Midlake kick of their contribution to the Late Night Tales compilation series with tracks from the cream of the UK folk scene of the 1960s and 1970s including the likes of Steeleye Span’s ‘The Blacksmith’, Fairport Convention’s ‘Genesis Hall’, the short-lived Bread, Love And Dreams (‘Time’s The Thief’) and the equally obscure (though apparently now reformed) Comus with ‘Diana’. … Continue Reading
Signed to Sub Pop on the strength of an unsolicited demo, Daniel Martin Moore is a singer, pianist, guitarist and songwriter who is already two albums into a rather curious catalogue. His first album, Dear Companion, was written with Ben Sollee last year and tackled environmentally destructive mining techniques in Kentucky. Now he follows it up with a solo record which turns out to be gospel, but not as we know it. … Continue Reading
The Tallest Man on Earth - Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird
It must be a drag for poor Kristian Matsson, being compared to Bob Dylan every time he opens his mouth, but it’s a comparison which holds more water than the typically lazy parallel drawn between Dylan and anyone who plays an acoustic guitar. The Tallest Man on Earth sports a vocal timbre which frankly sounds like the guy, and, with this brilliant new EP, Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird, he takes another step towards sharing Dylan’s virtuosic maturity and knack for worldly lyricism. We’re going through a period of popular music – ushered in by the Fleet Foxes, currently spearheaded by Mumford and Sons – where trendy nu-Folk is arguably reaching saturation point. Luckily, The Tallest Man on Earth avoids being swept out with the dirge by continuing to broaden, deepen and darken his already excellent craft. … Continue Reading
Laish - Laish
When most people hear the word folk two things come to mind: beards and Mumford and Sons. However, Laish are set to change that. True, Bristol’s off kilter acoustic quintet have toured with the UK’s best known modern folk group, and their vocalist, Daniel Green, is even host to facial shrubbery, but that’s where all similarities between Laish and bog-standard folk end. … Continue Reading
Bellowhead - Hedonism
Bellowhead’s trajectory has been upward since their debut album, Burlesque, made their name and prefigured the commercial success of acts such as Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling, all filed loosely under ‘folk’. However, the strength of the 11-piece Bellowhead has always been their admirably relaxed attitude to style labels, particularly the F-word which tied previous generations up in knots. They are unconstrained by any expectations about their repertoire, and their main imperative seems to be to play music they enjoy. And it shows. Their big band sound uses three fiddles, a bouzouki, cello, trumpet, trombone, sax, helicon (a sort of medieval tuba), drums, possibly a banjo, and the eponymous bellows, in the hands of co-founder John Spiers. … Continue Reading
The Whiskey Priest - Wave And Cloud
The Whiskey Priest is in fact Seth Austin, a singer songwriter with an impressive beard and a country outlook who makes his music in Austin, the San Francisco of Texas. As well as the beard, he has a fine moniker, culled from Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory (although the ‘e’ he adds to ‘whiskey’ brings in curious Irish overtones). His first album, begun in a church attic on a four-track, arrives weighed down by a high risk press release from record label, Rainboot. It declares, “It’s probably fairly unusual that a record label can, with any real level of honesty at least, suggest that they’re about to release a truly ‘classic’ album – one that could actually affect its audience to the point where it deserves the tag ‘life-changing’ – but we have that record.” Support for your artists is laudable, but probably only Blood on the Tracks, Here Come the Warm Jets and Kimono My House could live up to a billing like that. Rainboot sets Wave and Cloud up to be sinus-clearingly, mind-warpingly good. And although it’s not so bad, it falls some way short of the standards unhelpfully set by excitable marketing types. … Continue Reading
Jonah Maddox - Together We Are Taller
Oh deary dear. It seems Mumford & Sons have gone and upset a lot of people with their Mercury nomination. Though some saw the album as a whimsical folksy departure from the guitar-strewn indie that has dominated a large part of the awards of the last decade, some music purists (i.e. anyone with taste beyond pop laced with folk airs) saw Sigh No More as the equivalent of having a metal stake slowly worked into your temple – a situation not helped by the perpetual airtime ‘Little Lion Man’ still seems to get on 6Music. Unfortunately, it is this kind of divide that has split general opinion about the new era of folk. … Continue Reading
Laura Marling
April 25, 2010
“Miss Laura’s coming and she’s going to knock your socks off” – that’s how Alessi of Alessi’s Ark introduces the headline act. And although the Royal Box at the Palladium is empty, in Laura Marling tonight we truly have a homecoming Queen. She even says herself how good it is to be back in her hometown after touring America and the UK. … Continue Reading
Beyond The Curve
Beyond The Curve is coming up at London’s The Camden Head on April 4th, with a dashing bill of poetry, short film, theatre, live music, cabaret, spoken word and much more. You can monopolise on cheaper tickets by purchasing in advance, where we’re offering a special discount. Just visit Wegottickets’ Beyond The Curve page to purchase.
As a reminder, the bill has been put together by us and our good friends at Broken Glass and will preview the summer’s fringe festivals with a hand-picked programme starting at 3pm and taking its audience through until the early hours.
And what’s more: the day after is Bank Holiday Monday!
Tickets, once again are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/74842 … Continue Reading
March 15, 2010
A man and his guitar. A bearded man and his guitar. A Swedish bearded man and his guitar. A Swedish bearded man with a penchant for Bob Dylan and his guitar. A Swedish bearded man with a penchant for Bob Dylan and his guitar that I’m now head over heels in love with. The difference between all of its proceeding observations and the last one is its unlikeliness, in a world obliterated by folk musicians and their relative diluted incarnations. … Continue Reading
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