There’s a moment that most of us would have to confess to living at least one point in our lives, when it becomes startlingly apparent that you have pushed the boat out too far with the ‘state-altering’ substances. It’s that incredibly uncomfortable moment where you start to feel disconnected from the world going on around you. You feel as though you have been submerged underwater and all sound has become slightly muffled and distant. The night suddenly feels wrong and all the people around you enjoying themselves are monsters. The worst thing is that you know there is no way out, no quick fix answer to bring yourself back from the brink.
Category: Reviews
Live: Cherbourg @ Mad Ferret, Preston 12/06/09
Despite the venue being a small town pub, the atmosphere for the evening’s show is excellent. After the obligatory local bands The Agitator, Derek Meins’ and Robert Dylan Thomas’ new project, take to the stage. Right from the outset the duo amaze any new listeners present, making a fair few of them jump on walking through the doors. The ferocity of Meins’ onstage personality creates an enthralled silence that’s extremely refreshing. The Agitator fluctuate between the soulful and outright outrageous creating a stir amongst the ever growing audience.
Live: Slow Club @ ICA, London
It’s not often that you arrive at the venue and see the band you’ve come to see walking just a few steps ahead, guitars strapped on and using the same doors as you to get in.
OK, so I’ve arrived pretty late (“as per usual”, my friends will tell you) but Charles and Rebecca, better known as Slow Club, start their headline ICA show standing at the back of the hall, from where they launch into an acoustic, unamplified version of ‘Wild Blue Mile’, with their fans circled in reverential silence around them.
Album: Terry de Castro – A Casa Verde
Wedding Present bass player Terry de Castro’s debut solo album is a collection of cover versions written by her friends. The songs, which are not necessarily by well-known or famous artists, are recast by Terry on steel guitar and banjo to create a low-key, distinctly American feel.
Live Review: Willkommen Collective @ The Union Chapel, 5th June 2009
The Union Chapel was bedecked with mildly disturbing papier mache animals, swirling waves, giant trees and sugar paper bunting in the shapes of autumn leaves for Willkommen’s coming out gig at the Union Chapel, where we were treated to the full range of the collective’s talents.
Album: Pagan Wanderer Lu – Fight My Battles For Me
The beauty of Pagan Wanderer Lu isn’t that no two songs sound the same, it’s that no song ends the same as it begins with each track a miniature musical journey. And while your tour guide may be full of charming and witty anecdotes about places of local interest, driving the bus is an escapee from a high security institution coming down from a six week bender. Thus the energy of Fight My Battles For Me is motorway pile-up of musical styles and ideas.
Single: Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes
‘Summertime Clothes‘ is one of the best tracks on one of the best records of the year, Merriweather Post Pavilion. If you don’t own the album, stop reading now and go and buy it. The real challenge for Animal Collective now is to make the single worth getting as well.
Album: Parliament of Owls – Crow
As the achingly beautiful strings of the intro to Parliament of Owls’ debut Crow swelled beneath the singing of birds and a David Attenborough-like voice began to speak, I was stunned into awed silence. Any looming dread about having to review a two-disc album disappeared in one magnificent surge of music and, as commanded by the voiceover, all I could do was “wait and listen for the first songs to begin”.
Album: Caroline Weeks – Songs for Edna
Caroline Weeks (multi-instrumentalist from Bat for Lashes) presents her solo debut in tribute to poet Edna St. Vincent. Which for starters may I just say- feels incredibly refreshing. Not to have a ‘self titled’ album with narcissistic tales of a tortured band member previously in the shadows. Caroline has put nine of Edna’s poems to music with a simple backdrop of finger picked guitar loveliness. Simplicity is the running theme here, with only the odd flute and bell making a cameo with her voice and guitar double act. She eases you into her world gently with ‘See where capella with her golden kids’ and takes you on a slow boat ride through Edna’s works.
Album: Matt & Kim – Grand [sampler]
There’s something in the water in Brooklyn that makes it churn out the coolest of cool bands- Grizzly Bear, Vivian Girls, Bear Hands to name but three, with Matt and Kim’s superbly simple and imperfect DIY indie somewhere amongst all those. And this sampler of Matt and Kim’s second album, Grand, is as bare-boned and rough around the edges as you could wish for, or very Brooklyn.