For Folk's Sake

#80 She & Him – I Could’ve Been Your Girl

Ali Mason — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:01 +0000

Not that you should need any extra incentive to take in anything and everything that She & Him do, but their latest video is perhaps most notable for being Zooey Deschanel’s directorial debut. She told her HelloGiggles website: “After seven years and four albums with She & Him, I figured it was about time I took a crack at making a video for a song I wrote. The process was so much fun and gave me a chance to give a nod to some of my favorite ’60s musicals.” See how many you can spot. Then rush out and buy She & Him’s latest album, Volume 3.

News | Laura Marling Secret Cinema event announced

Ali Mason — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:03:32 +0000

A link-up between Laura Marling and Secret Cinema – described as an “immersive live music experience” – has been announced for June.

Details are thin on the ground, what with it being a secret and all, but eight dates have been scheduled between June 13 and June 21 in a “secret east London location”, with tickets released on Thursday.

“Secret Cinema is pleased to announce the launch of an immersive live music experience, creating the world of Laura Marling’s latest album for eight nights in a secret East London location,” an email from Secret Cinema read.

“Secret Cinema will bring to life Laura Marling’s Once I Was An Eagle in a sensory experience from June 13th until June 21st. Featuring a live performance by Laura, audiences will travel through a secret world of the album that will be layered across the building, breathing life into lyrics, where they are invited to become a part of the performance.”

Launched in 2007, Secret Cinema is known for showing films in unusual locations and creating immersive experiences around the screenings. Typically audiences do not know what film they will be viewing, but receive instructions about costumes to wear or props to bring along. Recent films have included the Shawshank Redemption and Prometheus, while there have been previous musical collaborations with Radiohead, Massive Attack and Imogen Heap.

Don’t expect to find out a whole lot more – details of SC events are top secret, with non-disclosure agreements the norm – but do expect something innovative and exciting.

Marling’s new album Once I Was An Eagle is out next Monday.

Album | She & Him – Volume 3

Ian Parker — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:00:36 +0000

We’re guessing it wasn’t a long meeting between M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel before they settled on the title Volume 3 for this, their, uhm, third collection of 60s-tinged pop. But it wasn’t just the title that was inevitable about this record. You could already guess the sunny sound, the (deliberately) corny lyrics, and the format of a handful of carefully-picked covers surronded by a host of time-warped original compositions.

To that end, you also probably already knew if you were going to like this album. If you’re a fully signed up member of the She & Him fan club, someone with Volumes 1 & 2 safely stashed away in the record collection alongside the Christmas album, you’ll have been eagerly waiting on this release. And if those albums did nothing for you, feel free to keep on walking by.

Just be aware that if you do, you will, in our opinion, be missing out. Because, really, what is not to like about She & Him’s lovingly crafted tribute to a lost age in pop music? When they are turning out music of the simple joy of ‘I Could’ve Been Your Girl’ or ‘Sunday Girl’ it’s really a test to listen without a smile on your face. Perhaps recognising that they can only take this so far without a little reinvention, there are some subtle tweaks, an extra pinch of country twang here, a few extra horns there, and on the lovely ‘London’, a beautiful piano-led ballad. But on the whole they’ve stuck to what has worked before. Volume 3 is another collective of sugar-coated pop songs made to celebrate the pure pleasure of music.

#79 Ane Brun – This Voice 2013

Ian Parker — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:00:01 +0000

Ane Brun will next week release her career retrospective Songs 2003-2013 and is marking the occasion with a re-recording of ‘This Voice’, which originally appeared on her 2005 record A Temporary Dive. The once gentle song has been reimagined as a pulsing, rhythmical tune with a full band sound, and is accompanied by a new video made up from recent live appearances.

Stream | Georgia Ruth’s debut album Week of Pines

Ian Parker — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:11:46 +0000

Welsh harpist Georgia Ruth this week releases her highly-anticipated debut album Week of Pines and we’re delighted to be able to offer a full stream of the record right here. The Aberystwyth artist has developed a distinctive picking style which has earned her comparisons with a host of folk heroes such as Bert Jansch and Meic Stevens. Find out why by pressing play.

Album | Nancy Elizabeth – Dancing

Ali Mason — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:31:29 +0000

Nancy Elizabeth is a true musical artist. There are few acts around in 2013 who have mastered the craft of making music like she has. Listening to Dancing, her third album and the one of which she says she is most proud, is like strolling through an exhibition, where the palette subtly changes as the pieces progress, themes and motifs come and go and you relax in the hands of a master at work.

Elizabeth seems to occupy a sphere apart from rest of the music scene. Where many folk luminaries have an affected note to their vocals, Elizabeth’s voice is ingenuous and natural. There’s not a hint of concession to the Americana which seems to influence much of the scene at the moment. Indeed, it’s difficult to place Dancing anywhere. It’s an album born of stillness, of emptiness. The sounds layer up like paint on a page, the silence they are built upon every bit as much a part of the piece as an artist’s canvas.

