advanced guard, heading a mini Green Man tour that will be snagging further unsuspecting and weak-willed punters around the country.

Be on your guard, people!

You must leave here and not come here again, for my husband has made his return

2010-02-12T21:53:00.005Z

“Gothic” is a funny word, isn’t it?

This being a music Blog (of a fashion), the word will be inextricably mired in a Batcave / Alien Sex Fiend sort of a morass. Visions of lip-stick smeared ninnies singing in grotesquely deep voices spring to mind.

A queasy thought, you'll agree.

If, however, this was one of the myriad of Victorian literature Blogs that clutter up the Internet, a completely different state of affairs would start to unfold. Cruel and sadistic masters, mad women in attics, improbably murky monasteries, providing shelter to defenceless travellers, perhaps. Hardly pleasant, but much more interesting…

So in the unfortunate event of my using the word “gothic” in the course of the next few lines, well, you’ll know where I’m coming from.

The Phantom Carriage

(Actually, quite how I’m supposed to write about a band taking their name from a seminal Swedish horror film, without using the G-word is a little further than my threadbare skills will take me.)

Phantom Carriage is the gloomy vehicle of two blokes calling themselves Mike Seed and Empire State Human, producing dark experimental pieces. I like a bit of eeriness every now and again and this is certainly scary music. Ghostly folk tunes are swamped in tape effects and crackly distortions, producing genuinely creepy music.

Truth be told, I’m still giving their newest album, Skull Exposed To March Rain, (now there’s Gothica for you) its early listens and there are some elements of the record I’m still not really sure about. But right now, right here, I fancy a bit of a chill wind…

The record has been released by Spoilt Victorian Child records, and is completely free to download, here, at SVC or here at the Phantom Carriage’s own site. There’s even a second previous record available, again free, again at both sites. Such startling generosity is only to be applauded I feel.

Here’s a couple of tracks to whet your appetite…

Hawthorn Tree

A Brackish Spirit

Now pick up your lamp and tiptoe downstairs, I’m sure I heard something…

Did you stay down wind? Yes, sir!

2010-02-07T21:46:00.001Z

(I’ll save you the bleating on about having no time, yada, yada, yada..)

No new music at the moment, just some old stuff I missed at the time…

Open the bottle and let the wine breathe

2010-01-23T18:00:00.009Z

Ofsted prowls with murderous intent on the doorstep of our beleaguered establishment, causing adults who probably should know better to careen hysterically about the place.

It’s all a bit hairy really – I hope they come soon…

Alasdair Roberts

Am currently very keen on this album from Scottish folk singer, Alasdair Roberts. Clearly a kindred spirit with Will Oldham, he manages to fill out some classic (or classic-sounding) old songs with a little light and shade – just enough to make it a little more edgy.

Just looking around the Internet, I came across this superbly pretentious article and interview which made me laugh aloud. Didn’t understand a word of it!

No downloads around at the moment, but a trip to YouTube yields a few good shows and a rather fine collection of Andy Goldsworthy videos set to the tune of a Roberts’ song.

I’ve linked to this show, however, mainly because, having spent a day on school work, I slipped my wearisome bonds and got along to it in person.

A very pleasant evening that I’m glad to return to.

He might stay, but he will leave in the morning

2010-01-08T20:24:00.006Z

Rather too many lists and bootlegs of recent. Let’s get back to basics…

Pants Yell!

A truly awful band name (surely, the worst…), but one to listen out for, nonetheless...

Pants Yell! (I’m sure the exclamation mark is vital) hail from Boston and are a three-piece writing genuine pop songs, with lovely brittle guitar lines that skitter around energetically.

I’ve just downloaded what is their fourth album out on Slumberland, Received Pronunciation, and am still giving it its first listen, so I can’t really speak with any authority. What I can say about it is that there’s a real hum about the record that for me could go either way – a huge grower or a hasty dismissal. Obviously I’m hoping for the former, but right now I’m not too fussed which way it’s going to go. I’m living in the moment (and thoroughly enjoying it).

I rather like what Slumberland have written about them. Have a listen…

Slumberland are one of those labels that have a very cool roster of bands (Cause Co-Motion!, Crystal Stilts, Pains of Being Pure at Heart) and we may well be hearing more from them on these pages. In the meantime, the good folk over there are giving away a track from the record “Cold Hands” which you can snag here, but there are another couple of Pants Yell! tracks available on the Asaurus site too, here.

I will also be giving a listen to the third album, Alison Statton, intriguingly named after the singer from bedroom luminaries of my youth, the Young Marble Giants. Endearingly, Popfrenzy, (another of their old labels) have a short clip of Ms Statton herself giving a luke-warm endorsement of the band and apparently asking for them to send her a copy of the record.

Love it…

2010-01-05T16:44:00.005Z

There are one or two very patient punters out there!

Mr Hooligan has pointed out (with commendable restraint) that the Chinese White link I posted a couple of days is still not working.

For once this is not down to my oft-referred to cack-handedness - I've actually tagged this correctly this time - but all the fileden links seem to have crashed. I have no idea why.

So anyway, here's a .RAR file fo all four songs, which people can snag until I get my (ahem) shit together...

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jwitgnmlw22/Robin Hitchcock Green Man '09.rar

Even kissed you once or twice...

2010-01-02T21:46:00.003Z

Very sad news...

Every step I take, I think my feet are getting older

2009-12-31T19:23:00.003Z

Some feller calling himself Devotional Hooligan has left a comment on an old post of mine about Green Man. Apparently the Robin Hitchcock recordings I made have gone down, and Mr Hooligan has asked for a re-up (I’ve got to stop watching quite so much of the Wire).

Couldn’t be happier to oblige, mate, and what’s more I found another recording, taken at the same event, of Mr Hitchcock singing Robin Williamson’s Chinese White.

Enjoy.

I Can Hear the Grass Grow

Bike

River Man

Chinese White

2009-12-31T18:22:00.007Z

The words “breath” and “bated” spring to mind as I continue to post my best of lists. As I said the other day, my record buying habits are such that whether an album is new or not rarely enters into my thinking. In fact I’m very often unaware of a release date until I get round to preparing these sort of lists. Some of the records I’ve been most excited about in 2009 are already a few years old. I’m a little slow.

So this first list runs down some of the nearly new records I’ve really enjoyed this year:

Seven Nearly New Classics of 2009

Coles Corner – Richard Hawley
Love, Ire & Song – Frank Turner
For Emma, Forever Ago – Bon Iver
This Nation’s Saving Grace – The Fall
Snow Tyres – Unbunny
Lost Wisdom - Mount Eerie , Julie Doiron , Fred Squire
The Wailing Souls at Channel One – Wailing Souls

Some of these I’m embarrassed to have only just cottoned onto, some I feel that I’m arriving at fashionably late after all the fuss has died down. They’re all great records that have enriched my life this year.

Seven Records You Should Probably Buy
(Even though I haven’t…)

The Hazards of Love – The Decemberists

(actually, I have just bought this, not much liking it so far…)

Real Estate – Real Estate (ditto)

Merriweather Post Pavilion – Animal Collective

(I just know this is going to be too difficult for me, and it’ll end up being flung across the room)

Tarot Sport – Fuck Buttons

Psychic Spasms – Neon Indian

Fever Ray – Fever Ray (highly recommended by Mr Cole)

Bitte Orca – The Dirty Projectors (even more highly recommended by the aforementioned Blogger)

And finally...

The Seven Best Records of 2009

But, anyway, what can you do? You can’t get them all can you?

Actually, once I got round to checking out which records were new and which weren't, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much quality music has been released this year. Honourable mentions go to the Volcano Choir, the Antlers, Califone, Vic Chesnutt, You Can Be a Wesley, Euros Childs, the Leisure Society, the Phantom Band, Art Brut, the Lemonheads and Sin Fang Bous, who all produced good records that I’ve enjoyed listening to, but sorry fellers, no cigar…

So here we go, no particular order, I love them all

Veckatimest – Grizzly Bear
Two lovely performances - at Green Man and in Bristol – certainly enhanced this record for me, but even without that, how can you fail to be entranced by those harmonies and complex arrangements?
Dory

The Liberty of Norton Folgate – Madness
I’ve always been keen on Madness and their ability to write a decent pop song, and it’s particularly gratifying to see older gentlemen writing mature songs.
Idiot Child

Album– Girls
“Weedy”, “adenoidal” and “morbid” are all phrases that flash through the mind when you hear this. Their performance at the Cooler confirmed everything, (rather reassuringly so in fact) and added “Hunky Dory” to the list…
Lust for Life

The xx – The xx
The xx are another band who crept under my creaking radar system this year and another band who produced an eponymous classic for me. Right now I can’t get it off the iPhone…
Heart Skipped a Beat

The Crying Light – Antony and the Johnsons
Another record that benefited dramatically from my seeing it performed. It’s that voice again, obviously, but also his ability to write aching, moving songs that makes him continue to stand out.
Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground

Hometowns – the Rural Alberta Advantage
Great songs and a punchy restless approach made this record a cut above all the other Americana-style releases of the year. Basically, a jumpy, beaty record pushed on by the busiest drummer of the year.
Don’t Haunt This Place

Survival – Forest Fires
Another American record, sounding a lot like the Let It Bleed era Stones and embellished by yukes and other old tyme instruments. Some ugly awkward lyrics as well. Fascinating stuff.
Echoes Coming

In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s – Let’s Wrestle
And speaking of ugly awkward stuff, my last record makes a virtue of a Seeds-ish lack of virtuosity. An eager, wholehearted record that owes something to Art Brut and which actually pushes Eddie Argos off my list. It’s a funny old world, eh?
I Won’t Lie to You

Eight you say? Ah c’mon, who’s counting?

Happy New Year.

2009-12-30T22:40:00.002Z

Like I said, I’m getting a bit of a taste for this list-writing mullarkey. So this next one is concerned with what was a characteristic of the year for me – live music. Basically, it’s been a stonking year for live music in the West Country, the best I can remember for a good while.

Six Cracking Gigs of 2009

(in chronological order)

David Byrne, Colston Hall, March
A wonderful, winning return from a man who had passed from my consciousness many years ago. Memorable for the choreography as much as the music

Anthony & the Johnsons, Colston Hall, May
Reminded me why I was so impressed by their previous album and made me go and listen to the new album a bit more closely. A remarkable performance.

Bon Iver, Green Man, August
Not having really listened to the album properly, wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy his set. I needn’t have worried, an atmospheric and moving performance, all pulled off with genuine humility. With hindsight, my highlight of a great festival. I actually have a recording of the set, and I can’t understand why I never posted it. I’ll remedy this ASAP.

Frank Turner, the Anson Rooms, October
One of those events that grew and grew in my mind as the days followed on from the gig. From being a complete Turner novice at the start of the month, I felt like a veteran by the end of it. Probably the warmest gig I have ever been to but it didn’t stop Frank putting a helluva a session.

The Fall, Jesters, November
A belated rite of passage for me really, and by all accounts up there with some of their better performances. “A glorious racket”.

Lou Rhodes, Thekla, November
What started out as a bit of an away day in the big (well, medium) smoke, turned into a breath-taking gathering in the company of the ex Lamb singer. A very special feel to the evening altogether.

Primal Scream, The Guildhall, December
Overcoming the Guildhall’s dodgy electrics and any tendency towards a spreading waistline, as skinny and as white as ever, Bobby Gillespie remains textbook rock’n’roll. Another rattling evening.

And one other…

Roky Erickson, Green Man, August
Alright, he wasn’t very good - pretty turgid blues rock, if truth be told. But… there he was a mythological figure from another time (another planet really) on stage before us. And he did You’re Gonna Miss Me – if only I’d brought my electric jug with me...

A Proposition...

2009-12-28T20:02:00.002Z

Everyone does lists at this time of the year don’t they? Best album of the year / decade etc. I don’t really like making lists like that partly because it takes a certain amount of prior planning and organization and partly because, as you’ll have noticed, I dot around, not really noticing what’s new and what’s not. After all, if you’ve not heard it before, it’s new right?

But anyway, not to be churlish, let’s get into the spirit of things…

Five Events that Made my Year

My iPhone – getting myself an iPhone in October proved to be every bit as distracting and fascinating as I’d hoped it would be. I love the touch screen and being able to push icons around on the screen, I love the combination of wireless connectivity and playing music, and I love the Apps. I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface so far, but I am loving it.

Podcasts – one of the upshots of getting the iPhone was that I have discovered the world of Podcasting. Somehow, I’ve never quite got into listening to podcasts previously, mainly because I’ve now gone back to using iTunes, which makes it very easy to keep up with a particular podcast. Current favourites are The Word podcast, The Classic Albums Podcast, Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, The Football Ramble and Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews.

My First Fall Gig – They’ve always been there, but I’d never seen them before, a little like the Queen (in so many ways…)

Green Man – What a difference a bit of sunshine makes. Previous years had been characterised by expansive rain falls and too long spent huddled in tents feeling wretched, but this year the sun came out and it was a wonderful experience. Highlights were listening to Jah Wobble and Joe Boyd reminiscing , being berated by David Thomas, meeting a few new friends, the new Chah Wallai tent, great sets by Bon Iver and Grizzly Bear and seeing Roky Erickson in the flesh.

Rediscovering the Fall – You’re probably all bored of my going about this, suffice to say that 2009 has been the year Mark E Smith came back into focus for me (albeit a somewhat fuzzy sort of a focus…)

The Wire – actually strike that, 2009 has been chiefly characterised by the obsessive and increasingly impatient wait for the next disk of The Wire to come through my letter box from LoveFilm. It’s been a fantastic journey, one that I would heartily recommend to anyone – easily the best thing I have ever seen on TV.

And now that it’s all over, Michael and I wander, bereft, from room to room unable to communicate our sense of loss to others. Broken tragic figures...

(Fortunately, Santa was tipped off and a gleaming Box Set sits on my desk top, a slightly golden hue emanating from its shrink-wrapped facade…)

Here, watch this, the opening scene from the first series…

I’m having fun here actually – now I’m in the mood I can see myself doing a few more of these lists in the next few days…

Gotta keep on, keepin’ strong

2009-12-12T09:36:00.007Z

It’s not a competition, of course it isn’t, (although I’ll admit to being secretly pleased that I do on occasion manage to beat my esteemed blogger-colleague and fellow shedhead to the punch…)

Anyway, probably just as well…

Primal Scream

Coming on for two weeks ago, my beloved Guildhall staged a bit of a coup, bagging indie-veterans and still by most standards fairly cool guitar slingers, Primal Scream on one of their warm-up gigs, preparing for an ATP affair (also, by now, in the past tense…). Haven’t been to the old place for a good while now, not having a taste for the procession of money-spinning (but god-awful) tribute bands that the bookers seem to be falling over themselves to engage. But you’ve got to say every now again, they do manage to pull something out of the bag…

No support band, which I was a bit put out about at the time, but it did allow for a good hour and half set from the Primals (the Screamers?). It was a good set too, full of noisy stompers and classic rockers – ticking all the boxes that Primal Scream do well. Gillespie is as white and as skinny as any rock’n’roller would aspire to be, Mani and the rest of the band as tight (and at the same time loose) as you want.

They weren’t helped by the fact that not once but twice the power went mid song, the second time during a rousing Movin’ On Up. Surely entitled to have a full-on hissy fit, to their eternal credit they ploughed on stoically, with Gillespie leading the audience singing until power was restored. Nice moment, really, captured here:

(Credit to ensutton, cheers!)

Another good evening, bringing my Autumn of music to a decent finale. I managed to record the gig, and offer it here minus one of the songs that fell foul to the power gremlins…

Can’t Go Back
Miss Lucifer
Country Girl
Jailbird
Burning Wheel
Necro Hex Blues
Kill All Hippies
Deep Hit of the Sun
Exterminator
Suicide Bomb
Swastika Eyes
Movin’ On Up
Rocks Off
Damaged
Loaded
Accelerator

And the whole gig in two .rar files...

Part One

Part Two

A wise man said to me, don’t underrate simplicity

2009-12-01T21:33:00.002Z

It's pouring down. I mean … throwing it down, biblical proportions.

We're on the coach back from Bristol. I'm thinking of what I have to do tonight and what I have to get done for tomorrow...

The woman sat in the seat next to me is large and seems to want half my seat. She is reading a copy of A Bit on the Side and smells of beans.

Ah, Saturday night…

Lou Rhodes

Newsflash: Thekla is still as cool as it was last week. And although I've seen a noisy gig there, I'm now convinced that it is even better suited to quieter acoustic evenings. Again the sound was excellent and having gone up to the balcony this time (in reality only a vantage point of about ten feet) the set up and general vibe (there's a good muso word for you) was even better.

Didn't know a whole lot about Lou Rhodes before last night (ex singer with Lamb, apparently, not that I’m much clearer after finding that out, either) but we'd carved out a weekend away and were keen to see some music. Got hold of her first record and, consummate professional that I am, did my homework - turns out Beloved One is an album I can easily endorse with a clear conscience.

