Mumford and Sons at a hoe-down in an out-of-town barn...
When I first came to university (and to London) I started writing for rockfeedback.com – it was a window into the wider music industry, to have CDs posted to me, merely for the benefit of me having a public opinion on them. Writing about music was something that slipped away more and more, and not for any Zappa/Costello/Steve Martin-quoting disdain, but simply because actively filming music and writing/performing music often took over, both in time and attention.
In any case, from time to time I’ll be writing column-pieces or reviews for rockfeedback, and as-and-when I do I’ll cross post them here. I just wrote my first ‘blog’ for them, on the idea of ‘the perfect gig‘, from which my editor (alongside a very odd picture of myself) chose to redact my article to:
“bands should only play awesome shows. i think it’s probably that simple. there’s too much music happening anyway…” – click here to read the whole thing.
I’ve been wanting to be able to post this here for a long time, but it’s been taking FOREVER to get it through the edit suite at work… (this is one of those things you don’t complain about – it’s a luxury problem to have too much to do in our industry).
Anyhow, only a few months after I’d started running the TV side of things for Rockfeedback I got an email from Simon over at Bella Union (you can read his blog at the link) saying that a few of his bands were in town, and would we like to do something. Chatting it through in the office, I flippantly suggested that we film them at the London Eye. The following day I followed up my flippancy with an email. And two weeks later we took all four bands, one-by-one, into a pod on the London Eye, and filmed the proceedings therein.
It was definitely a lesson to me about how relaxed and easy even a comlicated shoot like this one can be, and about a hundred moralistic sentiments (“you don’t get unless you ask”, “there’s no such thing as a stupid idea”, “don’t speak or you’ll be held to what you say” etc etc). It was also *awesome*. We heard songs from and chatted to The Low Anthem, My Latest Novel, Ohbijou and The Acorn. I also learned a neat trick with a couple of mobile phones, courtesy of The Low Anthem, which they show off in beautiful style too. The vid is just below, you’ll spot my mobile phone, and also my Martin guitar, which three of the bands borrowed for their sessions…
So I’ve been running the production on a new set of sessions for St Pancras Station, called, oddly enough, The Station Sessions. It’s been a lot of fun to set up and get going the last three weeks, and oddly enough there’s been a huge amount of overlap with the artists I used to book for IKTOMS.
I thought it’d be good to drop a couple of links in here so you could see what I’ve been up to. Obvious bias towards the two bands from the lineup I’ve booked so far! The sessions are every Thursday between 6 and 7pm, just by the Eurostar terminal, inside the station itself. This Thursday sees another IKTOMS acts coming down, in 6 Day Riot – if you happen to be passing by it’s worth dropping in on a free show in one of the odder spaces in London!
Matthew and the Atlas
Ed Sheeran
For more on Ed Sheeran or Matthew and the Atlas click on the links on their names just there… both great acts. Ed and I sat down before the session, and figured out that of the OVER ONE THOUSAND GIGS that he’s done since 15, I’ve put on a full 2% of them, including his first ever show. Sweet.
We’re in session with the wonderful Nina Nastasia today – can’t wait to film it. The rockfeedback sessions are my favourite thing to film, especially when it’s just one person, and especially if that person is as talented as Nina.
We spend most of our time, before the act arrives, perfecting minute details. We’re contstantly reshuffling the lights, taping down mic leads, testing room mics, blacking out signs, identifying sources of hums… and then the artist arrives, and the same starts again but down to the tiniest of adjustments on camera positions and light intensity.
After that the session is over before you realise. They play three or four songs, and then we sit them down for what is normally a deep and meaningful (we hope!) conversation about their music, what music is, why it is, where it’s going, yadda yadda…
Anyhow, I’m off to collect the lights, but in the meantime here’s something equally special, made for Nina by somebody else (a very talented someone else) – I love how you never see anybody but Nina actually providing their addition to the song….
