I have realised to my horror that I’ve missed some fantastic albums off my list of best albums of the year. The first of these is Beirut – The Rip Tide, a fantastic album albeit far too short for my liking, I want more Beirut, more! The stand out track on the album is the closing one, Port of Call, it is brilliant, there is also East Harlem which is pretty damn good and Goshen which is on a fair few playlists I’ve made this year.
The next is Low – C’Mon, I properly cannot believe I forgot about this one, it is probably one of my favourite albums of the year, up there next to Bon Iver. Especially Me is my favourite track on the album, also worth a listen is Try to Sleep and Nightingale.
Another album worth a mention is Admiral Fallow – Boots Met My Face, I only bought it the other day and have listened to it tons, the best tracks are the first three, Dead Against Smoking, Squealing Pigs and Subbuteo. I first heard of Admiral Fallow stumbling across them at the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury and I loved them then, but since I forgot about them, I think I was probably overwhelmed by the rest of the festival, it was so so good, I had the most amazing festival time ever! Anyway I saw the album in Fopp the other day and thought I’d get it, remembering how good their live show was and really this album doesn’t disappoint, Frightened Rabbit-esque but a little more jaunty and little more falling into noisy guitar. Go get it, it was only a fiver!
Other great albums from this year include Elbow’s Build a Rocket, Boys, and Josh T.Pearson, Last of the Country Gentlemen, the latter album is pretty special, Rough Trade’s album of the year so if you visit the shop there’s a hell of a lot of stuff about it there.
Right, Christmas presents need to be wrapped, mulled wine to be made and mince pies to be eaten. Till next year then! Cheerio.
So here we are, coming to the end of another year, a time where it is bloody cold, and wet and lists of albums of the year are created. This past year has been just a little bit mental, what with graduating, and my first ever Glastonbury, and working at the British Museum and starting a masters. Not to mention all of the amazing gigs I’ve been to in the past twelve months. I have been a bit lazy in blogging recently, what with huge amounts of work and very very little sleep I just haven’t had the time. It culminated in yesterday being an entire day of sleep, I barely left my bed, only for food and the toilet. Anyway, so this is a list, in some sort of order, well, the number one is my favourite album of the year, but the rest are in no particular order, because it is so difficult to do that.
Right, we can start with Frank Turner, good old Frank, he will always be one of my favourite artists ever, and England, Keep My Bones was another solid piece of recording from him. Particular songs that I recommend are If Ever I Stray, Peggy Sang the Blues and I Am Disappeared. I love Frank and hope he comes and plays Liverpool again soon, he’s always touring so with any luck…
The next album of note is Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues. An amazing second album, all harmonies and ‘oohs’ and ‘aaahs’ it is has a euphoria to it that will always remind me of the past summer. Songs such as Sim Sala Bim and Battery Kinzie are the Fleet Foxes we all know and love but then you get something like the epic The Shrine/ An Argument, which tips the album into awesomeness.
We now come to Bright Eyes, The People’s Key. I love this album, like properly adore it, maybe not as much as I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, but still, almost as much. Especially after seeing Conor on stage at Glasto singing his heart out to One For You, One For Me. This album feels like a deep exploration into the meaning of life, ambient music juxtaposed with tracks such as Haile Selassie, Shell Games, and One For You, One For Me.
Lanterns on the Lake – Gracious Tide, Take Me Home, this album is pure shoegazery, post rock genius. I adore it and always will I think, they were one of the best bands I saw live this year, I have already talked about their gig in a different post. The album sweeps you away, listen to it lying on your bed with headphones on at full blast and it will get into your bones! ‘Lungs Quicken’, ‘Ships in the Rain’ and ‘I Love You, Sleepyhead’, are my picks of the album, although to get the best of it listen to the entire album in one go.