She's a frail looking thing but has a clear and striking voice well suited to an evening of delicate songs accompanied carefully by a classic Nick Drake-style format of cello and double bass. Occasionally the pace of her songs got a bit same-y, but the short attention span of this punter was well catered for by the way the arrangements changed from song to song, with the cellist moving to glockenspiel and the double bass player switching to an acoustic bass.

At one point, she introduced one of her songs by saying that if you were one of those people who were too cool to arrive in time for the support act, you’d have missed a real treat. Well (astonishingly) we were one those too cool people and did miss the support, who turned out to have been John Smith.

I’ve seen and written about John before (here) – he was the best part of our ill-fated Davy Graham evening a couple of years ago – and so I was disappointed to have missed him, but fortunately he was called on to play with Lou Rhodes for one of her songs. He’s an astonishing player.

The evening was over rather too soon, but I did manage to make these recordings of the set. (Don’t know the actual name of the fifth track, I’m afraid…)

Janey

There for the Taking

Tremble

Each Moment New

Circles

As well as this, there is currently a free download (available here) which I would recommend you getting hold of too.

A beautiful and engaging singer.

I'm a fifty year old man, what you gonna do about it?

2009-11-25T14:51:00.006Z

So on Monday I proudly made my Fall debut, going along to the Metropolis in Bristol in the company of old lags, Steve and Martin whose entire adult lives seem to have been punctuated (perhaps even shaped) by Fall gigs. A fair old history indeed, one I’ll admit to being a little envious of, but (I got the feeling) one that was matched over and over again by the dedicated souls that packed a fairly small venue.

The Fall

Followers of this Blog will have found out that I’m a bit of a late-comer to the Fall; I’ve always been aware of their awkward spidery charm, and owned a couple of their records, but never quite “got” them. Until recently, that is with the rediscovery of This Nation’s Saving Grace, Grotesque and Bend Sinister, all records I’ve enjoyed this year.

So where do you go, faced with this history and your own status as a part-timer? The pub’s always a good place, I reckon, so having found that they weren’t due on stage until fairly late, we decamped across the road for a couple of drinks.

We did come back over for the support bands, but, as with a few gigs I’ve been to recently, they weren’t really worth watching. Time clicked on smartly, however, and it wasn’t long before the band came on and a slightly fragile looking Mark E Smith stumbled on stage. Someone at some point described the Fall’s sound as a glorious racket to me, and this was just how it was. A really tight band ploughed through a furious hour and a half of punchy noise, over which Smith ranted, screeched and occasionally crooned. All of the features of a Fall gig that I’d been assured would be present were indeed there – drunkenness, leering, amp twiddling, the mic being passed around the audience during “Blindness” and an amount of falling over.

I’d love to pretend I recognised all these songs and indentified them all immediately but I doubt I’d be fooling anyone. There’s a huge website called the Fall Online which is a good starter for anything Fall-related and perhaps not surprisingly a very active forum there, with people posting about lots of the gigs, including a whole thread on the Bristol gig here.

A jolly good time was had by all, and for once I managed to record the whole gig without talking over the recording or switching it off half way through. I imagine there will be people interested in this, so here’s the set in its boisterous entirety:

Introduction
Strangetown
Wolf Kidult Man
Chino Splashback
Slippy Floor
I’ve Been Duped
Cowboy George / Scenario
50 Year Old Man
Blindness
Psykick Dancehall
Mr Pharmacist
I’m Not From Bury

And two .rar files of the whole evening:

Part One

Part Two

Something’s happening in the attic, there’s no way I’m going up there

2009-11-22T20:07:00.002Z

It’s been a grand old week, taking in a meal out with friends, a gig in Cheltenham and culminating in a famous win at Castle Grim for the beleaguered Cherry & Whites. But you’ve not ventured onto these pages to hear about the rugby have you, so we’ll move on to the Jetpacks…

We Were Promised Jetpacks

Went over to the Frog & Fiddle with Adam on Wednesday for evening of music and warm ale, culminating in a performance by Glasgow’s humourously-named We Were Promised Jetpacks. This is the second time I’ve been to the Frog & Fiddle in recent months and as a venue I’m quite liking it. You have to go through the main pub, which is a frankly unpromising Sports Bar, and come out into a sort of barn area with a small stage. The sound’s surprisingly good and if you don’t mind nipping into the main bar you can get the aforementioned warm ale.

This evening, there were three other acts on before the Jetpacks ranging from the ballsy (Century Man) to the ridiculously over-confident (didn’t catch the name - probably best all round). The second (rather dull and also anonymous) band actually brought a lot of support with them all of which seemed to wander off after their set, which meant that by the time the Jetpacks came on the numbers were down somewhat, and attention was wandering amongst those who did stay.

I made some recordings of the Jetpacks’ set which are decent enough but reflect the rather small audience. What’s more, whenever I wear my super sensitive stealth mic, it’s almost a given that I’ll find myself standing next to some boorish idiot who just wants to continue a shouted conversation with his mates. (Honestly, hanging’s too good…)

Tellingly the recordings get a little better as the set went on mainly because the Jetpacks were good enough to bring people back on track. Led by a frighteningly intense singer (borderline autistic according to Adam - not me, you understand) who belted away at a rhythm guitar to the extent that he’d broken a string within the first two songs. (Not to worry, though, they had another one – rhythm guitarist that is…) He hooted and yelled throughout the set, often not bothering with the mic at all and was ably assisted by a boisterous but firmly-in-their-place set of Jetpacks.

The album is available on Emusic (here) but I’ll give you a couple of recordings from the night – some of the others were ruined by said loutish behaviour, I’m afraid.

It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning

Roll Up Your Sleeves

There’s also this by Century Man, a recording of their single, who were also good on the night and is worth a listen

Marauders – Century Man

And the questions come with armies

2009-11-15T19:49:00.002Z

Sheesh! A week, you say?

Grizzly Bear

Well, last weekend saw the latest of my line of gig tickets disappear from the notice board and into the pocket of my jeans, as I set off for a return trip to Bristol University’s Anson Rooms to see Brooklyn’s much-vaunted Grizzly Bear.

First on was a lady going by the name of St Vincent, who Martin tells me is one of Sufjan Stevens’ backing singers. She was earnest and made a fair old racket with a single electric guitar and loop pedal, but I have to say I found myself losing interest fairly quickly. The recordings I made are therefore marred by the sound of me chatting boorishly with friends through the set. (I can almost hear me tut-tutting myself…)

A trawl through Youtube yields this, however…

Grizzly Bear came onto a stage they had apparently decorated with jam jars with candles in them. It was rather charming really, and led onto a similarly pleasant and laid back set. They ran through most of the Veckimatest record, although I rather missed Dory my favourite track. The harmonies were beautiful and the arrangements as complex and ambitious as when I saw them in the summer. Unfortunately, although the heating at the Anson Rooms was not quite as ferociously ridiculous as last week, the sound was actually worse; very, very woolly. The whole set sounded like you were actually hearing it from next door (maybe if I’d stayed outside…). It very hard to hear any vocals clearly and pretty much spoilt the evening for me.

I’d like to say that this affected the quality of my recordings and that my stringent quality control procedures meant that none of the recordings were fit for your ears; but the sad fact is that my natural aptitude for the cack-handed rather overtook things. I think I forgot to turn my recorder on…

I know…

We can at least console ourselves that in any case the poor sound meant that there wouldn’t have been much to show for it anyway. Damn Anson Rooms! (If it helps, you can picture me shaking my fist, Homer-style, at this point).

So… no recordings. We could play the blame game, but let’s move on, eh?

You know I feel bad about these things, so here’s a couple of decent things I’ve heard recently, both Bradley’s Almanac bands (and both on Emusic, should you wish to follow them up).

I give you Drug Rug and Choo Choo La Rouge, both of whom do a rather passable sixties thing, both of whom write a decent song too, both of whom I have been meaning to write about for a few weeks now, but you might as well read about them here:

Never Tell – Drug Rug

It’s Gonna Happen Fast – Choo Choo La Rouge

We Were Promised Jetpacks on Wednesday…

Get up, get down, get outside!

2009-10-29T12:01:00.003Z

Well my Autumn of music moves on apace…

Frank Turner

Another evening of jigging and cheering, this time at the Anson Rooms in Bristol, with an impressive and vigorous Frank Turner. Not hugely impressed with the Anson Rooms, to be honest, just a large school hall with poor acoustics and an absolutely crazed heating system which made this probably the sweatiest gig I have ever been to.

Frank was great, though, tearing through a set which lasted a good hour and a half and covered most of the Love, Ire and Song album and a lot of his new one, Poetry of the Deed. I’m a new convert to him, really, having been completely unaware of his records until my friend Adam persuaded me to come to this gig. For most of the evening, it felt like I was in a minority of one, though, as song after song was greeted with cheers and rousing sing-alongs. In fact I don’t think I can remember a gig with as much enthusiastic singing and as many people who knew every song all the way through.

There’s something Turner does with his songs that seems to touch people quite deeply and make them relate to him, regardless of personal circumstance. I like the songs on Love, Ire and Song, chiefly because he seems to be dealing with issues of growing old (dis)gracefully, which as a gentleman of a certain age touches a chord with me. But at the Anson Rooms, there were very few old geezers like me, and most people were under 25, I’d say, and so it was a little weird to hear the whole hall singing along to Photosynthesis with gusto.

He played over twenty of his songs, bantered cheerily with the audience, invited one game lad to play a harmonica solo during Dan’s Song and did a wild encore of another ten minutes before traipsing off exhausted (and presumably satisfied) at eleven o’clock. I made some recordings of the gig, which have come out OK, and am attaching some of my favourite numbers, although to be honest, I could have put a good few more:

The Road

Substitute

Love, Ire & Song

Long Live the Queen

Great gig and a lovely bloke.

Who wants something real when you can have nothing?

2009-10-21T16:51:00.004Z

Well, with a whole host of tickets pinned literally or figuratively to my notice board and another triumphant evening in Bristol at the weekend, I’m on a bit of a roll…

Girls

Martin, Steve and I went to a new venue for me called the Cooler on Park Street to see much lauded and very cool San Francisco act, Girls, last Friday evening evening. Now, I don’t often get the chance to check out the newest bands that are setting keyboards a-flutter, first hand, so it was with something of a spring in my step that I found myself walking up the hill after a couple of refreshers in the pub.

The Cooler is another intimate venue in much the same style as Thekla, intimate downstairs space, poorly-lit with only the smallest of steps up onto the stage. I don’t seem to have been so close to the band for quite a while and I enjoyed it.

Girls came on looking as languid and foppish as I’d imagined the Wild beasts would last week, at least two of the members of the band sporting extravagant Hunky Dory-esque ringlets, and the singer wearing some sort of long, chunky-knit scarf. As Martin pointed out, it was reassuring to see a singer that you might actually be able to have in a fight.

Their set was appropriately nerdy, directed by reedy vocals and riding upon waves of feedback and twangy guitars, and showcasing most of the tracks from their album. It was great, as good as anything I’ve seen for a couple of years.

I do usually try to do a little research about the bands I’m writing about (although at times you could be forgiven for not noticing) but in this case I’m more vague than usual about even the most basic facts – I don’t even know anyone’s names. (Go on, you try googling “Girls”…)

Anyway, the sound at the Cooler was somewhat clearer and consequently I’ve managed to make some pretty good recordings of the evening. Again, there’s a couple of tracks I’m not as well informed of as I might be and have had to guess at names… But this is pretty much the whole evening, with a couple of tracks taken out from the middle.

Get hip!

Girls @ The Cooler, 16th October 2009

Laura
Summertime
Ghostmouth
Lust for Life
I Take the Key in my Hand
Hellhole Ratrace / Morning Light
Love is Everything that You Need
Big Bad Mean Motherfucker

One of these days I'll feel much better

2009-10-11T14:39:00.003Z

One of the little bonuses that came my way during this summer’s Green Man was the chance to catch up with a friend of mine I’ve not seen for a while.

Men Diamler

Going under the obscure moniker of Men Diamler, Richard seems to have had a pretty busy year already, including his first CD “Sea Shanties for the Far Inland” and a Radio 6 session for Mark Riley. I fear his days of leaping across bar stools at Calmer may well be drawing to an end.

He’d not actually been booked to play Green Man, but with commendable spirit had come anyway to do a few impromptu performances on various tree stumps across the site. (This is pretty much what I’ve come to expect from Richard – this week I got an email from him saying he was near Manchester and would anyone like to book him to play at their house, for a meal and a bed…)

Having spent a pleasant hour or so catching up, a CD plopped on the mat a week or so later. It was, of course, the aforementioned “Sea Shanties..” and not having heard him play for a while I’d forgotten just how curious a song writer he is.

We have songs about despair, suicide, horses starving in terraced houses and rivers as black as puddings, phrased in (more or less) traditionally folksy ways, alongside others with a much pricklier, rawer feel to them.

He also has this remarkable, aggressive voice which completely belies his affable nature. At times he appears to be on the brink of hysteria on stage, and it’s a little discomforting, to be honest. I kinda hope this apparently uncontrolled colouring outside the lines is done to provoke a reaction from an audience, because otherwise I am a little concernedfor the man’s well being...

Here are three songs from the record, which will pretty much give you the long and the short of it:

No Matter

Oh, Joy, When will you come?

Houseache Horse

I’ve written about Men before and posted a YouTube video of him at Slak, most of which featured an empty bar stool, as he pranced around the bar singing acapella on tables and chairs. Indeed, the first time I saw him play, he’d actually removed three strings from his guitar and filled it with stones to get some sort of wacky effect from it.

Well, these days, he appears to have calmed down a little and at least managed to stay on stage for the whole of this particular song, Black as a Cat in the Morning (also on Sea Shanties).

The Belle of the Ball

2009-10-05T20:09:00.003Z

A great evening at Thekla with friends Martin and Steve on Saturday. Thekla is a place I’ve not been to before although the list of indie bands on their schedule has often made me feel that I should be there. It was indeed my debut and I was well impressed.

Some sort of cargo boat / ship thingie in its time, it’s now a seriously cool music venue with most of its endearingly industrial features – pipes, heaters, railings - still in evidence, hiding behind only the scantiest coat of black paint. On top of that there’s the lowest balcony above the main floor I think I’ve ever seen – I could have reached up and tickled the toes of the punters above me. Not a video screen in sight, I loved it.

The Wild Beasts

Anyway, the occasion of my maiden appearance was the visit of indie crooners the Wild Beasts, who were for a few moments in danger of falling foul of my being so absorbed by my surroundings. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and a storming set roused me from my (frankly embarrassing) reveries.

Having had their first record Limbo, Panto on my iRiver all week, and being mindful of the swooning falsettos in evidence there, I’d built up a picture of the Wild Beasts being a troupe of ambiguously dressed young fops smothered in eyeliner. In the event, this was not the case and they ran through a tight, fidgety and very danceable set that sped by.

I don’t pretend to understand these things, but a friend had told me that the sound was particularly good there and if I took said iRiver along I’d get some good recordings.

And so it proved it.

Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants

All the King’s Men

The first of these songs was their debut single from almost three years ago, which I think still sounds pretty fresh. And, with a satisfying symmetry which may lead you to the (quite wrong) conclusion that I actually plan all of this stuff, the second song is due to be released as their new single … wait for it… today.

There you go, impressive huh?

Jump to your feet; let us catch your eye!

2009-09-20T18:48:00.003Z

Kids today, they don’t know they’re born eh? When I was a teenager, five pounds was a lot of money, a hell of a lot in fact. Weeks of saving up. So, blowing it all on a record you knew almost nothing about was an act of foolhardiness to say the least.

Neverheless naïve halfwit that I was, I used to do it regularly, just wanting to hear something new and interesting. There were certainly a few turkeys (basing your record-buying on the whims of a Sounds journalist will do that… Pink Military anyone?), but a few real belters and one in particular that I still listen to on a semi-regular basis.

Pebbles Vol. 2

Pebbles was a multi-volume compilation series, by now quite famous, but at the time, pretty much unknown,a and was made up of obscure sixties garage punk singles. I loved it. Amongst the rough and ready three minute tracks, there were songs by the Moving Sidewalks (Billy Gibbons’ first band), the Sons of Adam (written by Arthur Lee) and Bobby Fuller. There was also a hugely entertaining radio ad by the Electric Prunes for the Vox Wah Wah Pedal (“It’s the now sound! It’s what’s happening!”). Really, I played it to death.

If I’m honest, though, the one track on the album that I didn’t really go for was “Green Fuz” by Randy Alvey and the Green Fuz., which was an incredibly primitive, low-fi number, written to be their “theme tune”. None of the other songs were what you’d call polished, but this one stuck out as being really half-arsed.

Here, have a listen:

Green Fuz – Randy Alvey & the Green Fuz

Kinda basic, isn’t it?

