For Folk's Sake

FFS New Bands Panel: Gypsy & The Wolf

Ian Parker — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:39:22 +0000

Gypsy & The Wolf caused a minor stir with the release of their The Perfect Rose EP earlier this summer, and now the likes of Gary Moore and and Mark Knopfler are throwing praise their way. So what’s all the fuss about? We sent in the panel to find out.

Tom White: Mumford and Sons have been the clear headline act at festivals all summer, and the search is sure to be on for more acts to capture the hearts of a similar audience. Oh look, here’s one now. They’ll probably get sick of the comparison fairly quickly, but Gypsy and the Wolf (and their waistcoats) are tailor-made to fit the niche. Dark lyrics – particularly on Nobody Cares and stand-out track I’m Not The One – sit with cheery, whimsical music and Pictures Of You – a story of bitterly burning a loved one’s possessions, “but I daren’t burn those pictures of you”, which gives way to a chorus of “Oo-ooh sha-la-las” – sums up their superb eight-track The Perfect Rose EP best of all, before the rose-themed double of the title track and Blue Rose rounds things off (bar a radio version of single Good Man) in beautiful style.

Alice Sage: Posturing bands don’t do it for me and these guys are more style than substance, or at least nothing special. Lyrically worse than predictable, though instrumentally diverse – ukeleles, glockenspiels, mandolins aplenty – they utilise occasional gospel harmonies and make some pretty sounds. Unfortunately the singer has what is simply a bad voice. A boring, irritating, nothingy voice., characterless, mediocre and sadly accented with Hackney via Hoxton fakery. Blue Rose is a decent enough track and they are clearly a musically talented two-piece. Not anything to write home about, unfortunately.

Helen True: Musically, these guys are pretty trad-folk with a good dose of slide-guitar country thrown in: low-fi acoustic guitars, banjos, and the thump of a tambourine underly some pretty old-school harmonies. The Perfect Rose EP is an admirable collection of songs, and I’m an especially big fan of The Good Man: an anthemic chorus, an electric organ and some good old-fashioned guitar solos team up to make what could be a bit of a classic. You can listen to them on Spotify too, which is pretty super: Gypsy & The Wolf – The Perfect Rose EP

You can check Gypsy & The Wolf out for yourselves here. Their The Perfect Rose EP is out now.

EP: Dharohar Project, Laura Marling & Mumford & Sons – iTunes Live

Joe Collins — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:21:52 +0000

This brilliantly entertaining EP from Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons and the Dharohar Project is made up of live recordings from their combined set at the iTunes Festival in Camden Roundhouse on the 9th July.

The EP opens with two Mumford & Sons songs, ‘The Cave’ and ‘Roll Away Your Stone’. Despite not sounding that different from the studio recordings on their album Sigh No More, the addition of a live atmosphere and cheering of the crowd really make these tracks excellent. Mumford & Sons are a brilliant band to see live when the infectious hoedown style of their music really comes into its own with rippling banjo and thumping double bass, an effect captured on this EP, and it would be great to see more live recordings released by these guys.

Next up is Laura Marling with ‘I Speak Because I Can’ and ‘Rambling Man’ from her latest album. After the excitement of Mumford & Sons, Marling provides a more calm presence, quietening the audience with her powerful and emotionally stirring lyrics. Dharohar Project follow Marling, and this is where this release really becomes different and interesting. Following suite with the others, they perform two songs ‘Mala Ramaniya’ and ‘Sakhiri Mere’, the former being the most enjoyable song. The final songs on the EP are the most exciting however, when the bands join each other on stage to perform together, with Dharohar Project infusing ‘The Darkness’ and ‘Devils Spoke’ with traditional Indian instruments, and lyrics too.

Overall this EP is an enjoyable and somewhat educating listen, showcasing not only the brilliant live sets of it British stars, but giving the Dharohar a new wider audience too, and hopefully we can look forward to more collaborations betweens these superb artists.

