i’ve got this horrendously addictive personality. once innocent activities, food stuffs or hobbies often rendered subject to my frequent compulsions, becoming a displacement activity for whatever it is i’m avoiding this week until i’ve done them to death and can’t face going back. until the next time. regular stuff, quotidien stuff, nothing too illegal and a long way from depravity. i’m talking checking websites every hour, smoking, drinking hot water with a slice of lime, baking cakes, searching for new music on the internet, eating sushi for every meal, watching the wire, even knitting.
currently, and this might be letting on more than any of you want to know, but currently its raw vegetables and humus- i have to eat them every day.
Never been a particular fan of camping, so missing Glastonbury this weekend doesn’t feel like any kind of loss, especially when you see pics like this-maybe next year? (or not)-could go into a big rant about how lame and tweely guardian reader-y it has all become, but I think it will probably come across as sour grapes (and quite frankly, it probably is).
Instead I have a super-hl-exclusive from the wonderful, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain who have a new album out soon (which is lovely) and are led (in part) by a good friend of ours Kitty Lux (who is also lovely).
The album, Precious Little, continues their winning formula of mixing clever re-interpretations of well known songs with a few of their own, equally fantastic, original tracks.
you know, ten days out of the city might be just about right. long enough to get some distance, far enough away to achieve perspective but not soo far gone you lose touch completely.
for me this week just gone was a watershed (and not just because of the torrential rain and plentiful opportunities to wear my brand-new, bright-yellow poncho) much like in a box of that beautifully branded Dorset muesli - if you shake it up enough, once the rattling has subsided and the oatmeal levelled, all the big stuff finally is left on the top. same thing happens in my life (only with fewer raisins) so with a week in the deafening quiet of the Poitou-Charente countryside, the dust seemed to finally settle on the last year and half and the view ahead started to clear. but i won’t bore you with the minutae of my own personal revelations because we’re here to talk about the music/film/culture/miscellania.
over the great glassy sea to my right, j.tillman’s been busy working on his new album, the Territory, and posted another beautiful demo which you might have seen on gorilla vs bear or his myspace, but since we’re always happy to lend him bandwidth on the latitudes and since it’s (somewhat unsurprisingly) achieved the repeat-repeat-repeat-feat on my itunes since i got back, High Enough to Raise is a welcome back track today.
i know i’ve waxed lyrical about josh’s gently effortless talent loads before, but his is a voice which has followed my last eighteen months through the dust storm, the chiming tales in his lyrics ringing truer than is sometimes comfortable but always worth listening to, i’d urge you buy his records so he can record more and finally get the bits of cement out of his beard.
image of rosie, denison and sufjan by liz wong via her artghost blog
on thursday night i ventured out into the sultry heat of kings cross all on my own to catch a gig. i’d not been to a gig on my own before, it was a strangely liberating experience. no worry about the person you’ve invited not enjoing it as much as you’d hyped it, the ability to squeeze into a small space for a better view and cheaper rounds at the bar. plus i sort of felt like a proper music journalist (not much fear of that usually).
the gig was a bit of a double header by two friends, who are also friends of friends.
confused? get some clarity after the jump. Read more »
Spring has sprung and just to show all y’all that we too can move with the times, we have an exciting new feature. Discussed over Moretti beers and Bison Grass Mojitos at the remodelled BFI in our most recent catch-up this section is a play on Saturday Live’s Inheritance Tracks. The general theme is what tracks do you feel have been passed down to you from another, older, scene or generation – and what track would you want to pass on to the next generation from your own times. Musical Time Capsules if you’re twee.
We’re not. We call it Hand-Me-Downs.
A cursory glance at Saturday Live’s guest selections throws up all kinds of dancefloor bombs, such as Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’, Monty Python’s ‘Bright Side Of Life’ and Elton John’s paean to early 90s NYC Vogue & Drag Balls “I’m Still Standing”…which is a shame because I was planning to choose some of those.
Nevermind.
All the more reason to kick off the first post with a guest selection.
proir to our theo outing, this weekend saw part two of la reunion (part one being a pie and ale fuelled hair of the dog mini session at the lock tavern earlier in the week) as we hooked up with some wasters i went to university with fellow academics for the coming together of two musical power houses.
london’s lo-fi slacker darlings finlay (who rode out the whole finlay quaye thing with remarkable ease) and all the way from the US of A, sprightly bean-towners mittens (though as the majority of the band are straight outta phoenix i get to call them damn yankees apparently) presented a double header at the buffalo bar in highbury (which might or might not have to do with finlay drummer ani being a gooner).
with both outfits well past the difficult second album mark and running wild with their dreams and visions, it sort of makes me feel both old and happy that we’ve all got this far, not least considering our shady south east london roots. the gig itself was suitably shambolic and a whole bunch of anglo-american fun though i’m assured both sets of troubadours really raised their respective games with their following dates in Brixton and Brighton when they’d warmed to playing in different time zones (brixton being deep south and all).
anyhoo, this was a very short tour of duty for mittens and they’ve since boarded planes bound for europe and the states, (and apologies to finlay for not being foriegn enough to get posted about today) but here is a piece of their nick lowe-esque tasty popiness lifted entirely from their eponymous first album. catchy enough to have been ringing round my brain since last week, and suitably melodic that it reminds me of summerteeth era wilco and with dirty pretty things’ anthony rossomando on bugle duties its just right for keeping your fingers warm.
way back in early december, i had the unmitigated pleasure of hanging out in those (frankly spooky) disused railway arches which run from Bermondsey Street to right under London Bridge Station. now with my reputation, you might find it hard to believe this was anything other than run of the mill ramping up to the weekend type vibe. but non monsieur, the other lady ms b was shooting a video for the new acoustic ladyland single, cuts and lies, which is the first track to be released from the critically lauded new album, skinny grin and features the magnificently sassy vocal stylings of miss coco electrik herself.
so i spent four hours listening to playback of the same song - albeit cut into scene sized snippets, which might be enough to to put you off something for life (even with my intravenous replay habit) but i left the shoot near bedtime still singing and loving the infectuous saxophone and piano hook and air drumming to the pummelling breakdown at two minutes thirty. damn there it was still looping when i got up the next morning. and again on sunday.
scenes with the whole band and not just the stunningly hitchcockian looking anne, were a complete blast to behold, not least because my cynical mtv reared self had assumed that most everyone mimes through playbacks (maybe i’m basing my knowledge on that robert palmer video, huh?) but the 10 strong crew and associated hangers on (whoo, that was me!) were treated to live jams, not just as the phenomenal fourpiece that is acoustic ladyland but solo bits from sickeningly great saxophonist pete wareham and legendary, tonsorial explosivo, seb rochford, the comedically and keyboardly gifted Tom Cawley and the hirsuite and mighty funky bassist Tom Herbert.
Now wrapped and cut and ready for an early march release, here is the finished product, courtesy of myspace’s filmy thing… Cuts & Lies