Anyway, over the years, I’ve grown rather fonder of it, and as these things have a knack of doing, a cult has grown up around it, to the extent that a trawl around the Internet even rewards you with an interview with Randy Alvey himself (here), and talk of a series of reunion gigs. I believe the Cramps and one or two others have also covered it and probably even as I write, some bright young thing is no doubt negotiating terms for its use in a mobile phone ad.

Anyway, an album I’ve downloaded this month, and have been enjoying this afternoon particularly is the new(ish) one from the Lemonheads, Varshons. I’ve enjoyed following Evan Dando’s erratic, capering career, and will generally buy anything he puts his name to (again yielding a few stinkers, as above), but this really is a rewarding listen. My favourite track off Varshons is this one:

Green Fuz – The Lemonheads

It’s a more considered affair than the original, although every bit as confused and inept.

I can’t decide which I like the most…

I've been dreaming about creatures, coming from dunes on foggy beaches

2009-09-13T19:29:00.002Z

For a supposed Blogger, I don’t really spend a lot of time exploring the Blogosphere these days. When I do, though, one of the sites I return to is Bradley’s Almanac, a busy, streets ahead of the pack blog based on the Boston music scene.

I envy the selection of exciting gigs he seems to have ranged in front of him every weekend and the time he appears to have to go to them all. He updates regularly and also records gigs he goes to – all the things I’d hoped this Blog would become when I started it. Ho hum.

Anyway, a trip over there this weekend has yielded a few interesting-looking bands, some of which I may well pass off as my own discoveries in future weeks, but in the meantime, You Can Be A Wesley:

The song’s available to download over at Bradley’s – tell him I sent you…

About things today and fallen leaves

2009-09-07T20:18:00.002Z

Well, September has leapt upon us, school has started and yesterday morning I got my hooped shirt out of the wardrobe in preparation for the visit of pantomime villains Bath Rugby to Kingsholm. (A great time was had by all…)

Summer’s definitely over.

But I’m going to let myself have one last wistful glance back at Summer ’09, and post the last of my Green Man recordings. I didn’t get them up in time but it seems a shame to lose them altogether, so …

Lucky Seven – Green Man Special

A Matter of Time – The Leisure Society
An unidentified track – Beach House
Bike – Robyn Hitchcock
I Can Hear the Grass Grow – Robyn Hitchcock
Another unidentified track – Richard James and Cate le Bon
River Man – Robyn Hitchcock
Skinny Love – Bon Iver
Ursula’s Crow – Jonny (Norman Blake and Euros Childs)

A RAR file of the whole mix.

The more gifted among you will have noticed that, yes, this is actually eight tracks, but the three Robyn Hitchcock songs were so good…

I’ve never been particularly interested in him before to be honest (although I was always rather fond of the Soft Boys), but probably one of the more enjoyable hours I spent over the weekend was listening to veteran producer Joe Boyd talking us through some of his more memorable encounters. After each section, Robyn Hitchcock would sing a relevant song from the period. It was all quite charming…

(apologies for the unidentified tracks, anyone help me?)

I'm not coming back...

2009-08-30T19:07:00.005Z

A couple more sets from Green Man. Compare and contrast…

Roky Erickson

I’ve always been a big Thirteenth Floor Elevators fan, and so the news that Roky Erickson himself was coming to Green Man was pretty exciting. Kind of similar to the time when another alien from the Sixties. Arthur Lee, turned up at the Guildhall a couple of years ago. Watching his set I couldn’t help but be excited by the fact a genuinely legendary figure from psychedelic history was performing in front of me. This was probably what kept me going through the whole set because the comparisons with Arthur Lee stopped pretty abruptly as soon as a rather portly gent with grey beard shuffled uncertainly onto the stage. In truth he was pretty poor (“moribund” was Martin’s phrase), escorted through a series of uninspiring blues rock standards, by a band of younger zealots, none of the songs being Elevators ones..

It was a shame really, but there was a sort of reward for my dumb perseverance in that his last song was the Elevators’ classic You’re gonna miss me. Again not perfect, and sadly short of an electric jug, but, hey, I saw him do it…

And now you can too!

Far from perfect, I know, but the man himself.

I’ve got a couple of recordings of the set too, the first being one of the standards, Two Headed Dog. (Actually it‘s worth pointing out that a lot of the audience were loving his other songs and I’ve a feeling he has a bit of a reputation for his late seventies Cramps-style horror rock catalogue.)

Two Headed Dog

You’re Gonna Miss Me

Megson

So anyway, having left the main stage after this set I had a hankering to get me some real songs so I wandered over to the Pub stage and caught most of a wonderful folk set by husband and wife pair, Megson.

After a bit of an overdose of, y’’know, rock, it was a real pleasure to hear some folk songs, well-crafted and simply performed. They were enchanting and quite a palate-cleanser.

Inexplicably I spent the weekend, referring to them as The Megsons, and presumably everyone was too polite to correct me in this a mistake which I carried into the dubbing the video I shot. I’m afraid I only spotted this rather crass error after I had uploaded the video. My apologies…

Again, I made some recordings which have turned out pretty well. I strongly recommend them…

Working Town

Four Pence a Day

Take Yourself a Wife

Oh Mary Will You Go

Megson have two albums available here, and I really like the sound of the samples. I shall be getting them…

Green Man - The coolest

2009-08-30T13:21:00.004Z

OK I want to push on with these…

The Mandibles

This is probably the coolest thing I saw all weekend. As well as the normal three stages at Green Man this year, there was a new tent called Chai Wallahs, which featured a mixture of DJs and live sets playing a great mix of hip hop, jazz-funk, reggae and blue beat. We ventured over there a good few times over the weekend and each time it was really jumping.

The clip I’ve got here was of Bath band, the Mandibles, of whom I hope to tell you more later…

I probably should warn you that in my enthusiasm to try to capture the whole “scene” I did a few sweeps of the tent and may well have overdone it a little.

Green Man 2 – Good manners cost nothing

2009-08-28T14:07:00.007Z

So, if Hawkwind were the last and slightly silliest act of Green Man, today I’ve got some recordings for you from a band who were undoubtedly the politest young men of the whole weekend - in fact they were chief exponent of a trend that was a bit of a feature of the whole festival, The Polite American.

Grizzly Bear

As I say, one of the features of Green Man was of Americans playing their hearts out on stage and then thanking us the audience for the privilege of doing so. Grizzly Bear thanked us all in between songs as did Bon Iver and also Beachouse, and I have to say I rather like this. Don’t mention it, fellers.

I’ll admit I waver when it comes to listening to Grizzly Bear, sometimes I love their brittle rather awkward folky sound, and other times I just can’t be arsed with it. But from the moment the four lads came onstage I was very impressed with their ability to play what I think are quite complex songs, without losing anything to the live experience. They didn’t rock out or produce a completely different onstage sound, instead they really went for it. And I loved it; in fact if I’m honest, I had a bit of a “Ah-I-totally-get-this-now” moment. It sounded beautiful, and was by general consensus one of the better sets of the weekend.

I have only two tracks, I’m afraid, but they’re both pretty good.

Enjoy.

Lullaby

Two Weeks

What I did over the summer...

2009-08-26T21:22:00.004Z

Well, I’ve had just the best summer.

Started off with the obligatory week or so tidying up and getting everything for the school year finished off, but that passed quickly enough and then we were off on our hols.

We had two ridiculously sunny and relaxing weeks in Valetta and Gozo, and I have a few recordings taken there that I hope to put up at some stage.

But what’s really put a stupid grin on my face for the summer was the unexpected offer of a ticket to Green Man from my esteemed colleague, Martin. I’d originally intended not to go, the previous two years I’d ventured out having been dominated by rainfall and the attending grimness. But, well, anything to help a friend out, eh?

And it was a terrific weekend, the main difference being that the weather was very kind to us. We spent a lot of time, sitting around in the sunshine, drinking cloudy cider, meeting people and listening to some cracking music. It was fantastic.

I also spent quiet a lot of time recording some of the best sets and videoing a few of them too. I’ve actually got quite a lot to wade through, some of them very good indeed. I hope to make some of this available but such is the glacial pace at which I get round to these things, it may take a while…

It seems as good a plan as any, to start at the end and work backwards, partly because the last music I saw (Hawkwind, of all people) was one of the sets that was the most fun over the weekend. The other reason I’m starting here is that two friends I made over the weekend, Richard and Muireann, were particularly keen to see this video up first.

So, here we have it, Hawkwind at Green Man 2009 - I have no idea what the name of the song is, perhaps someone will help me out…

These are lurid times for sure, and our youth demands much more than the common girls in town can offer. We are different; we have breeding.

2009-07-26T13:52:00.004Z

I’ve been trying for a while now to sort out a way to stream music on this site, everyone else seems to be doing it after all. I’m not stupid, I can sort these things out, can’t I?

I’ve fiddled for a while with the Yahoo Media Player and I think I may have got it working. Here’s my chance to try it for real…

Virgin of the Birds

I got an email from Jon of Abandoned Love Records, home of Grumpy Bear (here, here and here) and a few others. As well as being the head honcho and general kingpin of this much-admired organisation, Jon also plays in Morning Spy and has another side project called Virgin of the Birds. (Stick a broom up his arse and he’ll do the floors too, as they say…).

Virgin of the Birds, named after a poor translation of a painting by Dali, (which I’m guessing must be this one) is “Jon Rooney, co-founder of Bay Area indie pop band Morning Spy and devotee of hazy major-key melodies, unruly e-bow, and arcane balladry.” An e-bow is apparently an electronic device for plucking the strings of your guitar, using electro-magnetic fields. (I wikipedia-ed it, and, no, I’m not really any the wiser either…)

Jon’s e-mail told me that Virgin of the Birds have just released a free-to-download EP called Every Rival, that can be taken as a zip file from Abandoned Love, or you can download the first song, “I Loved John”.

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t really like this track at all, but the others aren’t anything like this one and are frankly much more worth your downloading time. I’m going to post the quirky “Ilona, You Should Still be my Vampire Attendant” track from that EP, (you can snag the rest from Abandoned Love), plus another song available from the site, “I Fear the Sea”.

Ilona, You Should Still Be My Vampire Attendant

I Fear the Sea

But, if I’ve got the coding right, you won’t have to download them “blind”. You should be able to click on the little triangle next to each song and they’ll stream magically across the air waves. Let’s see…

Nothing will be fine, put your hand in mine

2009-07-20T08:31:00.006Z

Here’s a band that Rough Trade are plugging like mad at the moment, and I’m imagining you’ll be reading about them on lots of blogs in the next few months. (In fact, the more vigilant Blogs have probably been there and done that already – I don’t like to look…)

Forest Fire

Forest Fire have just released their debut album, Survival, and are another American band embarrassing the Brits by making original and varied music that differs from track to track. There are a few dense and compelling rhythms, a few delicate, inventive guitar lines and more than a little studio tinkering – everything a jaded and slightly cynical pallet might want in fact.

I’m struggling to find much info on the band other than the fact that members seem to live in different parts of the States – Brooklyn and Portland, to be precise. Now from what I know about the States, this is A Very Long Way Away – an impossibly long distance for a Brit to comprehend in fact.

I can’t imagine how this works for them, but I read on the site of one of the labels that handles them (Talitres) that this effectively means that the sessions for the album stretched over a good few months and that songs sat untouched, gathering dust for weeks. I kind of like this image of songs being worked on in fits and starts, sporadically. It does feel like some of the tracks grew over the weeks and developed into something they may not have started off as. It’s all got a rather endearing ragged feel to it.

Survival has been out for a while in America, but is coming out in the UK, today (Oh yes…). It’s available from Emusic, Talitres or from Catbird Records.

In my meanderings, I found these two tracks available for free download, but I can’t for the life of my find exactly where (my apologies to you, whoever you are), but here they are, and well worth a listen…

I Make Windows

Fortune Teller

He’s a clever bugger…

2009-07-19T08:26:00.001Z

It’s amazing what ten hours of sleep will do for you. Term has finished, I’m already through the exhausted and grumpy stage, and I’m up for a few weeks of fun and laziness.

Michael has done a painting of Lee Perry for me. It’s pretty good too.

Don’t tell him I said so, mind.

All the children had to leave; they missed school for the day; the teacher still got paid.

2009-07-12T20:20:00.003Z

I’ve had a bit of a delayed reaction on this one…

Saw Paul Weller a couple of weeks ago (I’m sure you already read it…), and thoroughly enjoyed myself, but keen readers of this Blog may have raised an eyebrow at there being no mention of the support band.

One of my little quirks is that I often gain a lop-sided amount of time and pleasure staring at concert tickets pinned to my notice board. The pleasure is largely in the anticipation for me, so much so that the headliners themselves are unable to live up to the Jenga-style skyscrapers of hype that gather in my mind. Not so with support acts, and very often it turns out that I come away from an evening disproportionately excited about the second string and slightly disappointed about the main act.

This was thankfully not the case with Weller – he was excellent – so much so that I pretty much forgot about the lively three-piece that opened the set. In fact to be honest, in the context of Paul Weller gig it was impossible not to look at them with a wry and slightly patronising smile.

Twisted Wheel

Twisted Wheel are clearly three massive Jam fans (three-piece led by an angry and energetic guitarist/vocalist) who have landed the support slot of a lifetime. They come from Oldham and have been around for a little more than a year. Apart from the Weller gigs (they’re supporting him all year), they’ve also played Glastonbury, so they’ve obviously caught a few eyes and ears. They also have a debut album out which you can stream and buy here.

Anyways, for some of the reasons above, I didn’t really get too animated about them at the time. But now the initial wave generated by the gig has subsided in my mind somewhat, and I’ve taken the time to look at some of the video I took of them, I find myself rather liking what they do. I like all that strident guitar stuff and I can’t help thinking if I’d not seen them on the same stage as Weller, the whole comparison wouldn’t have seemed quite so unflattering.

To be honest, I’m still not that sure but here are three tracks I’ve foraged from the internet. See what you think.

She’s a Weapon

Bouncing Bomb

That’s Entertainment (I know...)

I’ve also got this footage of She’s a Weapon that I took at the gig.

Apologies for the distortions you can hear – I’m guessing I was too close to one of the speakers…

Sleepwalking through the Mekong

2009-07-11T11:40:00.003Z

Here’s something that slipped under my wildly ineffective Heath Robinson-esque radar a couple of months ago…

Dengue Fever

I came over all funny about this time last year with …. I’ll go on… with a case of Dengue Fever. Read about it here.

A visit to IODA informs me that those strange Cambodian-obsessed fellers are at it again, featuring in a documentary film about the band and the country, called Sleepwalking through the Mekong which looks well worth seeing (or buying).

Here’s a really enchanting clip from the film.

The soundtrack is now out, and worth a listen, and the good folk at IODA have made this track available.

Dengue Fever
"March of the Balloon Animals" (mp3)
from "Dengue Fever Presents: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong"
(M80)

Stream from Rhapsody

And now that you are here, I’d like you to write me a list of all the television shows you’ve missed.

2009-07-11T11:07:00.001Z

Still struggling to find any time for this ailing project – the workload at school has bee pretty murderous over the last few weeks. A week to go, mind.

Here’s a peace offering.

Let’s Wrestle

Emusic have been all over these for a number of months now, and eventually having taken the bait, I found myself similarly bowled over by it.

(And they’re Brits – not much exciting stuff coming from these shores these days…)

I lose control and I’m in that place

2009-06-28T19:10:00.003Z

You were worried, you say?

Very sweet of you, but really you needn’t have…

Last three weekends have been completely taken out by school commitments (reports, assessments, blah-did-blah), but I’m back now. Actually I’m saying that, but it hasn’t been quite as relentless as I’m making out, I have managed to get along to a couple of gigs, and am out again tomorrow night. I am livin’ the life…

Old Peel faves the Wedding Present got along to the Guild Hall the week before last, and you can read about it here, at Martin’s site. Amazingly the night before, I had managed to breathe new life into my previously moribund iRiver. Joy unconfined was, however, turned into another one of those Doh moments that regular readers of this Blog will by now be familiar with. Got all my settings wrong and I fear the bootleg may well be unsaveable. It was a good night, although you’ll have to take mine and Martin’s words for it…

Then last weekend, found me and a couple of old mates in the lush surroundings of Westonbirt Arboretum, sat in deck chairs opening a few tins in the sun shine, waiting for Paul Weller to come on. Place was full of aging hipsters such as myself, and the fair sprinkling of parkas and boating jackets were only slightly offset by the number of bald and thinning pates in attendance. (I like to think of myself as more the latter than the former…)

The Wedding Present debacle still ringing in my ears I didn’t bring my elaborate and expensively assembled kit, but I did get this, which pretty much does the trick:

Cracking gig by a man who really is a legend and clearly still really fancies it.

More to come…

I’ll suffer death a thousand times

2009-06-08T20:18:00.002Z

Clearly, the greatest thing to come out of Baltimore is this, but apparently there are other worthy things coming out of Hamsterdam.

Wye Oak

Whilst downloading the SpliceToday compilation the other day (in order to get at the Christian Kiefer track that I posted here), I came across a few other good songs, one of them by this band.