Released: 21st July 2010

Download from: iTunes

FFS New Bands Panel: Larsen B

Ian Parker — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:26:48 +0000

There’s something homely about Larsen B, and we don’t mean their Home Counties background. The debut album, Musketeer, was recorded on a parent’s farm and features the local postman on accordion. But however it was put together, it’s picking up plenty of plaudits, so it’s time for the panel to take a listen.

Emma Dalby Bowler: Larsen B sounds like it should be the name of a dreadful Europop DJ pumping out Grooverider-esque ‘toons’. Luckily, what we’re getting instead is melodic, jaunty loveliness of a Mumford-like persuasion. Larsen B aren’t breaking any moulds, but what they are doing, they’re doing beautifully. Without pomp and bravado, they create elegant sounds and lush harmonies – Codeine channels The Beach Boys, The Gold Cup echoes the Fleet Foxes. That’s pretty good company to be in. Their debut album Musketeer has been generally well received – Mark Ellen of The Word put it in a list of his Top 5 albums of all time. I can’t imagine it’s going to break into mine, but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.

Alice Sage: Larsen B: This is an accomplished band. They have a well-developed sound, reminiscent of 90s indie boys in muddy Hampshire fields. The Gold Cup and Codeine stand out from the mush of indie sweetness, with less predictable accompaniment and waltzing choruses. Marilyn is a track I’d expect to hear from a million other bands – not to say it isn’t lovely to hear. All in all they sound not dissimilar to many other quick-drum, big-chorus folksters. Good, but easy to forget.

Rory Dollard: Just a couple of minutes in the company of Hertfordshire three-piece Larsen B makes you realise just how few bands have treated melody as their first concern in recent years. Thom Yorke’s Kid A-era proclamations that he was “embarrassed” by hummable tunes and the Alan McGee-inspired notion that Coldplay’s sweeping choruses made them “bedwetters” fed the notion that an edgy tone, the right amount of reverb and some fuzzy guitar were ample substitutes for a good tune. Larsen B beg to differ. They deal in sunny-side-up pop songs that call to mind The Delays or Longview and even call up a little nostalgia for the early days of Keane before they suffocated in self-regard.

Check out Larsen B at their myspace page here. Debut album Musketeer is out now on Old Radio Tunes.

FFS New Bands Panel: Georgia Bruce

Ian Parker — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:37:16 +0000

It doesn’t quite seem believable that emerging London talent Georgia Bruce is still a teenager. So much so we had to send in the panel to make sure it was actually true.

Anna Mellor: After only hearing one track by 16-year-old Georgia Bruce, it became obvious she’s to be treasured. The Laura Marling comparisons are going to be inevitable; the youth, the strength of lyrics and song writing and the voice which Laura too possessed at such a young age. There is more innocence to Georgia Bruce though, particularly in the voice which has a sweetness to it. The lyrics tell stories of fools and friends and the melodies are strong and pretty. The Fool’s Lament shows a incredible start from the North Londoner and I believe there will be much more exciting things to come from her. Without a doubt one to watch!

Damien Girling: Georgia Bruce is a precocious London resident. That she’s making her way into the world of indie-folk before most have begun there A-Levels will draw inevitable comparisons with Laura Marling. However the most immediate resemblance I find is to Kate Rusby, Emmy the Great, Lilly Allen and Kate Nash. Whilst the later two artists may find you turning up your nose it is in their oscillating between spoken, London-accentuated, vocals and melodic singing where affinity is found. There is little similarity to the music itself, which is influenced by the pleasant finger picking and sweet chord progressions of Kate Rusby and Emmy the Great. Where Bruce’s songwriting differs in approach to these two artists is in it’s sparsity, there is no instrumentation beyond her guitar. There is of course time for this to come and for now it’s fair to say that Bruce is building a solid foundation that could see her become a leading light within the indie-folk scene in the future.