Bon Iver – Bon Iver, this is by far my favourite album of the year. Bon Iver has grown from Justin Vernon in a hut in the wilderness to a fully-fledged band with the album ebbing and flowing along, crashing here and there. Listening to the album is like walking along on a beach in the middle of winter, frost biting, breath hanging in the air, but you are wrapped up warm in a woolly jumper, coat, scarf and hat, hands jammed into your pockets. That is how this album makes me feel and it is wonderful. My favourite track on the album is Holocene, as I have said in a previous post this song haunts me, it is beautiful. And the rest of the album too! I don’t know quite what it is that I love so much, maybe the juxtaposition of what is seemingly stark but actually very warm music? Or is it the blatant honesty of his lyrics? It is just wonderful.
Here is a list of all the other albums which I have adored this year, in no particular order but I just don’t have the time to write about everything now unfortunately, I have about 8000 words to write in the next three weeks for essays due in in the new year, fun times ahead for me; anyway here they are :-
Girls – Father, Son and Holy Ghost
British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat – Everything’s Getting Older
Wild Flag – Wild Flag
Peggy Sue – Acrobats
The Miserable Rich – Miss You In the Days
Yuck – Yuck
Tom the Lion – The Adventures of Tom the Lion
Other Lives – Tamer Animals
Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
Emmy the Great – Virtue
The Leisure Society – Into the Murky Water
The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh
Walls – Coracle
King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
And here is some alternative festive cheer in the form of Fika Records Advent Calender, lots of fantastic Christmas songs to download for free, some of my favourites are here;
So it’s the first of December and I can now officially listen to Christmas music. I have actually been listening to it for the last few weeks, I couldn’t help it, I got the For Folk’s Sake christmas album and it sort of gathered momentum from there. This year it seems that there are a fair few new folky Christmas albums out from the likes of She and Him and Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler and the old stuff like Sufjan Stevens’ five album Christmas epic, Bright Eyes, and something that surprised me was a Christmas album by Low.
Anyway the She and Him album, ‘A Very She and Him Christmas’ is exactly what I’ve come to expect from Zooey and Matt, the traditional mixed with their own stuff. Particularly good is Christmas Waltz, the whistling in Rocking Around the Christmas Tree and Zooey’s wonderful voice in Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. It properly gets you in the mood.
Last December when it was ever so snowy Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler decided to make a Christmas album, this is pretty much all original songs except Marshmallow World, a song from way back in 1949. Christmas Day (I Wish I Was Surfing) is great track, very reminiscent of Ash. The other song off that album I recommend is Home For The Holidays, this one has very much got the touch of Emmy to it, here is the video, check out Tim’s jumper, it is amazing!
An amazing Christmas album that has been out for a while is the Bright Eyes one. From 2002, this album is all covers of traditional songs but with a certain Bright Eyes twist. With guest vocals from Maria Taylor, one half of Azure Ray. Particular gems are Away in a Manger, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night and The Night Before Christmas. In fact I think you should listen to the whole album; here it is –
So Sufjan Stevens did a Christmas album in 2006, and like any Sufjan album (I say album, there are five discs, all amazing) it is pretty special listening. Doing his own stuff like It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad! and Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time, and then little instrumentals on traditional songs, and full covers. Worth a listen if you can find it, it’s stupidly expensive on Amazon.
Oh and I got the new Frank Turner album the other week. An album B sides and covers and stuff, and to my surprise there was a cover of Last Christmas, here he is playing it at Union Chapel a couple of years ago
And I can’t forget the amazing Christmas compilations that have been released by the great Folk website For Folk’s Sake. Last year they did their first one with people like Dan Michaelson, Emily and the Woods, and Laura Hocking, all are amazing. This year they did another one with the Leisure Society, Devon Sproule, Caitlin Rose and Darren Hayman. They are brilliant and raising money for charity, you can listen to them and buy them from Bandcamp here, last year’s album is on the left hand side.
So I hope I haven’t gone overboard on the Christmassy things, I know it’s only just December and that, I’m a little excited that’s all, and the Masters is driving me a bit crazy, that is my excuse for everything now.