Wye Oak come from the aforementioned troubled city and are chiefly the work of Andy Stack and Jen Wasner, writing rather dark and dense folk songs, draped in feedback and special effects. They’re signed to Merge Records and you can read more about them here. (Reassuringly for fans of Stringer, Wee-Bey and Slim Charles, they do talk in their blog about waking up one morning to find a dead body dumped behind their house. It’s a rough town.)

Their song on the compilation is a cover of a traditional folk song called “Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair”, made famous by Nina Simone and also covered by the late troubled Davy Graham. I really like their version, with its slightly drone-y toneless style, which makes it sound rather hostile and dark. I also like the way they’ve played fast and loose with the lyrics – all in the spirit, I think.

Wye Oak’s second album, The Knot, will be available from Merge in July. I’ve dug around and found three tracks available, and I think you’ll rather like them…

I Don’t Feel Young

Take It In

Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair

Nights were just too long, with all your children gone

2009-05-31T12:52:00.004Z

Haven’t done one of these for a while.

Lucky Seven 12

I’ve heard some great songs of recent and I think that’s duly reflected in this month’s Lucky Seven – incidentally, I think this may be the first one without any Jamaican music at all. There is on the other hand a wonderful track by a Japanese musician called Shoukichi Kina. The track is “Jing Jing”, and it’s a delightfully demented slice of surf-Psychedelia from the other side of the world (in all senses of the word). You should listen to it.

I looked for a YouTube clip of it for a quite a while (and I’m sure one exists), but my Japanese is sadly not up to the task, and none of the other tracks by him are quite as off the wall. It comes from this album, on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. What a guy.

Anyway, I’ve dragged up this video from one of the other tracks on Lucky Seven number 12:

Lucky Seven 12

Twister – The Fall (Peel Session)
That’s Us / Wild Combination – Arthur Russell
California – Low
Jing Jing – Shoukichi Kina
Chicago (acoustic version) – Sufjan Stevens
Kettering – The Antlers
Just a Moment – George Danquah

It’s true that I always wanted love to be filled with pain

2009-05-30T13:16:00.002Z

Well, to say that I’ve missed the boat on last week's Antony & the Johnsons gig at Colston Hall, would be stretching the point a little. In reality, the ship has sailed and is currently half way across the Atlantic, the Bravo film crew having already got six days of filming drunken Brits Abroad well and truly in the can.

Bugger. Not only has my trusty iRiver refused to surrender a wonderful recording of the whole evening – it was great, believe me – it’s actually completely packed in, and no amount of hanging around techie forums for the week, has managed to sort it.

Antony and the Johnsons

A really wonderful gig, one of the best I’ve got along to for a good while. As we filed out at the end, I heard someone say to a neighbour,

“That was really quite remarkable!”

And it was. Some of the arrangements weren’t quite to my taste, but the highpoints (Her Eyes Are Beneath the Ground; Fistful of Love; Cripple and the Starfish; For Today I Am a Boy and an encore of Hope There’s Someone) were so touching, delivered with such melancholy and poise. The man is certainly possessed of an astonishingly affecting voice. We’re way past the novelty factor, here.

He had a five Johnsons with him, moving between a number of instruments – guitars, violins, saxes, flutes and various percussive thingamajigs, who backed him with well-rehearsed sympathy and intelligence. In common with a number of people I know, the new album had not grabbed me as compulsively as the Mercury winner. but seeing him perform some of the songs from it, made me think I shall need to go back and give it another listen.

As I said, I have no bootlegs to give away here, but I like to think that the persistent souls that keep returning to Partly Porpoise, do get a little extra blogging for their loyalty, so I’ve routed through YouTube for some live footage (there’s lots of good stuff there) and come up with this. It’s by no means the best filming, but it comes pretty close to the Colston Hall show in flavour and atmosphere (I too spent a fair chunk of the evening gazing up at the backdrop, feeling the songs wheel and soar around me).

(Thanks to Teresa Domingues http://egoamo-te.blogspot.com/)

Nothing in hand do I bring

2009-05-26T18:59:00.004Z

A great time was had Sunday night and Monday morning in Bristol with Josie. Met up with some old friends before going onto Colston Hall to see a quite remarkable Antony & the Johnsons performance.

I’ll save my gushing praise for a couple of days, however, firstly because my nemesis has already posted his articulate and well thought out review of the evening (no doubt while I lay abed, soaking up all the luxury Premier Inns could toss my way). But also because, although I managed to make some rather fine recordings of the evenings, I’m currently having some problems wrestling said bootlegs from my battered old iRiver. I’ll sort it.

Anyway, in the meantime…

Christian Kiefer and Tom Carter

Have been enjoying immensely a new recording from Christian Kiefer. I originally wrote about Christian about 18 months ago here, going all gooey about the album he had released with Jefferson Pitcher. He got in touch with me after that and sent me some tracks from an album he’d done with Tom Carter of Charalambides. To be honest, it was a bit of a tough listen at times, and it gradually faded from my radar. But anyway, he’s now released another record with Carter, and it’s a bit of a belter, I’ll tell you.

It’s called From the American Songbook and is a series of… er… reinterpretations of classic American bluegrass songs such as “Will the Circle be Unbroken”, “Pretty Polly” and “Coo Coo Bird”. In many cases the originals are pretty much unrecognisable but still manage to retain their original spirit. The best tracks actually sound old…

No free downloads that I can find, however, so you’re just gonna have to go with me on this one. Get it here. C’mon, it's me, have I ever?

There is this, by Christian Kiefer, however, in the same sort of spirit:

Rock of Ages – Christian Kiefer

This track comes from a collection called SpliceToday.com which is available from Splice Today, a rather fine website which gathers together all sorts of titbits for the modern surfer. Actually the collection is pretty good and features one or two other artists I shall try to further acquaint myself with.

Oh and while, I’m at it, there’s this intriguing clip from YouTube about a film Kiefer seems to have taken part in which involved a group of men growing beards for six months.

I perhaps could have phrased that better, it doesn’t exactly sound like must-see TV, does it?

More later (including, I hope, that Colston Hall recording).

This is how we walk on the moon!

2009-05-23T18:34:00.003Z

I have been out of the game (as McNulty might say) of recent, not really looking for or finding new music, and generally getting on with … stuff.

It’s half term now, and in the coming months there are a plethora (yes, a plethora) of gigs coming my way in the next few weeks, the first of which is tomorrow at Colston Hall. So I’m envisaging a fresh onslaught in the coming days.

In the meantime, I have come across these tracks by maverick New York disco artist cum cellist. I haven’t quite got a handle on exactly where he fits, if you understand what I mean, he’s got some John Martyn in him for sure, but lots of quirky Latin American beats and the like too.

Anyway, watch this and read about him here.

(Thanks to Nick Leonard)

Now go and buy his compellingly ragged World of Echo record and go figure…

The ones you left behind are still with you…

2009-05-03T18:23:00.002Z

My increasingly-cool son directed his increasingly out-of-touch old man to a useful website I shall be keeping my eye on in future. Lost At E Minor is one of those sites whose mission is to keep you abreast of all decent new stuff as it surfaces, some of it music and some of it other arty things. I quite like it on first glance and even if I never go there again, it has at least led me to this lot.

The Papercuts

The Parpercuts are from San Francisco and are mostly the vehicle of one Jason Quever. They write a pretty dense sort of a pop song and seem to be resolute in their determination to play real instruments – the various interviews and pieces I’ve read about them each seem to refer to Quever’s dislike of computer-y effects and electronic noodling. I like a bit of electronic jiggery-pokery if truth be told but let’s face it it’s generally window-dressing; if you can actually write songs why bother, eh?

There’s an album out at the moment, You Can Have What You Want, (available at your favourite download store - not that one, stupid…), their second, following 2004’s Mockingbird. This one has generally received good reviews, including an 8.3 from Pitchfork, (Joshua Klein making a laboured and ill-conceived analogy between the band and, you know, actual paper cuts…), and certainly seems to be full of enough Stephen Stills-y sharp songs to keep this hopelessly set-in-his-ways reviewer happy. I’m enjoying it, so far. They’re also on tour with Vetiver at the moment.

There’s a rather jolly, enthusiastic interview with Quever on Salad Days Music, here, where he talks about influences such as Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield and the White Album. You can also pick up a couple of mp3s there, one of which I’ll repost, the Prunes-ish 227th Exit, and you can pick up the other for yourself over there. (Actually do, it’s a terrific track off their first album called John Brown)

The other track I’m posting here is from their new record, and is also rather fine.

227th Exit – Papercuts

Future Primitive - Papercuts

Well, your persistence is useless and your timing's slack...

2009-04-19T20:56:00.003Z

Last Harbour

I’ve written about Last Harbour a couple of times, once way back in the day when Partly Porpoise was a young fresh-faced thing, earnest and barely shaving (Feb 06, here) and then again in August of last year in a rather harsh post full of self-recrimination about having missed a release date of their last EP.

Well, never let it be said that I don’t learn from my mistakes, because here I am plugging Last Harbour again, but this time actually doing it rather more effectively, in that they are appearing on Marc Riley’s BBC6 program, tomorrow.

Oh yes.

More by luck than design, it has to be said, but I happened to be gazing thoughtfully at my emails this afternoon (I should really have been preparing for school tomorrow), when I noticed that the session had not passed yet and but actually pertinent. Who’d have thought eh?

The show will be broadcast between 7 and 9 tomorrow evening and I shall give it a listen (not least because as a born again Fall devotee, I’m suspecting there may be a little more to Mr Riley than previously thought).

I believe this is also supposed to tie in with a new Last Harbour EP “Saint Luminous Bride”, due to be released on May 25th on Little Red Rabbit Records.

Actually a visit to the band’s own site, will reveal a number of free downloads, including a previous EP, called “Embers”, plus artwork. I’ll put up my favourite track from that EP, and then when you’ve been impressed by their rather fine dark swagger, you can go to their site and download the rest plus artwork.

Out Back – Last Harbour

I wish today...

2009-04-11T13:36:00.001Z

See yer mate, yeah, see yer mate...

2009-04-09T15:56:00.003Z

It’s been a long time since I did one of these.

Lucky Seven

I was, as usual, going to put together a handful of tracks that I’ve been listening to this month, but to be honest, such is the Fall Frenzy going on at our house, I thought that I might as well put together a few blistering Mark E Smith tracks I’ve recently discovered.

I particularly like “C’N’C – S Mithering” – the man can rant...

The Classical
New Face in Hell
C’N’C – S Mithering
Container Drivers
Rowche Rumble
Auto Tech Pilot
My New House

I know I’m going to look at this in a couple of day and say “What about…”, but today, April 9th, these are the seven Fall tracks I wanted to share. Ask me tomorrow, it’ll be different.

Lucky Seven – Fall Frenzy

Sketch Book Scribble

2009-04-06T20:02:00.009Z

Things have been getting a bit … main stream around here recently (David Byrne? The Fall?). Time to slip back into obscurity methinks…

Moose Eats Leaf / Steve Fanagan

I googled “Steve Fanagan” and came up with this picture, although I fear it may not actually be our man…

Moose Eats Leaf is Irish guitarist and sound engineer Steve Fanagan, who specialises in a string of brittle, atmospheric releases under various guises (Northstation and Wrecking Ball being another two). He also runs Slow Loris Records based in Dublin, putting out a string of ridiculously obscure CDR releases, in a number of different quirky formats. His most recent CD, “Adrift”, for example, was limited to a run of 50 CDs and featured individually spiro-graphed covers. This I like very much.

The music is a little strange as well, largely consisting of meandering guitar pieces overlaid with various loops and psychedelic effects that make for a compelling listen.

I’m posting these three songs, and can heartily recommend them to you for thoughtful listening, and from there, you can go to the man’s site, where there are a very generous selection of other tracks.

The first track is from “Adrift”, the others from the CDs “Toy Box and “Sketch Book Scribble” respectively

Set Out

They Fall, We Float

Sketch Book Scribble

David Byrne at Colston Hall

2009-03-31T06:39:00.001Z

So, here are a few tracks from the Colston Hall gig. I think they’ve come out OK and give a good flavour of the evening. Enjoy.

Strange Overtones

Houses in Motion

Heaven

Born Under Punches

(The comments about Johnny Vegas during Houses in Motion are from Tom and concern the aforementioned buffoon...)

This ain't no fooling around...

2009-03-29T18:25:00.003Z

Amazing how you can forget, really…

So, I skipped lithely out of school, Friday night, overtaking amused parents and children alike, and bounded onto the first available Bristol train to see David Byrne at Colston Hall. Met my friend Tom, and pausing only to refill a cracked (well, gushing,) radiator, we were in the Bar by seven thirty, wondering quite what sort of a treat we were in for.

As far as I’m concerned, Byrne has been pretty much dead since the late eighties, although I realise this does a huge disservice to his later solo work – it’s just that for me the Talking Heads are welded onto a period in my life, when I (and the rest of the UK) listened to them pretty exhaustively and it seemed that the whole world had fallen for the furious, slack-wristed rhythm guitar of the man.

Things move on, you find other bands to adore and before you know it ten years have gone by without so much as a cursory listen, and what was considered at the time to be essential listening is now … well … old and forgotten.

This is all by way of saying that, incredibly, I can no longer name the tracks on Remain in Light, cannot (could not) singing along to Life During Wartime and am still struggling to remember the name of my favourite track on More Songs about Buildings and Food (“I’ll bet it tastes real good…”) How do these things happen?

Anyway, David Byrne came on at 8:30 prompt in a white suit (not baggy) and blew a good few of the cobwebs away. There was a fair amount of new (or at least unfamiliar) material at first but even on first listen it sounded pretty good (my favourite being the opener “Strange Overtones”).

Particularly enjoyable were the three modern dancers that weaved in and out of the musicians in what can only be described as a very David Byrne way. They were loose but as one, and I loved them.

Here’s a clip from the gig that has appeared on YouTube already, where you can see the them:

(Thanks to Dadiofoot, there are also a few more clips uploaded by the same feller, which are well worth watching…)

Pretty soon though, the tempo upped and some really cracking versions of great songs were rolled out – Born Under Punches, Houses in Motion and Crosseyed and Painless spring to mind. I really like Colston Hall and the acoustics are great, but it was a bit of a shame that we were all seated, because a collective fidgeting and wriggling started to flow up and down the aisles, as row after row of middle-aged respectables started to feel the urge. A few rash souls got down to the front to dance, and one buffoon with pints in both hands almost started a fight as he kept getting up for a little skip in the middle of his row.

I didn’t take my video gadget but I did manage to bootleg pretty much the whole show, missing only Burning Down the House, but by then it was mayhem even up in the gods. It’s going to take me a while to clean the recordings up, although I think they’re pretty good, so I’ll post them tomorrow or later this evening.

It was a great show, though, rounded off brilliantly with a second encore of “Burning Down the House”, with Byrne, dancers and band all coming back on wearing Greek fustanellas and spinning around enthusiastically.

Great stuff.

Amazing how you can forget really...

Ain’t got no time for western medicine

2009-03-08T16:57:00.001Z

Well this is weird…

I’m about to do a post on Bournemouth’s heavy, heavy My Broken 101, when I find this video on their Myspace:

My Broken 101

I’ve posted about this band before (here, in fact), and promptly forgotten about them. It’s always good to know, however, that bands somehow manage to carry on without my patronage.

The 101 seem to have sharpened their feedbacky, Krautrocky credentials and crank out a fair old noise these days, gaining plaudits on the way, by all accounts (not to mention a gig with Damo Suzuki).

They have an EP out on Saturday released by Apollolaan Recordings and a number of gigs on the way (see their Myspace). There’s also an interview with the band there.

Not available on their EP, is this track:

More – My Broken 101

Not sure how old it is but it’s still up on their Myspace, so I’m guessing it’s fairly current. There’s also this video, released by Apollolaan, to accompany the EP, which is worth a watch…

He is not appreciated

2009-03-07T20:44:00.000Z

Anyone got a collection of Hardy novels on their shelf they’ve been meaning to read?

Actually, I’ve read a good few Hardy novels, and morbidly rewarding experiences they are too.

I do have a stack of Fall CDs cluttering up Media Monkey, though, and I feel the time is right…

I will be the forest and you will be the dead tree

2009-02-22T18:45:00.002Z

Sin Fang Bous

I’ve been listening to “Clangour”, an album by an Icelandic bloke calling himself Sin Fang Bous for most of the week. It’s a belting little record that skips along at a fair old pace, full of Tunng-like harmonies and idiosyncratic little glitches.

Watch this:

Sin Fang Bous is actually Sindri Mar Sigfusson, from Iceland who also plays in a more acoustic outfit called Seabear, but I’m not going to pretend I knew (or indeed know) much about either release, other than that “Clangour” is a record I shall be listening to a lot more in the next months.