Will try to get the Nina session up here once done…
Just over a year and a half ago now I organised what is probably still the silliest (and most awesome) event I’ve yet to be involved with. I took 11 singer-songwriters (and a poet!) on tour in a minibus, starting with a gig in London, moving up through York to then do a three-night residency in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival (at an amazing venue – The Forest Cafe), then proceeding to take in Manchester and Worcester on the way back down the country.
It was a huge learning curve, and a huge amount of fun – people remember it fondly even now, and I’d like to think it was a part of bringing together some people who still remain good friends now.
In any case, when my parents mentioned that they’d really enjoyed the IKTOMS gigs I used to run in London, and would have loved to have one on in Cornwall (where they live), I quickly found myself working out a way to get down there and do it. And we’ll be doing exactly that this weekend… myself, Fiona Bevan, Kal Lavelle and Stephen Long are hopping into a rental van and driving to the South-West, where the intention is to sun ourselves in some Cornish coves, write some new songs, and to play a concert on the Saturday night at Wringford Down. I really can’t wait! It’s been a long time since I allowed myself a weekend of free-spirited creativity, so very much looking forward to it.
If you’re not in or around Cornwall this weekend (and I suppose the likelihood is that you’re not) then all four of us will be bringing the show back to Kal’s own night, WE LOVE SUNDAYS, at the World’s End pub in Finsbury Park (not the one in Camden!) on the 9th May, so join us there! If you live further afield then we’re just going to have to up our game… and I’m feeling up for occasional challenges – name your city, town or hamlet and we’ll plan a new IKTOMS tour…
I’ll attempt to post some songs up here when we get back – we’ll be recording the show.
I forgot to mention so far, those ever-changing banners up there came from a load of images sent to me by a friend from back at my Cartoon Network days… Pete McGlasham. They’re small snippets of absolutely *HUGE* files, all of which I think were randomly generated by a graphics suite called Flame, in attempting other things.
Basically I thought they looked ace, and chopped them all up, then put them in a randomiser at the top of the page. Realised today I’d never said where they came from, and credit should always, always, be due.
I met Meat Loaf this week. The man is a legend, and more than slightly off-kilter. He’s 62, with the energy of a 2-year-old high on fizzy drinks.
We did an interview with him for the rockfeedback ‘Real Talk’ section, expect it here soon. In the meantime, this video makes about as much sense as the man himself:
I’ve been to two gigs just recently that have been ‘powered’, as it were, by a front-woman with a voice in the calibre that verges on ‘ridiculous’.
What’s been confusing me is the reaction to those voices. People seem to be fine with women either having softly-softly vocals, throaty whispers, delicate breaking high notes etc… or to be ‘out-there’ and zany with the vocal potential (see Bjork, Bat For Lashes etc). The idea of a straight-up powerful female voice seems to be linked, for a majority of listeners, with some kind of 80s power-rock, or with OTT country music. That, or it’s just unsettling.
The closest to having awe-inspiring vocal organs, used in a relatively straightforward, non-quirky, non-delicate way that I can think of (until these last two gigs, that is) has been Florence and the Machine, in recent years. She’s obviously courting the quirky as an act, but not so much on the vocals front – there it’s just straight up ‘lungs’.
I guss I don’t want to delve too deeply into gender-politics on this one (I’ve not even touched on Beth Ditto, Karen O etc), and I’m not even sure I’ve got a point beyond this:
Music Go Music takes the prize for sheer incredulity of vocal prowess, but the common theme for myself between the two of them was the simplicity of the approach – “I’ve got an awesome voice, would you like to hear it?”. Held in check when it should be, unleashed with a piercing clarity at just the right moments. No warbles. No rasp. No breaking or whispering.
I really liked it, but found myself defending both bands after the shows. Accusations of cheesiness. Dismissals of it all being ‘too much’ or ‘all about the vocals’.