Tonight I found out that one of my favourite gig venues has closed its doors for the last time, that place is The Masque. Today a few short twitter messages marked the end for the place, ‘It comes with great sadness, that we have to announce, The Masque has ceased trading as from today’. It has been host to many a fantastic gig, I have some amazing memories of the place from the last few years. I think the first time I went there was two years ago to see Charlotte Hatherley, I was only talking about that gig today because I’ve been listening to the Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler christmas album, slightly premature I know, but I couldn’t resist it. Anyway, that gig was in the room upstairs, there were very few people there and it was so intimate and perfect, and made a great impression on me. Another memorable moment at the Masque was seeing The Strange Death of Liberal England last year, I got very drunk and was singing along, and accidentally might of taken their set list before they’d even come on, oops. So farewell then to a fine venue in this town, only a short blog, but a longer one will come soon, I just couldn’t not mark the passing of one of my favourite venues and I hope that something will happen to get the place up and running again soon.
Here is some new stuff that I’ve been loving recently. The first is the video for the new First Aid Kit song, The Lion’s Roar. First Aid Kit just get better and better, I cannot wait for their next album, for which this is the title track, it is out on the 24th January,
Something else that I discovered today is this, a free download from Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo with Frank Turner, it is full of strings, accordion and harmonica. Frank and Emily’s voices work really well together. Emily Barker is touring next week,
Tues 22nd Nov- Bournemouth O2 Academy
Weds 23rd Nov- Newport Centre
Thurs 24th Nov- Birmingham O2 Academy
Fri 25th Nov- Barrowlands, Glasgow
Sat 26th Nov- Manchester Apollo
Sun 27th Nov- Hammersmith Apollo
Here is a video of them playing the song;
Changing genre completely, I’ve been listening to a fair bit of shoegaze in the last week, culminating in me drunkenly buying the latest LP by Walls, the album ‘Coracle’ is a brilliant electronic album with crashing synths and drum machines all creating that sort of wall of sound is great just to lie back, relax and listen to for hours, I had the album on repeat for quite a long time today. You can listen to it below;
So there’s a few new things to listen to. I am particularly looking forward to the next gig I’m going to, Franz Nicolay with Chris TT in support at Basement 20 in town, and the best thing is it is only £3 to get in. That’s in a week or so.
This is probably the most laid back album I’ve listened to in a while. The gravelly gruff vocals of Dan Michaelson are accompanied with minimal guitar and piano, softly playing, and greatly complimenting him. I first knew of Dan Michaelson when he was with the Coastguards, and then quickly found out about his previous band, Absentee. This album continues on Dan’s normal path of melancholic melodies, he truly unleashes his inner Eeyore and I like it. Some people may believe that because he is not really moving on, that he has plateaued, I think this may be his best album yet. Although Saltwater, released with the Coastguards is pretty damn good, and Victory Shorts, when he was with his previous band Absentee is worth a listen. I think his music has become more mellow and laid back as his career goes on. This album has heavy influences from the time he spent in the Texan wilderness, in a remote artistic desert community of Marfa. There are twinges of Bill Callahan and Josh T Pearson in this music, maybe more like the latter, as Bill Callahan is more upbeat on the whole. This album is worth a listen anyway, but maybe not if you are feeling a bit down, or maybe it might compliment that. So continues the melancholic meandering of Dan Michaelson.