Here, let Icelandic Music Export fill in the gaps:

“Sin Fang Bous a.k.a. Sindri Mar Sigfusson, is traditionally known as the founder/frontman of Icelandic sensations Seabear. Though Seabear began as Sindri’s one-man project - he self-released the debut “Singing Arc” (2004) on his own – the project has gradually grown to encompass anything up to seven members.After putting out the glorious “The Ghost That Carried Us Away” in 2007, Sindri has once again returned to his solo origins, renaming himself Sin Fang Bous to release “Clangour”. Recorded and self-produced in his home studio, it sounds like he had a lot of fun making it.More electronic and upbeat than Seabear, it’s full of Animal Collective-style pop melodies, an esoteric rainbow of sounds and a savvy balance of the accessible and the experimental. IMX”

IMX, then go on to interview the man himself, and talk about his plans. (You can read the interview here)

Clangour is released by Morr Records, and has been out a mere two months (finger – pulse. Oh yes…). You can of course buy it from Emusic or from Morr themselves.

No free downloads from Sin Fang Bous, I’m afraid, (although there is another video available at Pitchfork TV), so I’m putting up my favourite two Seabears tracks from a giveaway EP – if you like them go back and get the others, here.

You’re Not Strange Enough - Seabears

Midori Green - Seabears

I perch on bridges and bellow, while dreaming only of thee

2009-02-17T20:26:00.001Z

I think I may have mentioned that one of the main reasons for my starting this Blog was that I hoped by so doing I would be overwhelmed by free CDs, backstage passes and offers of sexual favours.

Whilst I shall remain tight-lipped over the latter (a gentleman never tells), I have to say that on the former hopes, the haul has been less than impressive (five CDs and an invite to an in-store performance a hundred miles away). I have racked my brains about this lack of success in the freeloading department and am forced to conclude I’m just not that good at it. I do a piece on a band then forget all about them (literally so in at least one case), I get my name on mailing lists and then somehow don’t get round to passing on the updates I get from them. It’s hopeless, really.

Anyway, this is all going to change. And I’m starting here…

The Handsome Family

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Loose Records (see!) have made a new download from Brett and Rennie Sparks available to all, free of charge. Here’s what Loose say…

“They have long considered their music to be Romantic in the 19th century sense of the word: full of an awed sense of emotion in the face of nature's mysteries and this has never before been clearer than on their eighth album Honey Moon - a collection of songs written to celebrate their twentieth year of marriage. It is, according to Rennie, a love song to the world that takes place under bowed branches and deep within winding corn mazes. Lovers kiss in dripping wet caves and call to each other from trembling mountain peaks. They sigh on windy drawbridges and weep silver puddles in the street.”

It’s a charming little number about insect love, and it made me smile

Darling My Darling

I’ve put the track up here, (mainly to make use of the Yahoo Media Player thingie I’m trying out…), but really you should go to the Loose Site itself and snag it there.

Happy Anniversary to both.

Your lives are to be spared…

2009-02-06T11:42:00.005Z

Ain’t snow days grand!

Done my best, went into school, chatted to a few parents, built a snowman outside my classroom and went home.

Here’s a track by a band called I Am Spartacus on Gringo records, and it’s a gentle contemplative piece of instrumental music, just right for the day. Get it on your mp3 and stare out of the window, let the snow flakes meander past…

Under the Pavement – I Am Spartacus

You can buy the album from Emusic, here.

Now, altogether now…

I really shouldn’t say it, but I just love what the water does.

2009-01-25T16:26:00.002Z

Another strange and striking evening at Slak, last week.

I haven’t been to a Calmer evening for a while, but was drawn to a strong line up featuring Doveman and David Thomas Broughton. I also managed to drag my son along to his first Calmer evening, and am now hoping that it was suitably cool for him.

Actually, I don’t care much – I’m still and always impressed by just how damn groovy the whole Calmer scene is – I tell you I’d’ve been very happy to have had anything as good when I was seventeen. He should be grateful, I reckon.

Sam Amidon is a New York guitarist who came on first and played a series of bluegrass and Appalachian numbers on guitar and banjo. It was really well done, and was added to considerably by the atmospheric keyboards added by Doveman in places. Amidon has two albums available on emusic, here and here, the most recent one being a “Pick”, and also garnishing a 7.9 from Pitchfork. I shall have a listen.

Doveman’s mother actually calls him Thomas Bartlett, and he, it turns out, is a bit of a childhood buddy of Amidon - they played together in a number of bands, but I didn’t really enjoy him as much as his mate, although his songs did build up impressively. I can’t say I really warmed to his voice, it was a bit breathy, a bit, well, girly. And while we’re at it, I didn’t like the silly hand gestures he kept using.

(I’m being unreasonable. I’m listening to his record now, and it’s not half bad…)

Both fellers contribute to this Blog, Speak Peppery, which I shall keep an eye on from now on.

David Thomas Broughton

Until now David Thomas Broughton had confined himself to prowling around on the edge of proceedings, adding the occasional backing vocals from the bar, or sitting on stage fiddling with speakers and mixing things, in order to get his trademark strange noises from them.

I’ve posted about Broughton before (here and here) and have gone on at length about his voice and looping. So I’ll try not to go over any old ground here.

It is, however, a hell of voice he’s got. Words like “haunting” and “keening” spring to your mind when you hear him, and I remember being impressed with this when I saw him at Green Man. Sat a few meters away from him, however, what I hadn’t noticed before is what an odd character he really is. Dressed in the sort of grey tweed trousers I remember having to wear as a child for trips to my nana’s house, he came on stage, guitar strapped on but also carrying a tiny television set. He went on to set it up and tune it off-channel and used the white noise as atmospherics for his songs. He also used a Dictaphone or something from which he coaxed another range of hisses and pops to be used over his songs.

When singing he fidgeted constantly, punctuating his songs with coughs and yawns and at one point went through a routine of compulsive trouser adjustments. At times he was quite funny, at others a little intimidating, and certainly held the attention.

Most of the time his voice and delivery (“keening”, “haunting” etc) overcame all the other distractions; and the narrow line between weirdness and self-indulgence was generally trod quite deftly. (I say “most of the time”, at least one song was completely overwhelmed by feedback and white noise.)

Performers who leave the stage area and start moving around the tables and bar stools are almost de rigueur at Calmer, and Broughton spent a fair amount of time doing this. He also had an intriguing line in dramatic gestures – at one point he took some change from his pocket while singing, banged it on a table and placed an upturned beer glass over it, before moving back onto the stage.

I have no idea… I just know that no one had the nerve to pocket the money....

For my birthday, I bought myself a small video camera, and took this video of a fairly idiosyncratic version of Ambiguity.

(Apologies for the abrupt ending, I’m not really sure how to edit this sort of thing yet…)

Somewhere an arrow is flashing directionless over hotels of husbands and infidels…

2009-01-25T12:30:00.001Z

I’ve got some proper stuff to write and a video to upload, anon, as they say, but in the meantime, have a look at this:

This record by Unbunny is one I've been listening to a lot recently, and it's one I'm just loving...

Letting myself down

2009-01-15T21:30:00.002Z

I can be a bit of an arse at times…

Nalle

Was rummaging around the not-just-a-wonderful-name Pickled Egg site, and found some delightful but absolutely barking tracks by Glaswegian trio, Nalle.

Playing a collection of instruments including (get this) flutes, kantele, viola, bouzouki and clarinet (at least two bits of kit I’m having trouble with there…), Nalle are coming from a very different place than most of the music I listen to. I’m guessing there are all sorts of non-American sources in there, particularly as the band members are all (I think) Finnish. But as you’ll probably be aware of by now, this is great - I like hearing new things. And this is clearly a new thing, a kind of child-like, slightly mystical and completely down-right batty folky music.

I managed to find this clip of Nalle performing in Glasgow, which will pretty much do the trick…

Anyway, as I said, I can in truth be a bit of an arse at times.

I was watching this video when it dawned on me that I’d actually seen Nalle play at Green Man a couple of years ago. I use the word “seen” in its loosest sense in that if I remember rightly I spent most of the set sitting with my back to the stage talking with a couple of friends I’d met the day before. Very poor form, I know.

In fact, I think it got worse. The problem was that after a few drinks “child-like” started to sound just plain childish, and … well… a few boorish comments were made. The long and short of it is that “the piss” was liberally extracted.

I know. I let myself down, I let my friends down, in fact I let the whole school down. The only thing I can say in my defence is that drink had in fact been taken…

Anyway, it’s all good, because here’s my chance to redress an afternoon’s carelessness. Ignore the drunken buffoons in the corner, it’s lovely stuff – lush, twangy and, yes, difficult. Buy the record (“By Chance Upon Waking”, available here on Emusic), kick off your slippers and enjoy some weird exoticism…

Pickled Egg have made three tracks available for download, my favourite of which I’ll make available here. Pick up the others over there…

Iron’s Oath - Nalle

With one hand in the water running cold and clear; Fog obliterates the morning and I don't know where I am

2009-01-11T18:56:00.002Z

Hmmm, now I’m stirred into... well … action, another album I’m enjoying hugely at the moment could have featured in the Best of 2008 list I was going to write.

Mount Eerie & Julie Doiron

That record is “Lost Wisdom” by Mount Eerie and Julie Doiron. Phil Elvrum leads Mount Eerie, his previous band having been another band I’m starting to get a taste for - the Microphones. And Julie Doiron is yet another name floating around the outskirts of my current known world that also needs a little investigating.

The record they’ve made together is a beautiful, intimate affair with songs that are hard to pin down. Houses catch fire; winds, rivers and seas sweep across lives with little regard for anyone; the only signs that appear are dim shapes in the half light. Shadows, echoes and other wispy things all put in regular appearances and it’s all rather hard to grasp hold of at times. Great stuff.

I’d love to post a couple of tracks, but I can’t find any available online. There is this, though, a performance of the title track, apparently shot just days after the record was recorded. (There’s a fairly long intro, you might want to skip on to about 2:00)

I’ve also found this track by Julie Doiron available here, which is from her “Woke Myself Up”.

No More – Julie Doiron

We’re not here to apportion blame…

2009-01-10T20:33:00.001Z

Hmmm… How best to approach this whole no-posts-for-a-month business?

Probably I should come clean and get on with some elaborate hand-wringing request for forgiveness. How could I be so remiss? And some old chat like that. Perhaps I could act like I’ve just been so-o-o snowed under. No time for such fripperies as posting on a Blog. Maybe I should just breeze back in and say nothing in a sort of “I owe you nothing bitch!” way. You knew what I was like before you hooked up with me, eh?

If only I could think up some clever linguistic device to help me use up a few paragraphs, and then I could get on with the music.

Oh, well, maybe they won’t notice…

I did kind of intend to post a list of some decent releases from 2008, but I’m beginning to suspect I may have missed the boat there (I dunno, what do you think?) and anyway, it’s been done by many more worthy bloggers (and by “more worthy bloggers” I mean bloggers who post more than once a month…). Although, I would say, and this’ll be my final word on the matter, the Hungry Saw? Don’t think anyone mentioned it…

Anyway, best to look to the future, I always say; we could spend a lot of time working who was right and who was wrong. Let’s just say there was fault on both sides, and leave it at that, eh?

Fulborn Teversham

2009 is alive and kicking and I’ve uncovered my first quirky gem of the year, although in true PP fashion, it’s been out almost two years already. Never mind, I feel pretty safe in saying that the Fulborn Teversham will have crept under all but the most vigilant of radars in that time. Although, quite how is beyond me, the thought of this unlikely mishmash of drums, saxes and squeaking vocals creeping past anything is hard to believe.

A quick Google for Fulborn Teversham reveals that they are the new side project of Seb Rochford. You know, the brains behind Polar Bear. Yeah, that Polar Bear, Mercury Music Prize nominees and all that (Oh do keep up!) and that they are releasing records on the magnificently named Pickled Egg label.

There is an album out at the moment, Count Herbert II, and it is available on Emusic, here. And I’m listening to it now - it’s rather wonderful, a real mixture of idling jazzy stuff and gangly honking Beefhart-style oddities. I’m loving it, and I can heartily recommend it…

Beachtune

Count Herbert II

Back in the game… Oh yes.

Long time, since we had a nice time, do you think about that?

2008-12-21T08:35:00.001Z

The Damned were kind of fun, but the evening was more about seeing mates and meeting up with old friends. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The week before though, was all about the music.

The Skatalites

Got the train down to Bath to see my friend Tom, and go to the new Komedia there, where it was a real privilege to see genuine ska / rocksteady / reggae / jazz legends, the Skatalites. Regrettably, Don Drummond, Tommy McCook, Jackie Mittoo and Roland Alphonso have all passed on and as such are unlikely to be coming down to the west country in the near future, but Lester Stirling, Lloyd Knibb and Doreen Schaffer still remain…

I’ve looked up the biographies of some of the other musicians also currently in the Skatalites, and they’re pretty impressive as well. Look at the Wikipedia entries for sax player Cedric Brooks and trombonist Vin Gordon, for example… and then browse through some of the recording credits of bassist Val Douglas.

Yeah, it was a real thrill to see these old fellers - can I say “cats”? - walk onstage, which was given a bizarre but gratifying twist by the emergence of Lester Sterling apparently wearing an old-style Gloucester shirt… (Honestly, hoops and everything. In Bath, as well…).

Clearly not spring chickens, they tore through a set at least as energetic as the Damned’s, lovingly tossing away ska classics such as “007”, “Guns of Navarone” and “Lucky Seven”, all as tight as a drum and loose as hell. Great stuff.

I’d never been quite clear about the difference between Ska and Rock Steady but after about six or seven numbers, another original member vocalist Doreen Shaffer came onstage and the tempo changed completely. Still possessing a fine voice and a real warmth about her, she led the band through a series of beautifully light rock steady numbers, such as “You’re Wondering Now”, “Nice Time”, “Sugar, Sugar” and a version of “Simmer Down”. It was wonderful stuff.

And from there, the set changed again into a series of reggae and dub tracks, featuring Douglas’ thundering bass lines. It was breath-taking, and then not a little poignant to see Douglas walking off with the aid of stick at the end.

True to form, I left my microphone in the car, so I’m kicking myself that I have no recordings to share, but The Skatalites have a pretty active website and there are a number of freebies there, including these tracks with the wonderful Doreen Shaffer

Nice Time

Adorable

A great evening in all, (topped off when I got to shake Cedric Brooks’ hand as he showed up at the bar half way through the set!)

Is she really going out with him?

2008-12-21T08:23:00.002Z

Busy, busy time for everyone, I guess, but definitely for teachers – carol concerts, plays, assessments and the feverish dash to knock up … stuff … from card, tinsel and glittery bits. Predictably, this has meant the already meagre trickle of posts on here has recently dried up almost completely. I can only apologise.

What’s actually quite unlikely about the whole period is that somehow I’ve managed to squeeze two gigs into the last fortnight or so – I’m not quite sure how this has happened. This week I went to see punk legends, the Damned, at the Guild Hall. I quite like these old punk gigs – always bump into a few people I’ve not seen for a while, and it’s always kinda fun to see what shape these bands are in.

And it’s heart-warming to report that, despite being a little thicker around the waist and fuller around the face, Vanian and Sensible (regrettably no Scabies) aren’t doing too badly really. I was a little apprehensive to be honest, not just by the prospect of a new Damned album being out (not often a good sign) but also having suffered the humiliation of a perforated ear drum at the wretched Buzzcocks gig last year. To be fair, though, the sound this time was great, and the set not half bad. They galloped through a routine that included a few too many new songs, but was also dotted with a lot of rousing old favourites, including Love Song, Neat, Neat, Neat, Smash It Up and this….

(OK, not quite like that…)

Ear drum happily in tact, the only indignity suffered was courtesy of a friend’s pint, when an aging punk careened wildly out of the mosh pit and into our group. A modest sort of battle scar to be sure…

I’ll soon be with you, and we’ll know how it feels

2008-12-03T20:04:00.002Z

Time for another one of these methinks…

Lucky Seven 10

I put this together a week ago and I seem to remember having to scratch around a bit. Though listening to it now, I can’t for the life of me think why. If I say so myself, there’s some belters here.

Particularly enjoying listening to Parachutes again – I was a big Pretty Things fan at one stage, although this record passed me by…

Lucky Seven 10

Brighter Day – Pinch ft. Juakali
Microcastle – Deerhunter
Having a Party – Lee Perry
Novocaine – Richmond Fontaine
Who do you love – Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Summer Time – The Pretty Things
Tokyo – The Books

Need Somebody Tonight

2008-11-30T17:46:00.002Z

Do you go to gigs on your own?

Is it very sad?

I suspect the answer to those questions is “No” and “Yes” (in that order); but when faced with being unable to persuade any of your usually reliable cronies to come out, what do you do?

