“I’m traveling in some vehicle/ I’m sitting in some cafe/ A defector from the petty wars/ Until love sucks me back that way” Hejira represented a new peak of sophistication in Joni Mitchell’s writing when it appeared on Asylum Records…
Category: Reviews
Live: FFS @ The Great Escape
On paper, Brighton’s Great Escape is a rather extraordinary proposition. Take three hundred or so up-and-coming artists, sprinkle on a dusting of more established acts and spread them across a hotchpotch of 30 venues. While that’s bubbling away nicely, throw…
FFS New Bands Panel: The Son(s)
Originally a three-piece, the Sons are now just one, who I guess we’ll call the Son. Ploughing a lonely furrow, the remaining Son is working on a new EP and our panel took a listen to the work in progress.…
Classic Album: Joni Mitchell – Clouds
Clouds was Joni Mitchell’s second album and won her a Grammy for best folk performance in 1970. I didn’t know the album’s biography before I came to write this piece because when you come to an artist with a large…
Live: Po’Girl @ Holywell Music Hall, Oxford
Po’Girl stem from Canada and comprise Allison Russell, Awna Teixeira, and Benny Sidelinger. Allison and Awna both have incredible voices and produce incredible harmonies, yet as multiple instrumentalists they bring to their showcases a wide array of instruments that include…
Live: The Antlers @ The Scala, London
Kings Cross is an area lacking identity over and above being a major travel hub. The immediate vicinity is a tableau of inner city post-industrial decline and recent attempts at regeneration which have, in the main, failed. The venue for…
Album: William Fitzsimmons – Derivatives
William Fitzsimmons, the son of two blind musicians from Pittsburgh, announced his arrival last year with his official debut The Sparrow And The Crow. Filled with the sort of gentle folk-rock that quickly racked him up a series of US…
Classic Album: Ain’t No Neil – Joni Mitchell’s For The Roses
In 1972, two Canadian musicians released amazing folk albums, both coincidentally featuring songs about heroin addicts. Despite the links between Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, listening to Harvest and For The Roses I feel like they were never really trying…
Album: Family Band – Miller Path
The Family Band are formed of husband/wife duo Johnny Ollsin and Kim Krans, and their friend Scott Hirsch, but it’s been said they have a “fourth member”, their log home plan cabin in the Catskills Mountains of upstate New York…
FFS New Bands Panel: The Stan Laurels
The Stan Laurels is the solo project of John Lathrop, a musician from Austin, Texas. He describes his solo album, Death of the Sun, as “a psych-pop/rock/prog concept album with the theme ‘boy meets girl, boy gets abducted by aliens’.”…