So I’ve gone and drunk far too much tea for the second day in a row and am wide awake at half two in the morning. Yesterday I spent the early hours creating this mix, which I uploaded onto Soundcloud;
Last Friday I wandered along to a spectacular gig, this was to see The Miserable Rich at St Brides. I have meant to see The Miserable Rich for a long long time and whenever they come to Liverpool something seems to happen that means I don’t get to see them, so when the opportunity came along last Friday, I was free from work for a bit, one needs a break every-so-often, though actually over the last few weeks I’ve been very busy not doing work (that’s hit home this weekend, got a lot of work to get done for next week) anyway that’s beside the point. So I ambled up to the church on Percy Street, a couple of mini bottles of wine in my jacket pocket, it was bring your own, which I liked, you don’t have to pay extortionate prices for a pint like at the other venues in town, as I entered the church it occurred to me how good this place was as a venue. I’ve always liked churches as gig venues as the Arts Center back home is a church (according to local legend it is where the real Humpty Dumpty, a cannon in the English Civil War, fell from the church tower) and that places holds a lot of good gig memories for me. Anyway, as I walked in the support bands had started to play, I missed the first support, Fallen Leaf, and had walked in half way through the set of Married to the Sea, a local Liverpool band, their sort of Indie-twee folkiness is really interesting, it is quite refreshing to see this sort of indie around, its the sort that makes me remember why I like music, and why I am now so obsessed with it. Here is a short and sweet stop motion animation video for one of their songs ‘Quite a Spell’
You can listen to more of their music on their soundcloud and you can buy their music here Oh and one of the best bits of their set was when they did a cover of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, one of my favourite songs ever, and it was a brilliant cover.
The next support were Sparkwood & 21, a Liverpool folk band, who are vaguely reminiscent of REM, but with a lot more mandolin. You can listen to their stuff on good old fashioned myspace here. The song of theirs that I really recommend is Shadows, the lilting mandolin, the floaty vocals, the way it grows, its great.
The final support prior to The Miserable Rich was the somewhat surreal Alabaster DePlume, during his first couple of songs I was wondering what on earth is this, it appeared to be a man with a guitar wailing into the microphone, but as the set went on I became more and more endeared to him, and that grew to a peak when he played a song called Sorry, and that grabbed me, the darkly amusing lyrics suited the gig very well. He also played a song that is a eulogy to shoes, funnily enough called Shoes. He intermingled songs with ghost stories and really got us in the mood for the gothic night ahead.
The latest album by The Miserable Rich was recorded in what is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Britain, Blickling Hall, Norfolk, the ancestral home of Anne Boleyn, the album is filled with stories of ghosts and ghouls, and sex, the opening track Laid Up In Lavender is particularly raunchy. So on that Friday evening the band were introduced by Alabaster DePlume recounting a ghost story about Anne Boleyn with the band backing it up with monk-like harmonies before launching into their set. Throughout the set lead singer James de Malplaquet told the stories behind the songs, On a Certain Night, their current single is about de Malplaquet’s first love being possessed by an evil spirit, True Love is a tale he was told by his father about ghosts in a French house he was stationed in during the war. One night his father returned back to this house and thought he heard a knock on the door and footsteps on the roof, and then they stopped. Some of the men had been out drinking, thinking that this was one of them falling off the roof he ran outside and there was no-one there. Later he was told of the story that this house had been the house of a baron (or someone like that, I can’t remember exactly) and his daughter had fallen in love with a peasant, her father not letting this romance blossom, stopped it and now every night the peasant returns and the girl walks around the roof. Or so they say. At least the story went something like that, I think. All these ghostly yarns tinged with tragedy and lost loves.
My favourite of the songs on the new album, and played here, was Ringing the Changes, a truly beautiful track. The elegant piano, the subtle cello, and the amazing lyrics make this song. The lyrics make you feel warm inside, I know that’s a bit sentimental, but really they do, they remind you that you have to get on with things, go through ‘hell and bad weather,’ the layers build up and the song crescendos, nothing and then a sole guitar and de Malplaquet come in, soon joined by piano. If I dare to read far too much into this song, it is like he is carrying on after the crescendo, like weathering the storm. Too analytical? Maybe, but this song is just so good. I have already incorporated it into playlists and listened to it on repeat.
A particular highlight was when the band got off the stage and played in the aisle, the tinkling of a music box signaled that they were going to play Boat Song. I can’t really explain how it was, hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck good is how I would describe it. I couldn’t stop smiling by this point, so very happy. I left the gig new album and poster in hand almost skipping as I walked away from the church. I love a good gig, and that was not just good, it was bloody brilliant. You can get their music from their website here, and you should definitely do that, I promise, Cubs Honour!, that you will not be disappointed at all.