The Holloways

So, unable to convince anyone that a night out with the Holloways was worth a tenner, I thought “Bugger that, I’m going anyway!” and strode off to the Guild Hall, on my todd and only slightly self conscious. I like the Holloways. I bought their album last year and have enjoyed it regularly ever since, so I can’t really understand why they still seem pretty much unknown outside the web pages of trendy youth magazines. They write catchy, charming pop songs and there’s always a little more room for a band that can do that, I reckon…

Fortunately for my credibility and self respect, a friend of mine was amongst a rather disappointing turn out (although, bizarrely, one of the punters who did venture out was Dean Ryan). We spent the evening drinking and passing judgement on not one, not two but three fairly middling support bands, the only one of whom deserve a mention were Hereford’s, Rupert & the Robbers, who may be worth looking out for again.

(Reading through that again, I see that it implies that I spent the evening drinking with GRFC’s man at the helm, which is I’m afraid not true. Although I was tempted to ask him his opinion on music during rugby matches…)

Apart from local celebrity-spotting, it was turning into quite a long evening by the time the Holloways shambled on stage, and to be honest my mind was beginning to wander. Fortunately, (again) the Holloways were pretty good and came on looking determined to have a good time, despite the gaps on the floor. And so they did, playing most of the songs from So This Is Great Britain and a few that were new to me. They bounced around in fine fashion, engaged everyone with some energetic witty pop and managed to get a pretty clean sound (not something everyone manages at the Guild Hall).

On this occasion, I managed to avoid another Rifles-style fiasco and successfully recorded all of the set. And so I have a few selections for your pleasure:

Generate

Fuck Ups

Two Left Feet

Good Brain

2008-11-23T19:54:00.001Z

Clearly anyone with half a brain is a fan of the great and enigmatic Lee “Scratch” Perry. I do indeed have half a brain, so it follows…

A mere 72 years old, Scratch has now released three albums this year (and who’s to say there won’t be a Christmas release). I don’t yet have The Mighty Upsetter, but the other two (Repentance and Scratch Came, Scratch Saw, Scratch Conquered) are belters.

And I’ve just come across Eternal Thunder. A site lovingly put together by one Mick Sleeper which features, amongst other things, a great bunch of hour-long mixes, apparently sanctioned by the man himself and free to download. I’m not usually a fan of mixes (I’m trying to avoid saying “mash up”), but these ones really work and are a very funky way to meander away an hour or so…

Pay him a visit…

A Frozen Act of Sorrow

2008-11-15T20:46:00.003Z

When you’ve sat and watched Jools Holland’s increasingly uninteresting show enough times (or indeed listened to any of the BBC’s output) you begin to think that you’ve pretty much heard everything there is to hear now. That music’s getting… well… a bit dull. Maybe it’s time you stopped wasting your money and started to get into Box-Set DVDs. Christmas is coming, after all…

And then you stumble across something way out there, which makes you realise that for all the broadcasters’ claims, mainstream music is still pretty conservative and by and large not very good.

Avoidance Theory

This evening, I was ambling along one of the Internet’s many blind alleys (and rather enjoying it), when I landed on Schmat Records site. Never seen it before, and from reading the rather poignant recent posts, not likely to see much more from it. From what I can tell, Bryan, the label’s proprietor has lost faith in his place in the music machine and has stopped funding any more releases. I always think this is a shame; for me it’s labels like this that keep it all fresh. I shall enjoy having a look through the back catalogue.

There is one new release, however - a completely free download EP, Calico Cliché by a band called Avoidance Theory. Free albums are often not very good (to be frank), but the four tracks available here are just beautiful; acoustic, dreamy, sometimes steamy, sometimes poignant, but always just a little quirky.

The band is in fact Bryan, himself and Linda, is based in San Francisco, and has its own band website, where the inquisitive listener can lay his or her hands on more tracks by the pair.

At first listen, the Calico Cliché tracks are the better ones, and my favourite track is this one, with its marvellously goofy fade out sequence:

Break and Follow

But this is rather a nice track from the “Shape of Trees” album

Neck of the Woods

You can get the free Calico Cliché EP here and a pot full of other MP3s from the band here.

I See Your Keys Hanging in the Same Place...

2008-11-15T18:17:00.002Z

Emusic are all over this lot…

The Rural Alberta Advantage

And to be honest fair play to them. It’s a cracking album they’ve put together although they are still apparently unsigned. I’m not going to try to compete with the mighty Yancy Strickler on RAA.

What he said.

All the songs are pretty catchy (driven on by a ridiculously busy drummer) but fortunately the most beguiling one of all “Don’t Haunt This Place” is available as a free download from their site (or, indeed, here if you can’t be bothered)

Don’t Haunt This Place

Frank, AB

In the Summertime

I’m not going to claim this as a PP exclusive, but this is an album that’ll get a good few mentions in end-of-year lists. (Or mine anyway…)

You’re so in a hurry, you make it hard to breathe

2008-11-03T20:20:00.001Z

About a month ago I made a post about Tom Petty fans the Lonelyhearts, and reading through it now I realise I made no mention of the band’s label, Three Ring Records. I feel I owe them an apology, really, because their site (here) has got a good few downloads to snag, and it’s turning into a bit of a goldmine. There’s some great stuff there.

Music For Animals

You hear references made to the eighties, these days, as if they were a great lost of decade, full of long-neglected gems. But to be honest, people, it wasn’t great. A bit of a train-wreck, as far as I’m concerned. But, having said that … there’s something of the eighties about San Francisco’s Music For Animals. And I rather like it.

I’ve listened to some of their tracks and I just can’t put my finger on who it is they remind me of (maybe Teardrop Explodes?), but I really like their punchy guitar hooks and driving rhythms.

Watch this…

As I’ve mentioned, they’re signed to Three Ring Records and have an album out last year. They also released an EP this September, and both releases are available here.

And if you’re not sure, there’s a load of tracks you can stream from their own site or from Last.FM (I’m only just catching up on this…). I’ve also dug up two free downloads for your listening pleasure…

Worry

Love Love Love

Just the feeling of an empty place deteriorating

2008-11-02T12:55:00.003Z

There’s something funny going on here – I can’t believe it’s already more than a week since I last posted, and a week since the Rifles came to Gloucester. Honestly, you turn your back, and it’s Sunday already…

Anyway, last weekend saw the visit of East London’s the Rifles to our modest little province, and to be honest, I was gagging for it. Hadn’t seen any music for, well, ages, and having persuaded my friend Tom to join with me, I was looking forward to a good night.

We arrived too late to see much of the first band, local chaps Peppermint Hunting Lodge. I’m generally in favour of bands who manage to incorporate names of sweets into their names – visions of eccentric, quirky Psychedelia spring to mind – so I was disappointed to have missed them, but friends tell me that this wasn’t really what they were about and that they weren’t really up to much…

Next on were a group calling themselves Operator Six, who despite coming down from the frozen North (Bradford) seemed to bring a load of fans with them, and fortunately their own video camera man. They played a series of tight, energetic songs that suggested a lot of self-confidence and a certain knowingness. They didn’t really look like a support band. I really liked them to be honest, and I was pleased to see that there are a number of their tracks available as singles on Emusic. I shall be taking those…

I say “fortunately” because I recorded a few of their songs and all of the Rifles set, but I can only think I put my mic jack in the wrong hole in my IRiver… Anyway, cack-handedness means I have nothing. A real shame.

But, “fortunately”, on YouTube someone has posted two songs from the set. Here we go.

The Rifles

Unfortunately, a search for Rifles and Gloucester on YouTube only brings a few happy memories of the Cherry and Whites at Ashton Gate, which although always worth a watch is not what we’re here for. It does bring me onto the name, though. I don’t think it really does them any favours, to be honest. More than one person that I tried to persuade to come along with me thought that they were a Jam tribute band, and the general vibe about the Rifles seems to be that they are unashamed Weller acolytes. But, to be fair, everyone is these days, why tie yourself down like that?

Whatever, they also played a great set, cranking out a succession of strong, choppy mod-ish pop songs that were high on energy and full of sing-along choruses. There were also some cracking cost-effective guitar breaks that I really liked from Lucas Crowther. I always reckon the sight of glasses flying across the hall is generally a good sign for a gig (plastic glasses, you understand, mostly drained), and such was the evening. And at the front, well it was all kicking off, as they say.

I think originally, the tour was arranged to promote The Rifles second album, but it looks like that’s not ready yet, although there is an EP you get previews of in exchange for your email address, here. The pace dropped a little with the acoustic part of their set – “Spend a Lifetime” and “Narrow Minded Social Club” - and a few of their new songs, but listening to them now, I reckon the new album’s going to be worth hearing.

You probably all know and own a copy of their first album, so there’s not much point in posting anything from it. but there are also a couple of downloads from older stuff available online, including the title track of “No Love Lost”, which somehow didn’t make the cut, though for the life of me I can’t see why – it’s a belter…

No Love Lost

Talking

Anyway, as I said, no recordings, but here’s my favourite song, Local Boy, which was the final song in a rousing encore, and is kind of appropriate as we come up to Remembrance Day…

And I know Mr Roosevelt in the White House can't deliver no comfort down here

2008-10-26T16:18:00.004Z

(Can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get this post out…)

If your idea of a good night out is to watch some lanky chap stand on a bar stool and play banjo, well, I’m afraid you missed a corking evening in Cheltenham last week. Me, I love this sort of thing (as I suspect you’ve guessed by now), and fortunately I was one of a large group of punters crammed into Slak to see a stonking set from New York City’s Curtis Eller.

Turned out, the evening was part of the Cheltenham Literature Festival, so there was, I’m afraid, a certain amount of performance poetry, but as this is a family Blog, we’ll pass a discrete veil over those proceedings and move on…

Curtis Eller

He’s a funny character, Curtis Eller, singing a mixture of songs about Richard Nixon, Buster Keaton and his daughter, and supplementing his banjo playing with a series of back-cricking high kicks. To avoid boredom (although I’m not sure whose) he also took to strolling around the tables, blowing out candles as he played, and at one point disappeared into the Gents.

And there was yodelling too. (Lord, that man can yodel.) Maybe not in the Jimmy Rogers class but still a new sound to me, and one that I’ll bet is not often heard in these parts. And he got the audience yodelling too. I’m not usually big on “audience participation” but to be honest he’s such a charming character, that before long I was yodelling like a good’un too.

It was easy, however, to let his sense of fun and charm over-shadow the fact that he’s actually a pretty good song writer. One of the numbers he got a hearty sing-a-long response from was the remarkable “Save Me, Joe Louis”, a song about what were reputedly the last words of a teenage black man, who died in the gas chamber in 1936. Sombre stuff…. You can watch it here (the sound and quality are not the best, but…).

I’m afraid I can’t find any mp3s from Eller on the net but you can buy his most recent album, “Wirewalkers and Assassins” here, (including the Joe Louis song). But in any case, it was really all about the performance; I haven’t bought the record yet but I don’t think it’ll capture quite the magic of the evening.

Instead, there’s a host of Eller videos on YouTube, all of them worth viewing. Here’s one which includes a feller called “Joebass”, whom the more eagle-eyed viewers of this Blog may well remember from another posting….

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments page, at least)…

So he turned the corners of his mouth up to the sky...

2008-10-14T20:58:00.003Z

This month’s Acoustica was a bit of a mixed bag.

Some good (Bethany Porter playing some beautiful folk songs and playing cello), some bad (Sorry, Nuala and the Alchemy Quartet) and some well, ugly, is perhaps a bit strong. You’d have to say, though, that Stanton Delaplane is a little strange and this being the Blog that this is, you can guess where we’re going here...

Stanton Delaplane

I know, loop pedals are pretty much de rigeur these days, but they certainly make for a great way for a single artist to vary and enrich his strummings. I am still heartily in favour of the loop pedal.

Mr Delaplane pretty much depends on it to lend his rather odd series of songs a certain eerie nonconformity to them. I couldn’t begin to understand quite what was going on in the lyrics or where on earth he’s coming from, but I rather liked it. I still get a bit of a thrill when someone does something different on stage, and so as far as I was concerned the evening was a success, when it became clear that I could tick “euphonium” off from my list of never-seen instruments. A simple soul am I.

Although Mr Delaplane has a Myspace page, Myspace has had a revamp and now doesn’t seem to allow downloads from pages any more. So, no music, I’m afraid. This is all the more galling, because there was a free CD to be had on Friday, but I missed it as I fled guiltily to the bar half way through the Alchemy wotsit set. (I’m again forced to conclude that a real blogger…)

So anyway…

In my more po-faced moments, I like to think that by doing this Blog I am occasionally giving young bands a bit of a boost up. You know, cupping my hands and helping a deserving artist over the wall into the … er… cider orchards of success.

Passing swiftly over the unfortunately over-extended metaphor, I generally try to find new artists just on the way, as it were.

But when I’m doing this I often come across other people who’ve been around for ages and who basically don’t need any help from another small Blog. Nonetheless, there’s some great music coming from them. Here’s three tracks, I’ve really liked in the last few months that are well worth a listen…

Alastair Galbraith

This bloke’s been around for years, apparently, and is some sort of national treasure in his native New Zealand. Here’s his Wikipedia entry. And here’s the track that I found on the Emperor Jones site. Lovely wonk harmonies and complex guitar work, it reminds me of Alexander Tucker.

Bellbirds – Alastair Galbraith

United Bible Studies

Here’s another bunch who again have made a beautiful record that I really like, but which certainly needs no plugging from me. Again, donkey’s years.

Lowlands of Holland – United Bible Studies

The Anomoanon

And finally, this track is from a band that includes Ned Oldham, brother of Will, who hardly needs any publicity, but nonetheless is making good music. Read about him here.

Mr Train – The Anomoanon

By the time I'm clean this prairie will mean nothing to me

2008-10-04T08:38:00.002Z

I’m not a big Tom Petty fan myself, and I’m guessing not many of us are these days. In fact it seems a rather strange name to drop in as one of your influences on your Myspace page. C’mon fellers!

But. I really like this lot.

The Lonelyhearts

The Lonelyhearts are two blokes who come from Iowa and California and who make some really haunting, Psychedelia-tinged records that also lean heavily on a kind of Burritos-esque country sound.

There are songs about addiction, loss and self loathing., and unsurprisingly the tempo is pretty slow and deliberate. It’s good music for Autumn really, fair bit of rain, fair bit of wind, all pretty desolate, if the truth be told. But I’m OK with that. Some times I’m quite happy listening to people whose outlook on life is considerably more miserable than my own. It all makes for a fascinating almost guilty listening pleasure. Even the promisingly named “This Year Is Shaping Up To Be Awesome” starts:

“The fountain dried up years ago.”

and finishes

“Put the cash in my hand, put the gun back in your pantsPut the car into gear, drive our love away from herePut the past in the groundThese everglades are haunted and I want them to burn down.

Don’t know why we even try…”

Wonderful. Olympic standard gloom...

New Virginia, Iowa

Sadie

This Year Is Shaping Up To Be Awesome

The Lonelyhearts’ second album is available from Emusic here and includes a free track “Harlequin Bands” (there are a couple of other releases available there too). In fact, the Lonelyhearts are pretty generous in these increasingly mean-minded times with a good few other tracks available for free download from their website.

Pour yourself a drink and try to forget...

(Tom Petty, that is...)

Santa (will be there!) Mickey Mouse (will be there!) Walt Disney (will be there!)

2008-09-18T20:04:00.004Z

The start of a new term always gives a severe dent to the hopes you have of “a life”. And so it has turned out again this year. Ho hum...

(I’m exaggerating, of course, there was a staggeringly depressing afternoon at Castle Grim on the first afternoon of the new season, followed by a correspondingly euphoric afternoon in Bath last Saturday. There was drinking, on both evenings, for different reasons…)

Lucky Seven 9

But anyway, despite the lack of postings here, I have heard some great records in this last month, including some electrifying music from New York’s Slavic Soul Party! – I’m really enjoying the mixture of traditional Klezmer and modern break beats – and a truly (I mean truly) demented new album from the great Lee Perry.

So here’s the next instalment of your Lucky Seven:

Bees – Caribou
Trains and Boats and Planes – Laura Cantrell
Santa Claus – Lee Perry
Sorry ‘Bout That – Nancy Sinatra
Rumenka (remix) – Slavic Soul Party
Anyone Else But You – The Mouldy Peaches
Local Boy – The Rifles

Lucky Seven 9

Oh and, yes, we love Juno in this house:

And I was there...

2008-09-14T16:23:00.003Z

A rare non-music post, so please feel free to let this one pass over your head, but let the record show...

Look into my eyes my sweetheart, justice must be done

2008-08-31T10:10:00.002Z

If you’ve spent any time reading this Blog over the last couple of years, you’ll have probably formed an idea that I mainly write it in order to garner as many free tickets and CDs as I possibly can. If you have indeed got this message, I congratulate you on your keen-eyed cynicism. It’s all true.

One of the reasons why I’m not currently using old CDs to light my cigars, however, is that I’m not all that good at the whole business. A case in point.

Last Harbour

I first wrote about Manchester’s country Goths, Last Harbour, here, and get occasional emails from them about new releases. In fact I got one last month but in the general half-assed way that I’m afraid has grown to characterize this Blog, I forgot about it, and thereby missed a chance to promote their new EP. Who knows what goodies a prompt plug might have harvested?

