For Folk's Sake » News

News | Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe train tour documentary announced

Lynn Roberts — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:39:49 +0000

A film about Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show’s railroad trip across America will be debuted at SXSW.

Big Easy Express documents the Railroad Revival Tour the bands embarked on in April last year. Playing sold out shows in 6 cities – from San Francisco to New Orleans – travelling on a vintage train.

The tour echoed the famous Festival Express tour, when The Band, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead travelled Canada by train, playing gigs along the way.

Big Easy Express was directed by Emmett Malloy

News | Fránçois & the Atlas Mountain cover Slow Club + This is the Kit cover them

Lynn Roberts — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:29:56 +0000

Fránçois & The Atlas Mountain by Lola Perstowsky

The lovely Fránçois & the Atlas Mountain have put together a gorgeous cover of the Slow Club track Gold Mountain, and Slow Club are due to repay the favour.

Listen here:

Slow Club’s Rebecca said of the cover: “I really love it, Fránçois (obviously) found funk where we didn’t even realise there was funk!”

Team Fránçois is playing London shows tonight and tomorrow, and if you didn’t get your act together for those, the band recently announced a headline show at Cargo on 18th April.

And while we’re at it, here’s FFS favourite This is the Kit with a gorgeous cover of Fránçois’ song Les Plus Beaux.

News | Soap & Skin announce new mini album

Lynn Roberts — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:11:24 +0000

Austrian Anja Plaschg has announced the release of a new mini-album on March 19th.

Self-played and produced, Narrow follows Soap & Skin’s debut album Lovetune for Vacuum, which was released in 2009.

The record features ‘Vater’, a song about her father, who died suddenly of a stroke in July 2009.

Tracklisting
1. Vater
2. Voyage Voyage
3. Deathmental
4. Cradlesong
5. Wonder
6. Lost
7. Boat Turns Toward The Port
8. Big Hand Nails Down

Soap & Skin will play a single UK show at Scala in London. Tickets are on sale now.

News | Sons of Noel and Adrian announce UK tour

Ian Parker — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:17:24 +0000

Sons of Noel and Adrian have announced a UK tour this Spring as they prepare to release their second album Knots. The band will hit the road in April with five dates, touring an album that promises to see them move on from the acoustic tone of their debut and crank up the amplifiers.

The band say the record does a far better job of recreating their live sound than their debut, so one of these five shows might be just the place to give it a listen.

News | J. Tillman returns with first song as Father John Misty

Ian Parker — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:40:27 +0000

Hot on the heels of announcing his departure from Fleet Foxes, J. Tillman has unveiled the first sounds from his new project Father John Misty, offering up a free download and a video for ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings’, and talking at length about what has led to this new stage in his career.

The track is taken from debut album Fear Fun, due for release on April 30.

Father John Misty – Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings from Bella Union on Vimeo.

Tillman, who has released several solo albums in addition to his work with Fleet Foxes, has also been explaining the need for a new name and a new look to his work, starting off by quoting author Philip Roth at us: “‘It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it’. What I call it is totally arbitrary, but I like the name. You’ve got to have a name. I never got to choose mine,” he said.

“‘People who make records are afforded this assumption by the culture that their music is coming from an exclusively personal place, but more often than not what you hear are actually the affectations of an ‘alter-ego’ or a cartoon of an emotionally heightened persona.

“That kind of emotional quotient isn’t sustainable if your concern is portraying a human-being made up of more than just chest-beating pathos. I see a lot of rampant, sexless, male-fantasy everywhere in the music around me. I didn’t want any alter-egos, any vagaries, fantasy, escapism, any over-wrought sentimentality. I like humour and sex and mischief. So when you think about it, it’s kind of mischievous to write about yourself in a plain-spoken, kind of explicitly obvious way and call it something like ‘Misty’. I mean, I may as well have called it ‘Steve’”.

Speaking about the new record, Tillman admits it was born from an “immobilizing period of depression”, but believes the results are the most worthwhile music he has made to date.

“Songwriting for me had always only been interesting and necessary because I saw it as this vehicle for truth, but I had this realization that all I had really done with it was lick my wounds for years and years, and become more and more isolated from people and experiences,” he said. “I don’t even like wound-licking music, I want to listen to someone rip their arm off and beat themselves with it. I don’t believe that until now I’ve ever put anything at risk in my music. I was hell-bent on putting my preciousness at stake in order to find something worth singing about.

“I lost all interest in writing music, or identifying as a ‘songwriter’. I got into my van with enough mushrooms to choke a horse and started driving down the coast with nowhere to go. After a few weeks, I was writing a novel, which is where I finally found my narrative voice. The voice that is actually useful.

“It was a while before that voice started manifesting in a musical way, but once I settled in the Laurel Canyon spider-shack where I’m living now, I spent months demoing all these weird-ass songs about weird-ass experiences almost in real-time, and kind of had this musical ‘Oh-there-I-am’ moment, identical to how I felt when I was writing the book. It was unbelievably liberating. I knew there was never any going back to the place I was writing from before, which was a huge relief. The monkey got banished off my back.”

The album was recorded with producer and songwriter Jonathan Wilson, starting in February of last year, and features any number of different musicians who were invited in to take part.