Alice Sage: The unfeasibly young Londoner Georgia has talent in buckets. Her voice (adaptable, clear, strong, beautiful) is tainted with the lightness and clarity of youth. Her lyrics are similarly innocent, colourful but compelling, complex and moving, nevertheless. She has a genuine skill for fiddly lines and unexpected key changes. This Story is musically beautiful and lyrically surprising. Though there is triteness and tweeness in her stories it doesn’t dampen the joy of listening to them. She gets double thumbs up for slipping into dropped-consonant fake-cockerney just once – the rest of the time her voice is uniquely her own. I hope she keeps to the finger-picking simplicity and story-telling enthusiasm that seems to come so naturally to her. Definitely worth hearing more.

Check Georgia Bruce out for yourself at her myspace page here.

Jay Jay Pistolet’s new band first track revealed

Lynn Roberts — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:07:48 +0000

Jay Jay Pistolet’s “new direction”, much speculated about since he hung up his acoustic guitar last year, was revealed recently. He’s the singer with new London-based rock ‘n’ rollers The Vaccines.

There’s not much info about the band to be found on their website. But if you like an arty photo or two, you’d be well advised to head over there.

We’ll keep the information coming as we have it, but in the meantime have a listen to their first song, If You Wanna. It’s already been given away on Lauren Laverne’s 6 Music show and lauded as ‘the hottest record in the world’ by Zane Lowe on Radio 1. We’re loathe to add to the hype, really, but it’s pretty good so we just have.

Album: The Burns Unit – Side Show

Ian Parker — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:00:53 +0000

‘Supergroup’ is one of those terms that gets thrown out there all the time. Two or three folks get together from different bands for a side project, and suddenly its a supergroup.

Except usually it’s not. Usually it’s not nearly as good as what they do in their day jobs (we’re looking at your James Mercer – just make another Shins LP already). But while they may not be a supergroup in the heavyweight mould of a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Burns Unit justify the name.

Eight artists from Scotland and Canada have come together to form something genuinely bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s far from an obvious combination of talents. From award-winning Scottish folkster Karine Polwart to the ever-prolific King Creosote to rapper MC Soom T, there’s a huge range of talents here, giving the Burns Unit an enviable array of resources, styles and ideas to call on.

And it shows. The name Side Show suggests this album could be just another side project, but it very much feels like the main event. It almost feels like it should be a stage production, the six vocalists combining like different actors to tell a story musically diverse yet entirely coherent.

Since We’ve Fallen Out is the slow-burning opener, but it soon gives way to the upbeat pop of Trouble, before Soom T brings her trademarks political lyrics to the fore on Send Them Kinds To War. The album continues through rock, synth-pop and even bits of cabaret before hitting its high point in the driving Majesty of Decay.

You can hear how much fun these eight artists are having working together, and we can only hope this is more than a one-off before they go back to their solo careers.

Brian’s Mixtape #42: Cake and Coffee

Brian — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:42:50 +0000

After his Schmercury playlist triumph, Brian is taking another mixtape-making breather, but that’s not to say you’re missing out on a playlist of treats, oh no.

Even though his usual meal of choice would be acorn wine and some barbecued mouse, Brian’s partial to a bit of what we humans enjoy now and again, so he’s roped in his friend Siobhan from The Gallery Cafe in East London to make a coffee and cake themed playlist.

Siobhan’s no amateur when it comes to putting together a good set of tunes. The Gallery Cafe’s regular Spotify playlists are a thing of legend round Brian’s way, his ‘hood is regularly soothed by the folky loveliness emerging from the Cafe’s speakers.

And the venue will be hosting yet more marvellous music this Saturday evening, when the Allotment — run by Anika from Anika in London and Lynn from FFS — will be putting on a show featuring legendary Team Love songwriter David Dondero, Joe Innes and recent New Band Panel artist Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golems. Tickets are available here.