Anyway, turns out “My Knowen Foe” is actually pretty good (if by now a little past its original sell-by):

A trip to their site will also yield a few mp3s which are worth hearing, especially this one:

Science Song

Again apologies to all … Whadya gonna do?

Let's Incorporate!

2008-08-29T19:16:00.002Z

I know of at least one punter who’ll smile…

God bless you, FolkHero01!

(The Wiyos in Vermont…)

Can't look back, as a matter of fact, all I wanna do is make it through the door

2008-08-25T17:51:00.002Z

Well. Who’d’ve thought it?

Already almost a fortnight since Brighton…

Sound Sanctuary

We used to spend a lot of time in Brighton during the eighties, hanging out and spending money we didn’t really have. It was a great place, and I always liked it more than London. So twenty years later, and wanting to celebrate a bit of a milestone, it seemed about time to go back. It was a lot of fun and we were gratified to see a number of former haunts such as Food For Friends, Wax Factor, Grubbs and the Duke of Yorks all still there.

We also found our way to the rather cool Joogleberry Playhouse to see Sound Sanctuary

According to their Myspace page, Sound Sanctuary are from Sevenoaks, and are usually a four piece. (I’ll not bother going through all the details - you can read the Biog here.) The night we saw them playing, though, they were missing their special effects man, so the set was a completely acoustic one. I’d heard some of the samples from their webpage and I was a little disappointed about this, not least because my concentration levels are not always good. (I like gadgets, basically). It was a good gig though.

On the Myspace page there is a free download, “Polarity”, but to be honest it’s not one of my favourite songs and I see from their site that it’s quite an old one – they didn’t play it in Brighton. But, you can get it here.

On the night, however, they were pretty damn good (even a man down) playing strong, well crafted songs which zinged along quickly enough to keep this punter occupied. Managed to make a few recordings which I think are quite successful in catching their simple guitar, bass, and really busy drum sound, but also how lively and engaging the performance was.

Lonely Fishes

Collapsed Lung

Regulate

(It is that Regulate. I know. I’m not so keen on sensitive types “doing” hip hop, but actually it kinda works…)

Oh, go on then ...

2008-08-15T18:26:00.002Z

Just one more.

Les Ongles Noirs

This is Les Ongles Noirs, another team of Breton ragamuffins playing the streets of Paimpol while we were en vacances.

I narrowly missed videoing their previous song which involved a man attacking some small children in the front with his bass saxophone, but this one’s still pretty wild. If you’ve been following this thread of posts, it’ll scarcely need mentioning that I’ve no idea what the song is called or what it’s about. (I should also apologise for the woman who keeps edging her way into shot from the left...)

(Street flavour).

J'ai pas deux coeurs...

2008-08-14T18:49:00.004Z

I've got a few things to post in the next few days, and to be honest, there's a bit of queue forming...

I have more street recordings from Brittany to upload, and although I fear your attention may be beginning to wonder, I reckon that these ones are probably the best of the lot. In fact this particular set are just great.

These ones are again taken from our trip to Paimpol, and were again recorded literally round the corner from the last lot. It was an embarrassment of riches, I’ll tell you.

Fatras

We’d actually seen this lot wheeling a real collection of idiosyncratic instruments and… well… boxes through the cobbles of the town, and thought they looked fun. We were fortunate enough to catch them later, and they didn’t disappoint…

I’ve watched this so many times now I’ve lost all sense of perspective on it, but I hope it does convey the effortless sense of fun and cool that surrounded their performance.

Fatras are from Rennes and get their name from the French word for a jumble or hotchpotch. Hopefully, you’ve watched the video and can see why I got so excited about seeing them – in fact at one point in my recordings you can hear me frantically telling Michael to go and get some money off his mother so that I could buy the CD. I loved the brass section, the drummer banging on a box and the general collection of cries, cheers and claps from everyone. Best thing I’ve seen in ages.

As I’ve said, I managed to make a few recordings, of which these three are the best. The first track is Coquin D’Hiver, the one they sing in the video, but I’ve no idea what the names of the other two are, as they are not on the album. As you’ve come to expect, each recording is marred slightly by an endearing collection of fumbles and mumbles, but remember “street flavour”…

Coquin D’Hiver

Instrumental

Unknown Song

Streets of Paimpol

2008-08-09T10:26:00.002Z

One of the things that I loved about our stay in Brittany was the amount of music going on all around and good stuff too – it was quite a contrast to some of the fairly lame efforts you come across on English streets. It was a real thrill and in Paimpol, particularly, you just didn’t know what you were going to come across around the next corner. In all I recorded four acts playing on the street (and bought two CDs).

The first people I saw were these three players who set up outside the junk shop I was poking around in. I was still getting used to this videoing mullarkey and there were one or two comedy moments as I tried to make this recording (the first one involving a van reversing slowly across the shot and another where an elderly woman walked across the screen with her fingers in her ears…). But eventually I got this. The lady in the middle is playing a bombarde, and her two partners are playing the Breton pipes which I think are known as “biniou”.

To be honest, at first it’s a bit of a hard listen to our American educated ears, but stick with it, there’s something rather haunting about it.

(I should say, these are street recordings, and I am notoriously cack-handed about these things, so you’ll have to put up with general murmurings, background interference and camera wobbles. Think of it as additional “street flavour”, I say…)

I also came across this trio of musicians, quite literally around the next corner, who had a distinct Breton sound but had mixed into it tinges of Irish music, jazz and Klezmer. The feller in the hat looks like he’s playing another bombarde but obviously there’s something different about it, he’s getting a completely different sound out of it.

After this song, the fiddle player explained that they called themselves Kornigell, which is apparently the Breton word for a seabird and also some sort of Breton dance step. I can’t find anything about them on the Internet, so I guess I can claim this as some sort of exclusive. You heard it here first!

The fiddle player also asked me to send him a copy of the video, I hope this suffices. Many thanks for the performance and for patiently explaining everything in English, after my French had let me down so miserably…

On a eu peur

2008-08-04T11:44:00.003Z

Well, we’re back from Brittany and feeling suitably relaxed and refreshed. It’s been great actually, just what we needed - prolonged stretches of serious inactivity, during which large amounts of bread, fish, cheese and dry Breton cider were consumed. All very pleasant.

But I haven’t been entirely idol, I’ve come across some pretty wild and wonderful music, which was a bit of a surprise as I’ve never been particularly impressed with the French music I’ve come across before. I’ve bought some CDs, made a few recordings on my new (secondhand, picked up on eBay just before we left) iRiver, and even made a few video recordings on a “borrowed” camcorder. Indeed, I’ve had a lot of fun playing at Andy Kershaw (I’m talking about making recordings “in the field”, you understand, nothing to do with restraining orders…)

Raggalendo

Last Sunday afternoon found Josie, Michael and myself at a beautiful chateau called Roche Jagu, sitting in the sunshine, drinking the obligatory cider, watching a very strange hip hop act called Raggalendo, from Goudelin in Brittany. I can’t remember a band ticking quite so many wrong boxes (quite so enthusiastically). For starters they were all-white and all-female, and as well as that they rapped in French and Breton. Top stuff! Oh, and they did their whole set in traditional Breton costume. Outstanding…

My French isn’t good enough to pick out much of what they were singing about, although Josie swears they did a song about Petit Folous which may well be true but I kinda hope it isn’t. There was certainly a huge element of fun about the gig, but they weren’t the sort of novelty act that this maybe makes them sound. To me they sounded a lot like the Beastie Boys or even Deeelite, but their Myspace sites Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix as well. They even managed to work in some traditional Breton dance. It was all terrific fun.

I’ve found this video on Youtube, which I’m afraid takes a while to get going (skip on to about 1:25) but is “L’Alcoolocataire” the song they jumped into the audience and finished their set with…

I made a few recordings which aren’t quite as good as I hoped; you’ll have to excuse the sound of the wind on the mic and the occasional fumblings of a cack-handed recorder… The first track is called Peur de Peur, but I’m afraid I can’t work out the title of the second one, so I’m calling it Arret.

Peur de Peur

Arret

I should probably point out that without the wise council and restraining influences of my friends I not only went off and bought the CD (a weakness I think I’ve admitted to on these pages before) but went the whole hog and bought the T-Shirt.

I’m not apologizing.

…where I might present you as a chaste virgin…

2008-07-22T20:37:00.002Z

I’m off to Brittany soon! But I do have time for one more post. It’s a good’un too.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz

Maher Shalal Hash Baz are the vehicle of Japanese singer Tori Kudo, and are one of the many bands signed to the fine K Records from Olympia, Washington. If you went to Sunday School as a child you may know that Maher Shalal Hash Baz was the name of one of the prophet Isaiah’s sons. It means something like “Hurry to spoil! Make Haste to plunder!”, and it was a prophetic name the Lord instructed Isaiah to give his son. If you didn’t go to Sunday School, well you’ve got thus far not knowing this, and your probably none the worse for it.

I have no idea what it means to Tori Kudo, although he does seem to have a bit of a “thing” for Old Testament references. What does it all mean?

The songs themselves are odd shambling things with a simple charm to them that I really like. I also really like the brassy arrangements that Kudo gives his songs. Out on K Records is their most recent album L’Autre Cap which is full of short and quirky numbers that are either child-like or just plain childish (I can’t quite decide) - I think “naivist” is the term…

To be honest, they sound like a bunch of friends getting together for their second or third practice, still getting used to their guitars and trumpets. But I mean that in a good way, you understand.

In fact, various incarnations of Maher Shalal Hash Baz have been releasing records since the beginning of the 1990s, so unless Kudo operates a Zappa-esque approach to man-management, we can assume that the band haven’t just met, but are actually executing some fiendishly clever naivist plan.

Whatever. I just think they’re great and you can be sure that I’ll be filling my (recently purchased on ebay) iRiver with more acts of shambolic brilliance for the Brittany trip.

K Records give you one download - the glittering “Different Daylight” with its unnervingly odd drum patterns - but to be honest, one’s all you need…

Different Daylight

And then there’s this video of the same song, which appears to include members of the audience having a bit of a go too. Wonderful stuff.

A Comforting Deathly Silence Will Accompany You Now

2008-07-19T14:49:00.005Z

Ridiculously pleased to get a text from Al asking me if I fancied a trip to the Shush Club last Thursday to see Family Machine. I think this is now the fourth time I’ve seen Oxford’s shambling country rockers, but such is the dry spell that we’re having at the moment, I jumped, nay leapt, at the chance.

The Shush Club was a new one on me, but it turns out to be another acoustic evening running sporadically at Monty’s in Cheltenham, organised by a feller called Vince Freeman, who gigs around the area and has recently won some sort of award for his songs.

To be honest, I wasn’t all that impressed with Monty’s, not really my sort of bar and the sound was pretty poor, but hey, it was free! Family Machine were pretty good, although forced to cut their set a little short, and were a pretty friendly bunch to chat to beforehand.

Little Lost David

Probably the best part of the evening though was a set by Sheffield duo Little Lost David. Yeah, it took me a while to see past the name (surely the worst, I’ve heard in a long time…), but actually they were pretty damn good. Made up of a guitarist, David J Roch and drummer, Chris Basford, their songs were gothic, compelling affairs with Roch making excellent use of some haunting falsettos. They really grew on me.

I tried to record a couple of numbers, with only limited success, (my Zen Plus, being still not really upto the job), and I was going to post them here because I couldn’t find any other downloads, but somehow stumbled across these on Last.fm. (I didn’t realize they did downloads…). They’re far better than my recordings and well worth a listen.

Waltz for Elliott

Cutie Pie

I think Al was also quite taken by the pair, and who knows maybe we’ll see them in Gloucester?

What's freedom, babe?

2008-07-06T20:00:00.010Z

Seems about time for another of these. I’ve heard some good records this month, one of which I’m a little uncomfortable about… Can you guess which?

Lucky Seven 8

In the River – A Hawk and a Hacksaw
Odyssea (Giant Swarm Remix) – Fussible
Foghat Digs Holes in Space – Gong
Full Moon Over the Shopping – Jah Wobble and the Invaders the Heart
Mo – Murcof
Train Song – Pentangle
The Wind – Shukar Collective

The Shukar Collective track is well weird, a kind of Gypsy Drum and Bass thing; the Murcof track is also excellent, really quite creepy, and the Pentangle track a favourite of mine for some time…

Lucky Seven 8

2008-07-06T15:04:00.001Z

Cool is a word that’s tossed around very casually these days...

But I love this.

The first thing that I’ll do is throw my arms around you

2008-07-06T14:47:00.001Z

I’ve neglected you, I know. It’s not that you haven’t been on my mind. (and if I made you feel second best…)

Actually, I have sat down a few times in the last fortnight to bring you some new stuff but, to be honest, I haven’t really come across anything all that good…

The best thing I have heard this month is actually rather poignant, but I’ve drawn an absolute and complete blank when it comes to finding out more about the artist.

Last month, I wrote about the wonderful Dengue Fever, who’ve since then played Glastonbury and I get a feeling are going to be something special, and since then I’ve tried to hear some of the original Cambodian music that so attracted the Holtzman brothers. I came across a wonderful Blog called Horse Drawn Zeppelin, which is pretty eclectic (to say the least) and which had this post, from which I was able to download a magnificent mix tape of Cambodian Sixties pop, called “Cambodian Swing Machine”.

Really, I can’t recommend it enough.

Cambodian Swing Machine

And, waddyaknow, the second track on it turns out to be what is presumably the original version of Dengue Fever’s “Tiger Phone Card”.

It’s great, easily as strong as the Holtzmans’ version, with a guitar break that is probably even better. But that’s as much as I can tell you about it, taken as it was from an original cassette, whose liner notes were all written in Khmer, so I don’t even have a name for you.

The only other thing I can say about it with any degree of certainty is that the writers and performers are almost certainly dead, having disappeared along with the whole Cambodian Swing scene into the whole, awful Cambodian black hole of the seventies. A genuine tragedy or what?

So, anyway, snag this, if you liked the Dengue Fever stuff, and then go along to Horse Drawn Zeppelin and download the whole album, even if it’s only to pay your respects to a small piece of pop history, tragically caught up in one of modern times’ most brutal episodes….

Track 2 – Cambodian Swing Machine (Tiger Phone Card)

And never let go…

But Mary you are with me now, all around me in the waves

2008-06-22T16:04:00.001Z

My cherished iRiver H120 is broken and I am rather depressed about it. Its last will and testament was a frustratingly obscure Kurtz-like “ata error -32” My efforts to revive it have been rather cack-handed and have only made things worse – can’t even coax anything out of it now. Indeed if I was a surgeon, I get the feeling I’d be followed gleefully around by Lionel Hutz…

Anyway, I’ve replaced it with a rather cute plastic-y Zen V plus, which you can cram shedloads of music into but which won’t allow me to use my microphone – the jack won’t fit into it. So anyway, I ventured off to Bristol last night with Josie, to see Albuquerque’s most dysfunctional, armed only with the Zen’s built-in mic.

The Handsome Family

I like St George’s – there’s something defiantly middle-aged and middle-class about it, which obviously suits me fine these days. And what could be more middle-aged and middle-class than a picnic and champagne tent in the grounds of the old church. We didn’t get ourselves organised for that part, I’m afraid, which was just as well because predictably the weather didn’t play along (really windy and later rainy).

Brett and Rennie Sparks are The Handsome Family, a husband and wife team who augment their rather sparse sound as they feel they need it (but you know all this). Last night they employed a guitar/fiddle player and a drummer for their selection, and also played two sets with an interval in-between (during which the Champagne was rather forlornly declared closed “due to adverse weather conditions”).

I enjoyed their songs, full as they were with skulls and snakes, grizzlies and airports, and I liked the way they switched around the instrumentation a little – a pedal steel here, a melodica there.

They’re also known for their between-song banter, which was genuinely charming and witty. On the subject of their upcoming twentieth weeding anniversary, Rennie informed us that she’d been sold to Brett by her family when she was six. “They told me she could sew” was the response from the other side of the stage…

All in all, it was a really good show, and ironically (given that there had been lengthy discussion from the front about ionisation, lightning rods and UFOs) our ride home was accompanied all the way by a suitably Night of the Hunter-ish freak storm.

I made a few recordings. To be honest, they’re not as good as I’d like, but they’re kind of OK. Unfortunately, the spoken intros and chat are not really audible, which was a shame.

After we Shot the Grizzly (Live, at St George’s)

Amelia Earhart vs the Dancing Bear (Live, at St George’s)

Weightless Again (Live, at St George’s)

There are a few downloads available, none from their site, I’m afraid, (“Sometimes I can’t even dress myself”), but the site does direct you here, where you can fill your boots…

Owls are different here

2008-06-10T20:51:00.005Z

You may remember I wrote about a band called The Double U from Portland, about a month ago… Still listening to that record and still finding it intriguing and moreish. Well, they were good enough to answer a few questions for me and allow me to post a new track up from their album. Here we go…

The Double U Interview

I gather there is at least one other artist known as “Double U” – I came across some sort of rapper on Emusic. Have your attorneys been informed? Can we look forward to a long and tortuous Jarndyce Vs Jarndyce sort of legal case?