“Initially, the idea was to just kind of recreate the demos with me playing everything, since they were pretty fleshed out and sounded cool, but a place like LA affords you a different wealth of talent, potential, etc than just about anywhere else,” Tillman said. “I realised what was possible between Jonathan’s abilities, and the calibre of musicians that are just hanging around LA, pretty quickly. People were coming in and out of the studio all day sometimes, and other days, it would just be Jonathan and I holed up, getting stoned, and doing everything.

“I was honest with myself about what music actually excites my joy-glands when I was considering the arrangements and instrumentation. As opposed to what’s been enjoyable to me in the past – namely, alienating people or making choices based what I think people won’t like or understand. Pretty narcissistic stuff.”

You can snare a download of the new track below.

News | Bella Union to release debut album from Hannah Cohen

Ian Parker — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:37:32 +0000

We at FFS are starting to get very excited about Bella Union’s latest signing, New York-based singer Hannah Cohen. She’s given us a teaser of debut album Child Bride, due in April, in the form of the beautiful ‘The Crying Game’. Cohen’s haunting vocals will grab you straight away, while the delicate guitar work works its way into your head in the background.

After wowing her friends with late night performances of the songs she had been working, Cohen went into the studio with producer Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, who has worked with The National and Anthony & The Johnsons to deliver the album.

You can hear The Crying Game below, while awaiting the release of the album on April 23.

Download | Admiral Fallow’s new single Beetle In The Box

Ian Parker — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:49:25 +0000

Admiral Fallow have given us the first taste of the follow up to their cracking debut album Boots Met My Face by offering a free download of new single ‘Beetle In The Box’. Click here to get the track.

The track, which was debuted on Huw Stephens’ Radio 1 show before going live on their website, is due to get a physical release in March on a limited edition white vinyl, preceding the May release of their sophomore album.

The band will play a pair of shows in Glasgow this weekend, headlining the ABC on Friday the 27th, and supporting Snow Patrol at the SECC on Saturday before heading to London’s Borderline to play HMV’s Next Big Thing show with We Are Augustines on February 2nd. But if you don’t have a ticket already, you’ll miss out as all three gigs have sold out.

News | Sea of Bees announce new album “Orangefarben”.

Ellie Rumbold — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:14:32 +0000

Sea of Bees.

Following the success of her debut album “Songs for the Ravens”, Julie Ann Baenziger (or better known as Sea of Bees), has announced the release of her second album titled; “Orangefarben”. The album is set to be released on the 9th April 2012, and contains 10 solid tracks highlighted with guitar, bass and lots of drums.

With Julie (or Jules as everyone calls her), it is her distinctive voice that makes her songs so brilliantly unique, her main influences being along the likes of Joanna Newsom, Sigur Ross and Bright Eyes. What seems to be the stand out track on Orangefarben is Jules’ heart-tugging rendition of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. Following the end of a relationship with a woman Julie used to call Orangefarben (“the colour of orange” in English), this album is your classic break-up record.

With the creation of a mature and unified album, it is a very exciting step forward for Sea of Bees….. and one we’re all very, very edited about.

Sea of Bees plays several shows in the US, NYC. See here.

Words: Ellie Rumbold.

News | M. Ward returns with solo album

Ian Parker — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:30:02 +0000

After three years spent on his side-projects She & Him and Monsters of Folk, M Ward will return to solo duty this April with the release of his sixth album A Wasteland Companion on Bella Union. The album is being billed as a musical travelogue after months spent on the road in support of his bands.

“Between now and when I made Hold Time there has been a lot of travelling which requires a lot of reckoning with what to leave behind and what to carry – material and otherwise – and thinking about what I want versus what I need, creatively and otherwise,” Ward said. “I wanted to get a reflection of that on the album. It was a process of stripping away my security blanket, which is the same four walls I always record in.”

A record about moving, it has certainly been made on the move, with the 12 tracks recorded in different sessions across America in Portland, Omaha, New York City, Los Angeles and Austin, as well as in Bristol, England. Among the many collaborators Ward met along the way are Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb, Bright Eyes’ Mike Mogis, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, Dr. Dog’s Tobey Leaman, Jon Parish and, of course, the other half of She & Him, Zooey Deschanel.

A Wasteland Companion is scheduled for release in the UK on April 9. Before then, Ward will go on a short UK tour on the dates below.

Tuesday 20 March – LONDON – Leicester Square Theatre (£16)
Sunday 25 March – LONDON – Royal Albert Hall (with Feist)
Monday 26 March – MANCHESTER – Apollo (with Feist)
Tuesday 27 March – GLASGOW – Royal Concert Hall (with Feist)

News | J. Tillman leaves the Fleet Foxes

Ian Parker — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:29:05 +0000

Fleet Foxes fans got some good news last night with word of new music via Poor Moon, the new side-project of Christian Wargo and Casey Wescott, but now there is word that drummer J. Tillman has left the band.

Tillman, who joined the Foxes in 2008 after the recording of their debut self-titled album but shortly before its release, is now planning to return to his solo career. He has released seven solo albums, including three during his time with the Foxes, and is now working on another under the name Father John Misty.

The news came via Tillman’s blog, on which he wrote: “”Farewell Fleet Fans and Friends. Back into the gaping maw of obscurity I go. Tokyo is my last show with the Foxes. Sorry if I was distant and obtuse if we ever met. Have fun.”

For Folk's Sake » News

News | Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe train tour documentary announced

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Download | Admiral Fallow’s new single Beetle In The Box

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News | Sea of Bees announce new album “Orangefarben”.

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News | M. Ward returns with solo album

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