Here’s Siobhan’s playlist in full:
The Wave Pictures – Instant Coffee Baby
Blur – Coffee And TV
Otis Redding – Cigarettes And Coffee
John Sebastian – Coffee Blues
Bing Crosby – If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d Have Baked A Cake
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – Cup Of Coffee
John McCusker – The Cake’s Maker’s Wife
Nat King Cole – You’re The Cream In My Coffee
Bill Haley & His Comets – Pat-A-Cake
Bing Crosby – Sunshine Cake
Guy Clark – Instant Coffee Blues
Peggy Lee – Black Coffee
Muddy Waters – Iodine In My Coffee
Roger McGuinn & Calexico – One More Cup Of Coffee

Click here for a listen: Brian’s Mixtape #42: Cake and Coffee

EP: Sufjan Stevens – All Delighted People

Stephen W Thomas — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:26:21 +0000

Way back in 2005, when the world was a happier place – as yet untainted by financial apocalypse, Twilight still only available in hardback, and with all of us looking a great deal younger than we do today, all saggy and withered – Sufjan Stevens released Illinois, arguably the greatest American folk album of the 2000s. A ridiculously detailed concept album, Illinois was the proof many needed to qualify Stevens as the brightest talent in America. And then… nothing. Not really, at least. The following years saw sporadic releases from Stevens, in the forms of outtakes records, Christmas song collections, instrumental pieces inspired by terrible works of civil engineering and a barely-listenable re-interpretation of his debut recorded by a string quartet who had seemingly no control over their limbs. And then, out of the blue, three days ago, an EP. Except, this being Sufjan Stevens, All Delighted People is no ordinary EP.

In fact, it is as good as an album, clocking in just forty-five seconds shy of a full hour, and home to eight tracks, three of which are long enough to guarantee they’ll never be played on the radio. And so, after five years of waiting, fans have a collection of songs that could, with some credibility, be called the follow-up to Illinois. There will, of course, be the inevitable comparisons to said album, though we mention it here only to build a sense of an expectation – the sort of expectation fans of Stevens’ music will most likely feel in regards to All Delighted People. And this we mention only to illustrate this point: many people are bound to be disappointed, such are their expectations. Similarly, many people will rave endlessly on about the new EP, as though it were the second tablet Moses brought down from the mountain. “Wow! And we thought ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ was good, wait till you hear ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’!”

All Delighted People is, however, a more than pleasant collection of songs. Stevens’ weakest new tracks, ‘From the Mouth of Gabriel’, ‘The Owl and the Tanager’ are weak only in that they are not instantly memorable – they are not songs that have within them a tendency to instantly grab the listener, to drag them in a hold their ears at ransom until they fall in love. This is perhaps what the longer songs are able to do – the two versions of the title track, which grow more and more impressive not only through repeat listens, but through the course of the songs themselves. The ‘original version’ of ‘All Delighted People’ is especially heart-warming, building to a dramatic chorus of seemingly dozens of voices, singing the lyrics with glorious passion. Stevens remains, above all else, a master of instrumentation – a man who can bring together sounds, voices and, very often, noises in order to create something that seems natural, and is natural, and is beautiful.

Despite this innate ability to find beauty in noise – a talent Stevens utilised throughout his instrumental BQE album – the better songs on the EP are those not burdened by complexity. The gentler songs, the quieter and less produced tracks, such as ‘Heirloom’ and ‘Arnika’ stand-out as the logical development of Stevens’ work on earlier albums. Few match the simple and effective melodies found on Illinois or, say, Seven Swans, but they remain familiar in the same way a statue is not the same as, but is still a great likeness to the person after whom it is created.

Perhaps most worthy of recognition is the closing track, a eighteen-minute song with an eleven minute intro. Featuring a chanting choir of sorts, and a guitar solo reminiscent of that on Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’, ‘Djohariah’ is a haunting song that takes over your world over the course of its duration, and is the closest Stevens has yet come to matching his unreleased masterpiece, ‘Majesty Snowbird’.