Matt: Yes, we have our extensive, worldwide legal team working on it. They have been preparing our case for six years now and assure me they are getting close to making a complaint. It's getting a little expensive I must say, but if Metallica can shell out $40,000 a month for a psychologist, surely we can afford the same for a world-class team of international lawyers protecting our good name. I did ask about Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce; our lead attorney, Hugo Armbuckle, just sort of grinned.

So what’s the name actually about?

Matt: unusual unicorns, ugly uniks, uvular urges, that sort of thing. It's sort of a bland, lousy name. We’re surprised other bands have used it, too. Then again, there are probably 114 bands named "The Shoes."

And while I’m at it, Hibou? Unless, Google translator is letting me down, that doesn’t look like an owl on the cover of the record…

Matt: Owls are different here.

I've just created a Wikipedia account for myself and desperate to use it. What should your entry say?

Matt: Yes, you can write it. Here's some background info--I think some of these bands are well known and you can find out about them online

Alex: I'm not sure what you want to say, but our website www.thedoubleu.com and http://cdbaby.com/cd/doubleu and have information about us. Matt, Geoff, and I have been in a lot of bands. Geoff's currently in at least three. Matt and Geoff also have a side project (very loose) called Freedom Eagle (improv guitar/drums). There's one MP3 recording from a radio show.Matt's been in Stiff Legged Sheep (Iowa City) & Glorious Din (San Francisco) -- both had releases. Alex has been in Heavenly Ten Stems (a couple of singles) and Job's Daughters (a couple of singles) -- both of those cover bands had members in bigger San Francisco bands -- esp. Mark Davies of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Alex played bass on some tracks on Caroliner Rainbow's LP "Rise of the Common Wood-pile."Matt and I were the "backing band" of John Davis (Folk Implosion) and Cynthia Dall. We toured w/ both of them for very brief tours.Matt’s currently playing w/ Elizabeth Venable’s band. He toured and recorded w/ his cousin Virgil Shaw. (They both have websites.)Geoff is in Fuck, Sad Horse, and Staff, and he recently toured w/ Tara Jane O'Neill in Japan.

I’m a bit confused about your lyrics – they are in French aren’t they? I can’t really pick anything out with my schoolboy French – in fact I’m pretty sure I’ve made a dreadful hash of the lyrics for “Great Deceiver” in my post about the band…

Matt: Well, the lyrics are French-like.

Why is that? I’ve looked up Portland on the maps, and you’re not too far from the Canadian border, is that it? Why “fourteen songs about the French and their fucking Frenchy ways”?

Matt: OK, it's not actually in French or any particular language that I know of. A fellow at one of our shows kept saying, "I like those French songs," even after I assured him it was gibberish. I used to write lyrics, but the more I wrote, the farther I got from what I was trying to say.

What’s Portland like? What’s the weather like? Tell us what you’ve been up to today?

Matt: eating as many Little Debbie snack treats as fast as I can, while dipping my feet in some cold water. The weather for May is windy and gray (say 3X fast).

Matt has a pretty distinctive vocal delivery, you could say! It sounds a bit Tom Waits-y, a bit Beefheart-y, who are your favourite singers?

Matt: These are not influences, per se, but these are some of my favorite singers: Jessie Mae Hemphill, Huun Huur Tu musicians, Desmond Dekker. Also, my tonsils are messed up. That probably has as much to do with my vocals as anything.

And I promise not to mention the vocals again, but you sing in French, the songs are delivered in this gruff, way-down-in-the-mix way, and many of your songs are instrumentals. Do you have a bit of an, … um…, “issue” with lyrics? I’d love to see a lyric sheet…

Matt: see above. (Yes, I guess I have an issue.)

Who plays what in the band? I got the basic, keyboards, drums, bass, guitars line-up, but there’s all sorts of other sounds I can hear too – do you have a resident Brian Jones, who can pick up anything and get a tune from it?

Currently this is what's going on --Matt: vocals, guitar, standup bass; Alex: electric bass, organ, keyboards, piano; Geoff: drums, percussion, bird sounds

I really like the title track of your record – there’s something rather chilling and gothic about it. What is a mechanical owl?

Alex: Our son was obsessed with owls at the time, and we like robotic toys, so that's probably how it came about. I'm sure it was something spontaneous that occurred in practice. We liked the sound of the words. We also liked this place in San Francisco that had turn-of-the-century (1900s) penny-arcade games and novelties. It was called Musee Mecanique -- we probably were influenced by that, too. (see http://www.museemechanique.org/)

I reckon I can hear what sounds to me like a bit of nightclub cabaret, some UK post punk and a pinch of European Klezmer in your music. What did you grow up listening to? What are you listening to now? Is there anyone I should be listening to?

Matt: you're right that all those influences can be found in our music. I started with punk rock, but I was into the weirder edges of it, like Pere Ubu and the Birthday Party. I also liked the first Latin Playboys CD. Alex and I have some classical background too, oddly enough. Alex plays classical piano currently and I studied classical bass in high school and college. We also like blues, jazz, Indian classical music, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ethiopiques series, metal, etc.

Alex: The most recent stuff I've bought is Eat Skull (friends), Jessie Mae Hemphill, Cat Power. I'm Sad Horse's number two fan. Hmmm... I like Deerhoof, Omar Souleyman (!!!), tons of stuff.

I’m guessing the chances of me seeing you in the UK are a little slim. If I was ever to come over the pond, what would your gigs be like? I’m imagining a fairly eclectic affair…

Alex: Gigs: people standing far back and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. A couple of very happy people up front, laughing at my dumb jokes. We play all our songs, no matter how peaceful or confusing. If the sound guy likes us, we're happy; if he doesn't, we're sad. If you see us play, we'll buy you a shot of whiskey. We'd like to play in the UK. Can you get us a gig?

Believe me, I’d love to… Here’s the new track I’m posting, the title track from Hibou Mechanique, my favourite song on the record…

Hibou Mechanique

Look who’s back with a brand new style, a brand new look and a brand new smile.

2008-06-09T19:58:00.002Z

This is, I’m afraid, a grossly misleading title, suggesting as it does that I have in some way made a revamp of this site. I haven’t. It’s more of the same really…

I’m getting a bit lazy, these days.

I don’t mean the old “it’s been two weeks since I’ve posted” apology, which is pretty much standard fare amongst bloggers (certainly this one). I’m more talking about the way I get my music fixes of recent. I’m usually a bit of a beachcomber, lifting up rocks and poking sticks at things that move, working my way up the shoreline, bucket brimful of dubious treasures.

But like I say, I’m getting lazy these days and doing my shopping by more conventional means (I’m tempted at this point to try to tease out my seaside fishing metaphor a little further, but I shall hold strong). Basically, I’m saying I’ve not got anything to put up which is actually genuinely new (as in, you’ve never heard this before), but I have got hold of some cracking new records at Emusic in the past few weeks, particularly from the wonderful Nacional Records, based in California but specializing in Latin American beats.

The Pinker Tones

One of the “new” albums I’ve heard recently is by this lot. The Pinker Tones are from Barcelona and are the plaything of a pair of inspired Catalan DJs called Professor Manso and Mr Furia. They have a sound that is quite deliriously exotic at times, based in dance music, which is not really my cup of tea normally, although there’s enough general oddness going on in there as well that I can live with a few iffy break beats. The album I’ve got is “The Million Colour Revolution” which is now a couple of years old, although it still sounds really fresh to these jaded old ears, and I’ve played it to death this fortnight.

I really like the Karma Hunters track from this album, as it’s just impossible to listen to it without smiling (haven’t got a clue what it’s about, mind), and the whole album’s a lot like it. They kind of remind me of Of Montreal, with their cutesy cleverness. Watch this…

Anyway, the Pinker Tones have a new record just out (last week, I think) called Wild Animals out on Nacional Records.

I’m posting a track from the new record “Happy Everywhere”. The other tracks are both from Million Colour Revolution.

Karma Hunters (mp3)

Happy Everywhere (mp3)

Sonido Total (mp3)

More On This Album

Your face was so so so so bright I had to close my eyes to see

2008-05-25T17:05:00.002Z

Not really breaking new ground here, as such, but I came across these tracks this morning when I was trawling through Promonet. And they’re not really like anything else I’ve heard before (always a good sign).

This is definitely my New Favourite Band…

Dengue Fever

Dengue fever is an acute febrile disease found in the tropics and transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito (obviously), but is also the name of a rather rousing six piece from Los Angeles. Led initially by Ethan and Zac Holtzman, they combine a love of garage/Psychedelia with Cambodian pop from the Sixties, that they heard on a trip there. (Bear with me, here.) Zac sings and Ethan plays one of my absolute favourite sounds in music – the Farfisa Organ (we’re back to Question mark, here…).

What really brings it together and allows them to carry it all off is the recruitment of Chhom Nimol, a Cambodian émigré to LA, who had sung in front of the Cambodian royal family before leaving her home. Her voice is quite beautiful, a little fluttery thing that bounces precariously above the denser, heavier backing of the band, and of course gives the whole Cambodian sound a certain authenticity. Have a look at this…

A lot of their songs are performed in Khmer and are covers of Cambodian “classics”. For their first two albums, the Holtzmans actually had their original songs translated into Khmer!

For their latest album, however, some of the songs are written and performed in English, but still manage to preserve a certain sixties naïveté which is quite charming. This album, Venus on Earth, was released in January of this year and for me is an absolute must release. It’s readily available on Emusic – you have no excuses!

Tiger Phone Card (mp3)

Sober Driver (mp3)

More On This Album

Don't Carry the Weight of the World on Your Shoulders

2008-05-24T19:21:00.003Z

We’ve had some sunshine these last few days and it tends to remind you that, sometimes, there really is a summer out there – as opposed to the soggy mess that passed for summer last year.

One of my abiding memories of last year (apart from the site of bowsers being delivered to the bottom of my street) was that of struggling through deep river beds of thick mud at Green Man, and explaining to my son, who was at his first festival, that we’d just been a bit unlucky, and that if he could just imagine how the whole site could have been in glorious sunshine then maybe he’d feel a bit better about the whole experience.

Anyway, I’m still um-ing and ah-ing about Green Man this year. Officially, I’ve decided I won’t be going, but it only took a casual mention from said son to leave me all turned round about it again. I dunno…

I was reminded, though, of one set I caught at last year’s festival, which never quite made it onto these distinguished pages, even though I did record it. I remember standing at the Green Man café, grimly holding onto a cider, waiting for the various water/electric problems to be sorted out, feeling, well, not a little pissed off with the weather. And then this lot came on, and, well, if the sun didn’t actually start shining, let’s just say it felt a little brighter.

Threatmantics

Threatmantics are from Cardiff and, perhaps not surprisingly given that they are a Green Man act, do a fair amount of singing in Welsh. With an idiosyncratic line up of drums, lead guitar and violin, they were a lot of fun, alternately wistful and then blunt. It was a really good set that cheered me up no end.

At the time, they didn’t seem to have much of a web presence, and so I didn’t post about them at all, but now there are a couple of tracks available from their Myspace page which are worth hearing, and there’s an album and new single in the offing.

They’re also playing at this year’s Green Man…

Don’t Carry

Sum Sum

There’s also this video of Threatmantics live which looks a lot like their actual Green Man set, but isn’t…

Bit miserable around here...

2008-05-20T18:59:00.003Z

Stoke up the mp3 and pretend it never happened.

Lucky Seven 7

Clash City Rockers – The Clash
Westbound Train – Dennis Brown
Eros’ Entropic Tundra – Of Montreal
I See You all the Time in Airports – The Handsome Family
Karma Hunter – The Pinker Tones
Louie Louie – Toots & the Maytals
Take the Cash – Wreckless Eric

(The Toots track is outstanding.)

Daughter, dear daughter, what troubles you?

2008-05-04T19:26:00.002Z

I’m not really a country-type – I enjoy walks in the countryside as much as the next man – but to be honest I quite like living in a (smallish) city. I like shops and pubs, streets and people, and the fairly modest hustle and bustle that a city such as mine generates. But still, every now and again I do get a yen for, you know, nature and stuff. Greenery, rain drops, apple blossom and the like…

It’s a rather damp, mild Sunday morning, and these are probably the sort of thoughts middle aged gentlemen with nothing better do are more and more prone to. If I was the car-washing sort, I’d probably be out there right now, whistling to myself and greeting passers-by as long lost friends…

It’s Bank Holiday weekend, and I’ve found some rather gentle, pastoral, music to accompany you through your extended break.

Half Asleep

Half Asleep seems to be mainly the work of Belgian singer Valerie Leclerq, from just outside Brussels, if my school boy French is still reliable. She has a beautiful voice and a knack of arranging her simple songs to great effect, with the help of vocals from her sister, Oriane. There are some really stunning pieces available from the pair available as downloads from their label, Another Record, plus a few more from their own site.

I guess, when you hear the words “French” followed quickly by “sisters”, you might be tempted to think CocoRosie, which will certainly put off a few, but I wouldn’t, if I were you. I’m quite partial to small doses of Cocorosie’s resolute quirkiness but Half Asleep are really nothing like this – they are much purer, much less irritating, concentrating mainly on uncomplicated, guitar and piano arrangements with minimal percussion.

Half Asleep have three albums available, one of which, We Are Now Seated in Profile, is available from Emusic, and as I say a good few downloads to hunt down. I’ve posted my two favourite ones I’ve found so far.

Happy Mayday.

The Butcher’s Boy

Sea Shells

Really worth a listen.

And no sound will come from your phone

2008-04-22T18:21:00.003Z

You’ll probably be aware by now that I get very excited about freebies (out of all proportion, to be honest) and so you’ll be able to work out my feelings when a friend texted to offer me a ticket to go and see Shelia Chandra and Slow at St George’s in Bristol, last weekend.

I actually got the chance to see Slow last week in Gloucester at this month’s Acoustica, but, like the dimwit I am, I chose to stay at home and watch Top 14 rugby (Dax 9 Stade Francais 13, if you missed it). Those who did venture out, however, came back enthusing about Slow, and I began to feel a little foolish.

St George’s is a lovely old venue, a disused church (more like a temple, really) that has been restored for concerts and the like. I imagine the great cavernous ceilings and galleries play havoc with the sound, at times, but the atmosphere is terrific.

Sheila Chandra is mainly famous for her 1982 hit “Ever So Lonely” with Monsoon, although a friend tells me that she was also a member of the Grange Hill cast at one point. I get the impression she’s worked through all that now because there were few concessions to popular culture, and judging from last night’s performance, I’d say she does pretty much what she feels like.

I’ll be frank; she was at times a hard listen. Although she clearly has an excellent voice and skipped cleverly between a number of different cultural traditions, you’ve got to be pretty damn exciting to get through an evening just using vocals and the very minimum of ambient backing tracks. I liked the Gregorian / Sanskrit chanting she did (not as pretentious as it sounds – it worked) and I liked the fact that as a British Asian she had a pretty good understanding of British folk tradition in the songs she did. I also liked the discreet version of “Ever So Lonely” she did (and the fact that she introduced it as a song that her ex-husband wrote for a previous girl-friend – “He did write a beautiful love song for me, but that wasn’t a hit…”) But on the whole, I did find myself wishing for just a little more backing – a tabla here, a guitar there…

Coming on before this, however, was a much more conventional line up in the shape of Bristol five-piece Slow, who specialise in a downbeat, gentle style that showcased the strength of their song-writing pretty well. Framed by the composed rhythms of percussion and bass, and some nicely understated guitar work, each of their songs was performed in two-part harmonies by Marvin and Lucy, and I really liked that. The other element I particularly enjoyed was Lucy’s harmonium playing – it’s an outlandish sound you don’t hear too much these days, which is a shame.

The artists Slow really remind me of, is American group Ida, who do a similar sort of slow tempo, boy-girl vocal interplay that I’m rather partial to, but seeing as how I’m yet to meet anyone who’s heard Ida’s records either, you’re probably no wiser, really.

There was a lot of talk in the bar afterwards of an organic sound that grew naturally, with no one part out-stripping another, which I kind of went along with, because they were such a friendly bunch, but thinking about the gig as I went home, Slow’s set was a bit one-paced and the one part of it I wanted to hear more of was that slightly John Cale-ish harmonium sound – I wouldn’t have minded that part out-stripping the rest.

I’d love to be able to add some tracks by either of these artists at this point but neither of their sites offer any, which I think is a shame, but there you go.

You can, however, go to the websites and Myspaces below to find out more and hear some streamed tracks.

Slow’s Website

Slow’s Myspace

Sheila Chandra’s website

and finally :

Sheila Chandra’s Myspace

Where you’ll find this :

Cheers Al!