Last Wednesday I was in a funny state of mind, that kind of not really knowing whats going on state of mind, the one where you wander around looking a bit lost, but in the evening I found myself going to Leaf on Bold Street to see Lanterns on the Lake. If you want a band that is the perfect sound track to suit that state of mind I was in, this is definitely a good call. It was a free show as part of Liverpool Music week that has been happening over the last couple of weeks, and this was the only gig I could make, and boy was it a goodun. I wandered into the place, looking a little lost as I always do and walked through the busy restaurant up the stairs to find a bustling bar and many happy people waiting in excited anticipation for the bands to play. I think I missed the first support, but the others were pretty good, though due to my neglecting to remember their names I cannot say who they were, which is really irritating. Anyway so as I stood there waiting for the main show I got talking to a gentleman who had traveled down from Preston to see the band, they must be doing well to pull people in from that far around, and definitely deserve it. We also shared a mutual love for Bella Union and Midlake, as I have gone on about in previous entries. Right so as the band were coming on I realised that actually I had been chatting to them over by the merchandise where I’d bought a t-shirt, which are pretty awesome. So the band got going with ‘Lungs Quicken’, the opening track on the album and the crowd stood there in awe. The epic shoegazery-post-rock-ness oozed out of them and as usual at gigs I broke out in a broad grin. I cannot get over how good they were, especially the guy on the pedal-steel guitar, doing all sorts, including playing it with a violin bow, amazing. The highlight of my night was ‘I Love You, Sleepyhead’, my favourite track off the album. So I left in a state of wonderment after that gig, thinking what on earth just happened, that was brilliant! Here is them playing Sleepyhead at Glastonbury a year ago;
So that was that gig! Their album is amazing, worth going out and buying, you can get it here and they are still on tour so if you are anywhere near these places go and catch them live, you will not be disappointed.
Nov 11 @ Rolling Stone Weekender, GERMANY
Nov 16 @ Amager Bio Beta, COPENHAGEN
Nov 17 @ Mezz, BREDA
Nov 18 @ Royal Theatre – Crossing Borders Festival, DEN HAAG
Nov 19 @ Crossing Borders Festival, ANTWERP
Nov 20 @ The Attic (In The Forum), HERTFORDSHIRE
Nov 22 @ The Lexington, LONDON SOLD OUT
Nov 23 @ The Cooler, BRISTOL
Nov 24 @ HMV Institute, BIRMINGHAM
Nov 25 @ Bodega, NOTTINGHAM
Nov 26 @ Brudenell Social Club, LEEDS
Nov 27 @ The Deaf Institute, MANCHESTER
Nov 29 @ King Tuts Wha Wha Hut, GLASGOW
Nov 30 @ Electric Circus, EDINBURGH
What a welcome bit of post for a cold, grey Monday morning in November, the new Sigur Ros live album and DVD. I am sat on my bed with the beautiful music blooming out of my CD player in a sort of blissful stupor. The memories of that day in November three years ago flooding back to me. It was my first year at uni and my first trip back home, purely because I didn’t want to sell my ticket to the gig, I would not have gone home otherwise, I don’t think, but any way that was a wonderful day, there was a chill in the air as we walked from the station to Alexandra Palace, the place was buzzing with excitement, Sigur Ros rarely play in Britain and this was the second time I was seeing them in a year, the first being the breath-taking headline performance at Latitude festival earlier in the Summer. This album feels like you are there, it doesn’t sound like a live album until the rapturous applause at the end of each track. So yeah, you should definitely check this out. I am yet to see the film but it is sure to be good after their last film, Heima, which was amazing and is also worth viewing if you like this sort of thing, in fact I would probably say that watching Heima is very much higher on the list of live music films than this, it is beautiful, amazing, stunning, anyway, here is Festival from that Alexandra Palace gig, so judge for yourself, it is amazing, I cannot hide my love for them.