Take ‘Debt’, which starts out in familiar territory, before sitars and synths are layered in and the whole thing builds to a climax of “come on”s and handclaps before dropping back down to earth again. Or ‘Death In A Sunny Room’, which flowers from a two-and-a-half-minute piano-and-harp intro. ‘Shimmering Song’ dissolves to leave a single voice, singing about the restlessness of romance, while ‘All Mouth’ and ‘Early Sleep’, which closes Dancing, are hypnotic sound installations That said, there are moments of pure folk. ‘Desire’ keeps things simple and would be at home on her last album, Wrought Iron, and opener ‘The Last Battle’ is a perfect gateway track.

Underpinning the whole thing, though, is melody. And this is never more obvious than on singles ‘Heart’ and ‘Simon Says Dance’. ‘Heart’, with its skittering drum beat and sinister air, is sad and inspiring: “The end of my days and I’m so alone. Don’t remember my name or myself, don’t remember his face or even his voice, though I never let love go.” The playful ‘Simon Says Dance’ shows off her wit as a songwriter, beginning: “We may think we’ve not met before but we’ve danced out our lives on a million dancefloors,” before a mesmerizing troupe of dance metaphors takes over.

The dance metaphors are apt: the album’s title arises, Elizabeth has said, from an awareness late at night – when most of it was written – of the passage of time. It’s an awareness, of time moving on and passing by, that pervades the album, giving it darkness and urgency. But it’s hard to imagine how Elizabeth could better have spent her time than constructing this rich and extraordinary album.

Stream | Laura Marling’s new album ‘Once I Was An Eagle’

Lynn Roberts — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:05:11 +0000

Laura Marling’s fourth album ‘Once I Was An Eagle’ is due for release in the UK on 27th May. But you can hear it now via NPR.

And while we’re on the subject of Lazzle, have you heard her gorgeous cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’ performed with Californial songwriter Eddie Berman?

EP | Patch & The Giant – The Boatswain’s Refuge

Ian Parker — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:39 +0000

If you’re already familiar with Patch & The Giant you’ll have been expecting their debut EP to be named after a boat or a boatman. And so it is. Drawn from all four corners of our little Island – and additionally from another Island all together – this merry band of two Scots, an Ulterman, Jerseyman, southerner, Somerset shanyman and Kentish maid have always their eyes firmly out to sea. They may now base themselves in London, but we can’t imagine them ever straying too far from the docklands, stood on a quayside somewhere blasting out their rambunctious soundtrack of the waves.

With a rich blend of instruments – ranging from the more straightforward guitar through assorted drums and percussion to ukuleles, fiddles, cellos, mandolins, flugelhorns and more – their merry array of sing-a-longs carry you right up the gangplank and put you on board as they set sail. They’ve already established a fantastic reputation for live performances, but they’ve captured plenty of that energy on record too.

Through the course of this five-track EP they show their range of styles with the softer, delicate ‘Love And War’ coming before ‘The Heretic And The Albatross’, which several members of the band have declared their favourite precisely because it’s the opposite and they get to engage in lots of “cathartic” shouting. ‘Gone’, one of the more recent compositions goes through the full range from its lonesome solo vocal opening which ultimately grows into the band’s trademark full sound. ‘Yourself Into The Sea’ then caps it off with a full-blown sing-a-long, so raise a jar of rum and dive in to a delightful debut EP which fully warms the cockles.

The Boatswain's Refuge EP by Patch and The Giant

Album | The Baptist Generals – Jackleg Devotional To The Heart

Ian Parker — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:39:06 +0000

The Baptist Generals’ sophomore album begins like a schizophrenic soundtrack to an Atari computer game, beeping and buzzing as a guitar tries to make up its mind which key to play in. ‘Machine En Prolepis’ does settle down after a while, but only a little, and it sets the tone for a second dose of the Generals’ brand of slightly claustrophobic folk, music that always has an edge, is never at ease, like every other note is actually a nervous tick.

‘Jackleg Devotional To The Heart’ is a sophomore album 10 years in the making, and emerges into the light like a recluse making those first few uncertain steps back into society. It shuffles rather than strides, always ever so slightly awkward and sometimes almost apologetic for that fact. But this is not a complaint. Just as though you were watching a real-life person making their way back, you find yourself somehow rooting for the album to make it.

And you can track the progress. While the early part of the record is full of quirky sounds, as it moves forward you can sense its eyes adjusting to the light of day and there are some real moments of beauty. The sweeping ‘My Oh My’ and the delicate ‘Morning of My Life’ feel like the end of a long journey, the ironing out of all that uncertainty which marked the first half of that record.

While they have taken their time in doing it, the band have succeeded on their stated mission – the one which saw them scrap the first attempt at a follow-up album in 2005 because it sounded like plain old indie-rock – they’ve produced a coherent album that is uniquely theirs.

#78 Natalie Evans – Library Days

Ian Parker — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:00:08 +0000

Kent songwriter Natalie Evans has just released her second EP Houses, which shows off a style so dreamy that she manages to make a day spent at the library seem like a spiritual pastime. The six-track EP focuses lyrically on escapism and the lush arrangement of guitar, piano and violin perfectly captures that mood. The record is available now from Natalie’s bandcamp page.

For Folk's Sake

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