Maybe so – but they were both *sodding awesome* vocalists. Well worth checking out – even if just to tell me I’m wrong.
ps – Lissie is a true-to-life hippie, and sings country songs – don’t go there if that’s going to offend you
pps – Music Go Music, on a similar note, sound like Florence and the Machine being redone by Abba covering Fleetwood Mac by way of Journey, plus some. Again, no apologies if that’s not your basket – but I wouldn’t have assumed it was mine.
ppps – postscriptums and “band name bears other band name’s bastard child” journo tags are both great fun!
I think most people write these at the end of the year before, to appear more prophetic should the recommendations come through. Having just made a few compilation CDs for friends, however, I thought I’d share a couple of the bands that are exciting me at the moment, a couple of months into 2010.
(1) Beach House
We had the chance to film Beach House at their recent Bush Hall show, and I was completely blown away. Their new LP, ‘Teen Dream’ is a sure-fire contender for album of 2010, and you shouldn’t be without it. In the meantime you can get a few songs of them live in session for free over at Daytrotter (who do awesome sessions – check out their completely free back catalogue). They’re the sweetest people, and they make incredibly focused, completely overwhelming music.
(2) Field Music – The new Field Music album (oddly titled ‘Field Music (measure)’ parentheses and all) landed on my desk about 3 weeks ago, and there’s never more than 2 days between plays at the moment. It’s a glorious and OTT prog record, it sounds like Yes and ELP having an intellectual debate with Steely Dan and Tortoise. It’s the other surefire album of the year. How awesome is it that there are two already?
(3) Music Go Music – speaking of OTT, these guys are genuinely preposterous. Fronting the band is Gala Bell, who’d fit somewhere between Florence and the Machine and Blondie. Which is a horrifically trite thing to say, but sometimes it helps. The band make balls-to-the-wall pop music in the vein of Abba and some kind of late 70s hair-metal band. There were times in their last show, at ULU, where my only possible response to what was being presented to the audience was bemused and uncontainable laughter. And times where I was literally leaving my jaw hanging open. A completely astonishing and fairly unbelievable band. You shouldn’t go see them if you’re not a fan of ‘pop’ music. But then, you shouldn’t go see anything, if you’re that silly.
(4) Laura Gibson – Laura’s just amazing. She did a session with rockfeedbacl that we’ve nearly cut – I’ll probably put it up here once we’ve done it. She writes beauttiful songs with a heart of yearning optimism, unclouded by conceit: her lyrics run liltingly under the fingerpicking with a kind of childish honesty, tempered against a wisdom-aged depth of perception. All of which makes me want to write hugely pretentious sentences about her music.
(5) Surfer Blood – Dan Monsell, our Head of Live at rockfeedback, books some awesome bands. And the best ones for my tastes fall into two categories – sometimes he goes folk (the Peggy Sue boat show was perfect for me!), and sometimes he catches trendy and quirky bands from the ‘States just before they break. Surfer Blood are in the latter camp – uplifting melodies, a sprinkling of Vampire Weekend, maybe a little Pavement, but basically a core of great songs sung by a great new band.
(6) Johnny Flynn – I’m lucky enough, so far as Johnny Flynn goes, to share an office with his management at Transgressive, and so have heard a good few of the songs on the next LP. It’s going to be absolutely astonishing. ‘Nuff said.
(7) Caitlin Rose – From Nashville, Caitlin feels like one of the ones who grew up on the other side of the tracks in that divided city. Her latest EP, Dead Flowers, holds the promise of somebody who’ll be able to bring country music through to a different audience. ‘Answer In One Of These Bottles’ is just brilliant – a bold voice and slightly careless sense of humour…
(8) Lawrence Arabia – Lawrence (or James really, isn’t it odd when singers become the name of their bands?) was playing support at the Beach House gig I mentioned at the top there. I’d heard his album ‘Chant Darling’ already, but wasn’t prepared for quite how beautifully it all came across live. There’s a similar mastery of dynamics to fellow kiwi Liam Finn, but the songwriting is taken in a different direction. I’m going to add ‘Chant Darling’ to the albums of 2010 too. I’m going to have trouble figuring it out by the end of the year…
And that’s all for now! Let me know what you think of them if they’re new to you… and if not, let me know if you agree!