All Delighted People is a collection of songs as bound to disappoint some as it is to enthuse others, and though it is perhaps mismatched as an album, it is not formed to be one. As an EP it serves a purpose – to tide us over until Steven’s next full length album, as opposed to his full length album in the guise of an EP. The songs are not perfect, but they are, for the most part, beautiful, and if they were the work of any other musician, we’d all be more than content with that.

Label: Asthmatic Kitty

Release date: 20th August

Singles round-up: Clinic, Harper Simon, Sleepy Sun

Lynn Roberts — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:07:43 +0000

Clinic – I’m Aware
Clinic’s I’m Aware is evenly spread across its three minutes of running time. The band hints at its affinity for minor, slightly uncomfortable chords throw a wrench into the natural sense of how a song should develop. On I’m Aware, Clinic offers just enough discomfort to ensure the listener does not become complacent with the swaying ease of the song’s verses. This dreamy, vaporous piece is punctuated by clean rim-shots and snare-hits, providing rhythmic points of reference. The clarity of those sounds in parallel with the wobbly autowah, flange, and reverb on the lead guitar is like a strong cup of coffee cutting through the flavour of a sugary piece of cake. I’m Aware is a worthy addition to an already compelling body of work from Clinic.

Sleepy Sun – Marina
The colossal and dissonant introductory movement of Marina provides just enough distortion to induce a meditative state. There is a strange calm within the chaos, not unlike parts of Butthole Surfers’ Pepper from so many years ago. The distorted sections provide instrumental stepping-stones between more delicate, twinkling lyricism in the first half of the single. Just as the song is nearing the limit of the listener’spatience the plodding tempo, Sleepy Sun ascends to another plane with an up-tempo section in which they flex their vocal harmonisation muscle. Sleepy Sun’s Marina begs many questions, and has a breadth that makes it a great opener for an album or show.

Harper Simon – Berkeley Girl
At first listen, I was concerned that Harper Simon’s Berkeley Girl would fall victim to endless comparisons between the subject of the song and objects of beauty. Happily, after the delightful first turn of phrase, “She is juniper and roses/ She is amethyst and pearl/ Though she makes her home in Hollywood/ She really just a Berkeley Girl”, there is only a light dusting of metaphor. The lyrics quickly become more frank and simply share warmth towards a still-loved ex. The sentiments of Berkeley Girl are crisp, honest, and not overambitious. The song is a concise and complete musical thought. And sparked the interest of this listener enough that I returned to his self-titled album from which it came.

Words: Pablo Quesada

Live: Mariner’s Children and Tristram

FFS writers — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:30:26 +0000

The Mariner's Children

It was a windy night and the sun had begun to sink into the horizon, when a crowd of folk-loving youths sat their bottoms onto the deck of the Tamesis Dock, a boat moored along the south side of the Thames.

Tristram and his band began – their lulling melodies hushing the crowd, as though we were sat down for story-time. Tristram’s melancholic voice tells an unusual tale – from ‘Me and James Dean’ to ‘Ballad of the Stolen Bicycle’ to ‘Zombie Holocaust’. Reminiscent of Laura Marling, Tristram stretches his notes whilst changing pitch, carrying you along the song with him.

The Mariner’s Children explained to the audience it was only their second headline gig, at which one wanted to both clap and cuddle them. The crowd was full of support and enthusiasm towards such plaintive songs as ‘Back I Beat the Waves’ and ‘Waltz for a Sleeping Lover’. Various strings accompanied folklor-ish images depicted in Coal and stomping drums built into a powerful ending: the instruments stopping and the musicians’ voices singing out into the body of the boat.

That night, both bands demonstrated that there is something fundamental and human to folk music: its acoustic instruments, male and female harmonies, stamping feet and clapping hands. These elements have the ability to bring us all together – and have done for countless generations.

Words: Juliet Cochrane

For Folk's Sake

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