Back again after a very busy summer, filled with Glastonbury, Berlin, work and volunteering at the British Museum and then starting a Masters degree, so yeah very busy. I meant to keep this up over the summer but it just didn’t happen, access to the internet was sporadic at best. Anyway, I am starting this again because I am going to gigs again on a more regular basis. In the past month I have been to three great gigs which started with Slow Club at the best venue in town the Kazimier, supported by Dead Cities, Stealing Sheep and Sweet Baboo. Of those supports the one that stood out most to me was the folk troubadour stylings of Sweet Baboo. Hailing from North Wales he comes onto the stage guitar in hand and sings some of the most lyrically brilliant songs I’ve heard in a long while, so honest. Songs to check out by him are Who Would Have Thought… and I’m a Dancer. If you have a spare 45 minutes here is a recording of one of his gigs in Cardiff, and you can buy his stuff from his bandcamp page here
Then Slow Club were superb, a very fun set, lots of dancing, and at their merch stand they were selling T-Shirts with Sorry written on, and I just had to get one. Brilliant. Their new album, Paradise, has moved on from their debut, it has a different feel to it. Yeah So was more twee folk, something they didn’t really want to be classed as but, I can’t think of a better way of describing it. It is a really good album, filled with great songs, and the new album is a progression of that, just not so twee, a bit more raucous, maybe a bit more fun but it still has that feel of Slow Club, that great chemistry in the band. I’m not too sure, but anyway, both are very good listens. Here is there latest single, Two Cousins;
The next gig I went to a couple of weeks ago was Emmy the Great, the wonderful Emmy, who is definitely great. Emmy’s set was wonderful, and after the gig she was selling her merchandise and was lovely when I spoke to her. I can’t really remember it that well because I’ve been so mentally busy, but what I do remember is that the gig was seated, which felt slightly odd, but that didn’t matter because Emmy mesmerized the crowd. Here is one of the best songs off her new album, which I reviewed earlier in the year.
Then a week ago I went to what was probably the most spectacular of gigs, followed by one of the most odd. The spectacular one was Laura Marling at the Anglican Cathedral in town. That cathedral is huge, absolutely enormous, which made the acoustics there really really good. The support came in the form of The Leisure Society, a band I have loved for ages but only saw for the first time at a Bandstand busk this summer; here is one of the songs they did then;
They opened with We Were Wasted, which is my absolute favourite of their songs, I immediately broke out into a massive grin and the mood for the evening was set, one of wonderment and mesmerism. Laura was brilliant as usual, her beautiful voice echoed around the building, capturing the audience. At one point there was a bit of a break in the music with her band giving facts about the cathedral, one fact was that it is the longest cathedral in the world, at 189 meters. Night Terror was particularly effective in the building, her amazing whistling caused the hairs on the back of neck to stand on end.
Following that, I ended up in a little bar watching a really interesting gig, a guy called Thomas Truax, his last gig in the country for a while. His band was made up of his own creations, a ‘Mother Superior’ drum machine made with bicycle wheels and various other bits and pieces, other ‘instruments’ included the string-a-ling (I think that’s what it was called), and other marvelous things. This gig couldn’t have been more different from Laura Marling, the music, the venue, heavy metal pounding into the room from the basement. It was all a little crazy.
All in all then a pretty good month for gigs, then October was, and it ended with British Sea Power at the Masque on Halloween. I had agreed with a friend to get dressed up for the occasion, so had procured a sheet and cut eye and mouth holes into it and dressed as a ghost, something I later regretted, dancing in a sheet is not the easiest activity to do in the world. The gig was pretty laid back to start with but by the end the crowd was bouncing and the band playing loud. Due to the fact that I was fairly inebriated the set list escapes me now, but i do remember loving every moment of it.
Right, off to yet another gig now, the wonderful The Miserable Rich are playing St Brides tonight, and I cannot miss them again, I missed them every other time they played due to various unforeseen circumstances and now I have no reason not to go!
